Isolating for a Short Period?

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Some people are calling for the period for isolation to be shortened again, to five days. This is if you're a symptomatic and what's really interesting about that visis you don't need a negative lateral flow test to get out of isolation. You do have to wear a mask around others for five further days. The uk. Has chosen not to go that far at the moment. But there's n ovious benefit if you can have people isolating for a short amount of time. And the shorter the better, obviously, because then people can go back to work.

On Wednesday, 194,747 daily confirmed Covid cases were reported for the whole of the UK. But this doesn’t include all the people who have caught the virus for the second, or even third time. In fact, official figures for England, Scotland and Northern Ireland don’t include those who have had Covid before, despite warnings from scientists that up to 15% of Omicron cases could be reinfections. Madeleine Finlay speaks to the Guardian’s science editor Ian Sample about why reinfections are so high for Omicron, what these cases could tell us, and how it could affect public health measures in the future. Help support our independent journalism at theguardian.com/sciencepod