The Min­istry of Health has made some changes to the home iso­la­tion guide­lines.

Chief Med­ical Of­fi­cer Dr Roshan Paras­ram made the an­nounce­ment dur­ing the min­istry's COVID-19 press con­fer­ence yes­ter­day.

He said that peo­ple in self-quar­an­tine at home will con­tin­ue to be of­fi­cial­ly dis­charged 14 days af­ter the date they were ex­posed to a sus­pect­ed or con­firmed case once they con­tin­ue to dis­play no symp­toms.

But, he said once symp­toms de­vel­oped they had to con­tact the CMOH im­me­di­ate­ly and arrange­ments would be made for COVID-19 test­ing.

Paras­ram, how­ev­er, said there had been changes in the dis­charge cri­te­ria for home in­so­la­tion and for iso­la­tion gen­er­al­ly.

"We broke it down to two cat­e­gories based on the da­ta sent in to me and sup­port­ed by lo­cal and in­ter­na­tion­al da­ta as well as vac­ci­na­tion cov­er­age in the coun­try.

"So we are say­ing now asymp­to­matic cas­es per­sons will be dis­charged af­ter ten days from the date at which the pos­i­tive sam­ple was tak­en, so that is per­sons who nev­er had symp­toms at all.

"A com­mon ex­am­ple that you find is some­body hav­ing a pos­i­tive as they take a test for the pur­pose of trav­el, they have no symp­toms, they quar­an­tine for ten days and once those ten days lapse and you have no oth­er con­cerns be­yond that, mean­ing the de­vel­op­ment of symp­toms, you will be dis­charged af­ter ten days," he ex­plained.

With peo­ple ex­pe­ri­enc­ing mild to se­vere symp­toms, he said, "We are look­ing at a min­i­mum of ten days af­ter the first had symp­toms and we adding three days where they don’t have any acute symp­toms. Cer­tain symp­toms per­sist for a very long time for ex­am­ple short­ness of breath fa­tigue and oth­er symp­toms. We are look­ing at the ab­sence of acute symp­toms in the ab­sence of med­ica­tion."

He said once acute symp­toms de­vel­oped dur­ing the quar­an­tine pe­ri­od, those peo­ple will be swabbed and treat­ed. He said com­mon symp­toms for acute in­fec­tion in­clud­ed cough, fever and run­ning nose.

Mean­while, Health Min­is­ter Ter­rence Deyals­ingh said that Phase 3 of the Boost­er pro­gramme for peo­ple who took As­traZeneca, Sinopharm and John & John­son will be­gin on Mon­day at the var­i­ous vac­ci­na­tion sites. How­ev­er, he said Pfiz­er boost­er shots will be rolled out from March. The min­is­ter re­mind­ed the pub­lic that they can safe­ly take any COVID-19 vac­cine as a boost­er re­gard­less of the brand they had ini­tial­ly tak­en.

Min­is­ter sup­ports Car­ni­val, phys­i­cal school re­open­ing

Health Min­is­ter Ter­rence Deyals­ingh re­it­er­at­ed his sup­port for the re­open­ing of phys­i­cal school and a Taste of Car­ni­val. He said, "As we have said pub­licly when­ev­er you open up any part of the so­ci­ety or the econ­o­my there will be risks, but at the stage when vac­cines are so read­i­ly avail­able we no­tice that coun­tries are putting more and more of the re­spon­si­bil­i­ty for the re­sponse to COVID on the pop­u­la­tion.

"Coun­tries are not tak­ing the po­si­tion that we can co­coon and shut down and lock­down things for­ev­er, it is just not good eco­nom­ic sense, men­tal health sense, so­cioe­co­nom­ic sense, and I have said pub­licly that I sup­port the re­open­ing of schools. "Our chil­dren need to be out there learn­ing, play­ing, mov­ing, meet­ing their peers, so­cial­is­ing, get­ting their nu­tri­tion, the ben­e­fits far out­weigh the risks and the onus is on all of us to pro­tect those who can't be vac­ci­nat­ed by be­com­ing vac­ci­nat­ed. We en­cour­age all sec­tors to get vac­ci­nat­ed. He added that the same ap­plies for the Taste of Car­ni­val.

"We are in full sup­port of the Min­istry of Tourism Cul­ture and the Arts to start to re­open the en­ter­tain­ment sec­tor as care­ful­ly as pos­si­ble as they are do­ing and, again, what­ev­er risks there are will be mit­i­gat­ed by the fact and we are hap­py that pa­trons com­ing in­to these events are go­ing to be ful­ly vac­ci­nat­ed."

He said since last year the min­istry had stat­ed that the re­spon­si­bil­i­ty had shift­ed dra­mat­i­cal­ly from gov­ern­ment ac­tion and gov­ern­ment in­ter­ven­tion to per­son­al re­spon­si­bil­i­ty and get­ting vac­ci­nat­ed.

On whether there were plans to open any oth­er ar­eas, he said "Let's wait un­til we reach that bridge. I can't pre­dict what the fu­ture will bring at this time, but we are tak­ing very brave mea­sures to re­open sec­tors of the econ­o­my es­pe­cial­ly for those who are vac­ci­nat­ed for large scale events, we don't have a po­si­tion on that as yet." He re­mind­ed peo­ple that be­ing vac­ci­nat­ed could save their lives if they con­tract­ed the virus.