Several countries are moving towards shortening the quarantine period for Covid-19 to an average of 14 days. But how far could this shortening go and will it be uniform throughout Europe?
On Friday 4 September, German Health Minister Jens Spahn said at the end of his virtual meeting with his European counterparts that a consensus had been reached not to go below 10 days. This deadline is already applied by the Netherlands and Norway and is being considered in Germany.
“We were able to agree that travellers from risk areas should generally be quarantined for a minimum of 10 days. Some countries want to keep the option of even exceeding these 10 days, but a minimum of 10 days was the consensus everyone could go along with at this point”, Mr Spahn said. “A rather more controversial issue – and one that will require a bit more work – is whether we should have a common Europe wide approach on whether to allow a negative test result five days later to reduce the quarantine”, the Minister added.
Only a few days later, however, the French Minister of Health, Olivier Véran, indicated that he had received a report from the national scientific council containing a favourable opinion for a reduction of the quarantine period to “seven days”. “You are most contagious within the first five days or after symptoms or after a positive test. And then, this contagiousness decreases in a very important way and, beyond one week, it remains, but it is very weak”, he argued, specifying that he would reserve his decision for Friday 11 September. According to him, this shortened period of isolation will promote “better adherence” because, today, “we see that a large number of French people do not respect the fortnight”.
Asked about this by MEPs on 2 September, the director of the European Centre for Disease Prevention and Control, Andrea Ammon, said her agency was currently assessing the issue. She recalled that the standard 14-day period already left out “3 to 4% of cases” who develop an infection after 14 days. “The more you shorten [the quarantine period], the more cases go undetected”, she warned.
It should be recalled that Member States are currently working on better coordination of measures to combat Covid-19, in order to avoid problems at intra-European borders. On Monday 7 September, they discussed the proposal for an EU Council recommendation, tabled by the Commission a few days earlier, and are expected to discuss it again in the coming days at ambassadorial level and the EU’s Integrated Crisis Response Mechanism (IPCR) (see EUROPE 12553/1). (Original version in French by Sophie Petitjean)