Are eight days of quarantine enough?
Different models were tested to see how length of stay and testing affected returning travellers
Quarantining overseas travellers for eight days prevents a “similar” number of infectious cases being released into the community as for a 14-day period, UK researchers say.
Authors from the London School of Hygiene and Tropical Medicine modelled different quarantine periods for travellers returning to the UK from the US or the European Union.
Their findings, which are in a preprint journal, show that a quarantine of eight days on arrival with a polymerase chain reaction (PCR) test for SARS-CoV-2 on day seven can reduce the number of infectious arrivals released into the community by a median 94%, when compared with no quarantine.
“This reduction is similar to that achieved by a 14-day quarantine period (median 99% reduction),” they write.
