STA, 21 January 2022 – In Slovenia, the time of self-isolation will be reduced from at least ten to seven days from Monday, health officials announced on Friday. This will apply to most infected people, provided they do not have fever or any other covid symptoms for 24 hours before the end of self-isolation and are negative on the seventh day.

Self-isolation will be reduced for all those infected with the coronavirus, except for those with a weakened immune system or a severe covid-19 infection who need hospital treatment, said infectologist Janez Tomažič at the Covid press conference.

If a person has a fever on the sixth day of self-isolation or shows any other symptoms of Covid, the self-isolation period is extended.

In addition, self-isolation will end after seven days if a person’s rapid test is negative on the seventh day. The test will have to be performed by an authorized testing provider, which means that self-tests are not enough.

If the rapid antigen test is positive on the seventh day, the person continues with self-isolation and takes another test the next day until the tenth day, when the self-isolation is completed according to the current regimen.

To make the new protocol even safer, the person will need to avoid socializing as much as possible for three days after the end of self-isolation and use FFP2 or surgical face masks.

The updated regime will take effect on Monday and will also apply to those who were in self-isolation before that day, said the head of the Covid government advisory group, Mateja Logar.

An agreement will soon be reached with the rapid testing providers that those wishing to be tested will set time intervals to end self-isolation after seven full days.

For asymptomatically infected people, the period of self-isolation begins on the day of a positive PCR test, and in people with symptoms and PCR-confirmed infection, the first day of symptoms begins, she added.

According to the rules of the European Covid Pass, the issuance of a QR code for those who have survived Covid is possible from the eleventh day after a positive PCR test, ie from the eighth to the tenth day after a positive test, people will not have a valid QR code.

The proposal to shorten the time of self-isolation was made by experts from the Infectious Diseases Service of the Medical Center of the University Medical Center Ljubljana, and later it was also supported by an advisory group.

This comes after calls to reduce self-isolation by company representatives who observe a shortage of Covid-related staff during the Omicron wave.

“We know that the Omicron variant is highly contagious and that people who have been vaccinated or have had Covid-19 are less safe than previous versions. society, “said Tomažič.

“With a pragmatic approach to shortening the duration of isolation and quarantine, we are adapting to the desire to maintain the functioning of society, while recognizing the additional risk of human-to-human transmission,” he added.

Logar, meanwhile, reiterated the distinction between self-isolation and quarantine, explaining that the first is the separation of infectious disease sufferers from non-sick people, and the second is the separation and restriction of movement of people who have been exposed. infectious disease to determine whether they get sick or not.

Despite the slightly milder Covid-19 in most people infected with Omicron, a large increase in infections could lead to an increase in the number of patients in the coming weeks, Logar warned.

In addition, large numbers of self-isolation and quarantine could lead to problems in the functioning of public services and critical infrastructure in the younger population. The Advisory Group is therefore not yet considering mitigating the measures.

So far, the time of self-isolation has been at least ten days, depending on the course of the disease.