POLL | Should mandatory quarantining still be a thing?

It remains to be seen whether the national health department will ditch the requirement to quarantine for 10 days when you have come into contact with a Covid-19 case, and the subsequent contact tracing.

This after the co-chairs of the ministerial advisory committee on Covid-19, Prof Kholeka Mlisana and Prof Marian Jacobs, proposed their discontinuation in a report last week.

TimesLIVE reported that in a statement addressed to health minister Joe Phaahla and acting director-general for health Nicholas Crisp, Mlisana and Jacobs said: “Identifying contacts of Covid-19 cases, that is contact tracing, equally serves very little role.

“In addition, contact tracing is impractical once the Covid-19 caseload rises due to the large number of contacts that have to be identified for each case, and is extremely burdensome in its use of human and financial resources,” they said.

Jacobs and Mlisana also said testing for Covid-19 was not required unless the exposed individuals showed symptoms. 

Quarantine requirements in Kenya

The department of international relations and cooperation and the SA embassy in Kenya intervened after author Janine Jellars tweeted that she was forced into quarantine after she tested positive on landing in Kenya.

“I’ve tested positive at Nairobi airport and they’re trying to take my passport. I’m refusing. What are my options?

“It’s illegal. They’re trying to book me into a hotel I did not choose. They won’t let me self-isolate even though we have a home here. They are refusing to let me keep my passport despite the fact they’ve taken the pertinent details four times,” she tweeted. 

Another user said her passport was taken away after she tested positive on arrival in Nairobi, and was asked to choose between five quarantine hotels where she would stay for 10 days. 

She said individuals who tested positive stayed at the quarantine site at their own cost.