Seven days' home isolation for mild Covid infections, says Health Ministry

Shubhadeep Choudhury

Tribune News Service

New Delhi, January 10

Lav Agarwal, joint secretary in the Ministry of Health and Family Welfare, on Monday said the home isolation period for Covid patients with mild symptoms or having no symptoms (asymptomatic) had been decided to be of seven days.

The patient should not have any fever during the last three of the seven days’ isolation period, Agarwal said while participating in an online interaction on the topic ‘Home Isolation amid Omicron Rise’.

A patient thus “discharged” should continue to wear a mask. However, the patient need not take a fresh test to check his/her infection status.

Agarwal said those who might have come in contact with the patient should remain in effective isolation. However, they need take the test to ascertain whether they got the infection.

Agarwal said the patients should keep in touch with the treating doctors and could also contact the National Telemedicine Service of the GoI for advice. He warned people against “unauthenticated” information regarding Covid floating in the social media, especially WhatsApp.

Agarwal said that during the last surge it was seen that people were indulging in generic medications and even going for complicated tests like radiological imaging of blood, etc, by blindly following WhatsApp forwards that had landed on their smartphones.

Agarwal also warned against taking omicron lightly. He said the impact of the omicron variant on elderly people or on the co-morbid status of people was still not fully known.