The government is reportedly considering to offer state-funded quarantine facilities for those living in large families and cramped accommodations and are therefore facing challenges of self-isolation. These considerations appear amid reports of a third wave of coronavirus that has caught some neighbouring European countries by a storm and as Britain moves ahead with its slated unlock policy.
Contact tracing chiefs are concerned that people living with large extended families often find it hard not to pass on the virus to people they are living with, many of whom often work in jobs that cannot be done from home. Some do not come forward for testing as a result and even when they do it is harder to stop the virus spreading.
Figures from the Office for National Statistics showed that coronavirus infections were no longer falling and had started to level off and Monday, 29th March was the first day in six months that the country recorded zero Covid-19 deaths. But it is still concerning contact tracers that only 21 per cent of those who live with others are able to keep themselves separate while isolating, according to the ONS.
Baroness Harding, head of Test and Trace, told council chiefs this week that for many people in multigenerational households, pre-dominantly those from Asian backgrounds, “self-isolation physically just is impossible”. She highlighted “households where maybe there are eight or ten people who are all working, all of whom fearful that they might lose their job, which means that no one comes forward”.
Test and Trace is planning pilots to offer Covid-19 patients and their contacts the offer of staying in a hotel free of charge to reduce their risk of passing on the virus. Such a policy was discussed during the first local lockdown in Leicester last year but was never implemented. Details are yet to be finalised and Unlike hotel quarantine for travellers from red-list countries, the policy would be voluntary and state-funded.
