Is scrapping self-isolation safe?

Is now the right time to lift all Covid restrictions, as the Prime Minister suggested he might do from 24 February? The news was met with howls of outrage from some quarters. For example, Zubaida Haque, who runs an equality think-tank and serves on the self-styled ‘Independent Sage’, last night tweeted: 

‘Ending the legal requirement to self-isolate if you test positive is a clear message to the clinically (extremely) vulnerable and immuno-compromised groups that their lives/health are no longer the concern of the govt or the public. It’s cruel, callous and not based on science.’

But others beg to differ. Irene Peterson, professor of epidemiology at UCL, suggests that ending the legal requirement to self-isolate might, counter-intuitively, be exactly what we need to do at this stage to reduce harm from Covid-19. Her reasoning is that we need 95 per cent of the population to gain immunity through either vaccination or previous infection – and we would be better achieving that before the effect of booster jabs has had a chance to wane.