RIO DE JANEIRO, BRAZIL – The Uruguayan Ministry of Health (MSP) issued a decree yesterday amending quarantine, testing, and hospitalization protocols. The parameters are now based on the vaccination status of individuals.
The ministry believes that with the implementation of the changes, a change in “sanitary risk standards” will be required, as positivity levels will “undoubtedly” change when the regulation goes into effect.
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The most significant changes affect asymptomatic patients in contact with a Covid-19-positive case.
Instead of a smear test and preventive quarantine, individuals on the full initial vaccination schedule – two doses and 14 days after – will only need to undergo a rapid antigen test after contact and another PCR test five to seven days after the last test, eliminating the need for quarantine during that period.
People vaccinated with a booster – three doses – need to take no action. No post-contact antigen test, no quarantine, and no PCR test after one week.
The MSP emphasized that these new measures apply only to patients without Covid 19 symptoms and that symptomatic patients, whether they have received two or three vaccinations, must have the two tests and quarantine.
The measures remain the same for unvaccinated or incompletely vaccinated individuals if they contact someone positive for the virus.
“We know that the number of positive cases will increase, and that should not worry us,” a ministry source told El País. According to the source, only the population susceptible to contracting the virus is tested. Therefore it is “logical” that the percentage that determines how many of the daily tests are positive will be higher “because the denominator in that department is reduced.”
The positivity rate included in the daily reports of the National Emergency System (Sinae) is currently just under 3%. This percentage is an essential parameter for measuring health risk for experts and health authorities.
If the number of daily positive tests exceeds 5%, the capacity for testing, tracing, and isolation (Tetris) gets out of control; however, if it is below this level, the pandemic is “under control” according to the criteria.
With information from El Pais Uruguay