When will Covid self-isolation rules end?

Ministers are set to wind up their response to the pandemic, no longer prioritising attempts to stop the spread of Covid-19 “at all costs”, as part of an exit strategy dubbed “Operation Rampdown”, leaked documents have revealed.

Official files seen by the Mail on Sunday describe how key parts of the government’s £37bn emergency response package will be “dismantled” as the country prepares to live with “endemic” levels of the virus for “years to come”.

The plans reveal that officials are examining questions such as “what activities can we start ramping down before April?” as well as what the “end state” of Britain’s response to Covid-19 should be after April, said the paper.

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The 160-page dossier reveals government plans to end the legal requirement for those who catch coronavirus to self-isolate for ten days as well as shut down the national test and trace system, which tracks those who may have been exposed to the illness.

Operation Rampdown also includes plans to end free Covid-19 testing and allow private companies to charge for lateral flow and PCR tests, as well as scrapping the £500 support payments for those on low incomes who have to isolate.

The documents indicate that ministers are considering abandoning attempts to stop Covid-19 spreading “at all costs”. Health officials will instead “judge future policies against the same kind of cost-benefit analysis used to decide whether the NHS can afford expensive new drugs”.

“We will no longer be prioritising the previous objectives of breaking chains of transmission at all costs,” one document is reported to state.

The strategy is part of a six-week review by the UK Health Security Agency into the government’s pandemic response and how life could look by spring next year. The new strategy outlined in the official papers “makes it clear the government is looking at how to dial down its response, and take it off an emergency footing brought on by coronavirus”, said The Telegraph.

The fight against Covid-19 is now “expected to move away from a countrywide response and towards tackling local outbreaks, prioritising vulnerable communities such as people living in care homes”, said the paper.

The conclusions of the UK Health Security Agency were due to be finalised by Dr Jenny Harries, head of the newly formed body, over the weekend before being submitted to Health Secretary Sajid Javid.

The plans are likely to be unveiled “by the end of the year unless there is a resurgence of cases caused by an unmanageable new strain of the virus”, said the Mail.

But No. 10 sources are said to have “distanced” ministers from the dossier on Sunday and denied that April could mark the end of the government’s emergency coronavirus response, reported The Guardian.

“No ministers have asked for this or seen it,” said one source. “It’s far too early to be talking about any of this stuff when [we] don’t know where we will be in terms of case numbers or state of the pandemic. You can’t plan so far ahead with this disease. It’s very premature to be talking about that at this stage particularly ahead of winter.”

However, it is hoped that the government’s booster programme will protect the most vulnerable over the winter period. More than 12.6 million people have now received their third jab, according to the BBC.

Professor Jonathan Van-Tam, the deputy chief medical officer for England, said: “If the booster programme is a success and we have very high uptake, we can massively reduce worry about hospitalisation and death this Christmas and this winter for millions of people.”

But he warned that coronavirus remained “unpredictable” and that “there just isn’t a second to waste now”.

While epidemiologists will still be keenly watching for “new variants that might be capable of outflanking the immunity provided by vaccines”, Covid-19 is now likely to “settle into its fate as an endemic disease, like flu or the common cold” over the coming years, said The Economist.

“Covid is not done yet,” said the paper, “but by 2023, it will no longer be a life-threatening disease for most people in the developed world” and will be “well on the way to becoming just another disease”.