South Africa Scraps Isolation for Those without COVID Symptoms.

South Africans without symptoms of COVID-19 will no longer need to isolate or test if they have been in contact with a positive case, the government announced on Friday, saying developments around the virus justified a shift from containment measures towards mitigation.

The country has led the continent in terms of COVID-19 cases and deaths, as well as vaccinations, and its experience has been closely watched around the world after it was among the first countries to identify the more transmissible Omicron variant.

The health ministry said that asymptomatic individuals who had been in contact with a case of COVID-19 no longer had to isolate but should monitor for symptoms for 5-7 days and avoid attending large gatherings.

Only those people who developed symptoms needed to get tested, the statement continued, adding that those with mild symptoms should isolate for eight days and severe cases for 10 days.

All quarantine in facilities outside the home would be stopped, it continued, while contact tracing efforts would also be scrapped aside from in specific scenarios such as cluster outbreaks.