Reactions vary to National Epidemiological Committee’s lowering of home quarantine time

AMMAN — Spokesman for the National Epidemiological Committee Nazir Obaidat said that the reduction of the duration for home quarantine to seven days was due to the fact that the period “has been proved sufficient enough to determine whether the person is infected with the virus or not”.

Obaidat said in press statements on Sunday that a two-week institutional quarantine followed by a one-week home quarantine was seen by the committee as an adequate amount of time to determine for sure if the person has the virus or not.

“Although there are cases where it took the virus more than 20 days to cause symptoms in a patient, the most common period is up to 14 days, which we have exceeded by a week, so the chances of a case being registered after that is very slim,” he added.

Obaidat further noted that home quarantine was originally set in case a person is infected during his or her institutional quarantine period.

Some citizens voiced disapproval seeing the issue as “a sign of favouring the economy over the people”, as put by Raed Jaghbir, an engineer, in remarks to The Jordan Times.

Jaghbir added: “After weeks of lockdown that have taken a significant toll on the economy, it seems that the government is now easing measures to attract tourists at the expense of citizens’ safety.”

The decision to reopen the domestic tourism sector a few weeks ago and the gradual reopening of Queen Alia International Airport soon comes after demands from residents and citizens abroad to ease the government’s safety measures amidst low records of virus cases.

“Dubai has reopened its tourism sector and airports even with more than 600 cases being recorded a day while we are suffocating our much poorer country for no more than 10 cases a day,” said Khalil Nasir, a tourism operator in favour of reducing home quarantine.

In a phone interview with The Jordan Times, Nasir said that reducing the home quarantine from two weeks to one is an “excellent decision”.

He added: “We receive tens of calls every day asking if the quarantine period has been reduced yet, as some people cannot afford to spend three weeks in quarantine when they might have much less time for a vacation. No one has more than three weeks for a vacation only to spend it all in quarantine.”

Nasir, among other citizens in favour of the decision, asked for further reductions in institutional quarantine as well.

Minister of Transport Khaled Saif said on Saturday that the reopening of the airport is going to be “gradual” but did not reveal details as to the quarantine arrangements for arrivals.