France to ease isolation rules

France will relax Covid isolation rules from today, the government announced, in a bid to ease their impact on society and the economy.

Fully-vaccinated people who test positive will only have to isolate for seven days regardless of the coronavirus variant they were infected with, but can leave quarantine after five days if they show an antigen or negative PCR test.

There will be no quarantine for fully-inoculated individuals who have a close contact test positive. However, people must respect protective measures and “undergo regular testing”, health minister Olivier Veran said. Until now, those who tested positive in France had to isolate for 10 days with their close contracts also quarantined for a week.