AS THE end of a difficult year approaches, there is growing debate over how people can celebrate the festive season together while minimising the spread of the coronavirus.
With scientists warning that relaxing restrictions could lead to a third wave in the new year, countries are implementing different rules.
The UK’s Christmas rules . Up to three households will be able to meet in homes for the five days spanning 23 to 27 December in most of the country, pushed up to seven days in Northern Ireland. Within these “Christmas bubbles” there is no requirement to socially distance unless it is a short visit.
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Whether the government has got it right in terms of the number of people and days for these bubbles is still debated. “I don’t understand why it needs to be so long,” says Stephen Griffin at the University of Leeds, UK.
In addition to the rule of three households, . People are being encouraged to avoid meeting in person unless it is felt necessary, and social distancing should continue. It is also capping the total number of people over the age of 12 who can meet in a home at eight. In the rest of the UK, numbers are unlimited. “One household could be as high as 20 people,” says Griffin.
Several other countries are also relaxing rules during the holidays.
In France, for example, people will be able to meet in groups of six adults but a national curfew is expected when lockdown lifts on 15 December. People will need to be in their homes from 9 pm until 7 am, except on Christmas Eve and New Year’s Eve. Restaurants and bars aren’t expected to reopen until well into January, in line with findings that closing such venues has more impact on virus spread than simply closing early.
“9 million
Austrians will be offered a coronavirus test before Christmas”
In Germany, in order to minimise transmission when people get together, in particular asymptomatic spread, people are being asked to voluntarily self-isolate for several days before meeting with other households.
“You may well be saving your relatives from getting covid,” says Julian Tang at the University of Leicester, UK. “It’s a nice idea, but it’s probably quite difficult.”
Festivities will be more subdued in Italy, which is taking the harshest approach with a progressive tightening of the rules until the new year, in a bid to discourage parties and gatherings. Between 20 December and 6 January, people will be banned from travelling between regions, barring a few exceptions, and won’t be allowed to leave their towns on 25 and 26 December.
Unlike people in the US during Thanksgiving, which fell on 26 November, Europeans won’t be expected to bring their own dinner. The US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention advised people travelling for Thanksgiving to bring their own food, plates and other utensils. But many scientists now think the risk of passing on the virus from contaminated surfaces has been overstated. Cleaning and disinfecting surfaces was “A casual touch of a surface is not going to get that much virus off it,” says Tang.
Austria’s approach involves mass testing its population of 9 million over 10 days in an attempt to isolate cases before the increased socialising starts. The country is using antigen tests that look for protein molecules from the virus, rather than the more commonly used PCR tests, which look for the virus’s genes.
Antigen tests give fast results, but aren’t as sensitive as genetic tests, so will generate more false negatives, wrongly telling people they are clear of the virus.
One risk is that it could be counterproductive, if people wrongly think a negative test is an all-clear. The testing process could even lead to a rise in cases. “If you bring all these people for testing, you might get some additional spread,” says Andreas Bergthaler at the Research Center for Molecular Medicine of the Austrian Academy of Sciences in Vienna.
We will find out in early 2021 which approaches have worked best, when we see the impact on transmission rates. After all, this is the world’s first encounter with the coronavirus. “We have never done anything like this before,” says Simon Clarke at the University of Reading, UK. “I don’t think we can say exactly what the impact will be [of different measures]. But the simple fact is, the more mixing that goes on, the more transmission there will be. And that will mean more people dying.”
