BBC Radio Wales – Self isolation comes to an end in Wales

Oliver Hides “People in Wales who test positive for Covid 19 are no longer legally required to self isolate. The change came into force yesterday (28/03/22). Mark Drakeford said on Friday, it was a finely balanced decision to scrap most /covid of the Covid rules in place.”

Ollie welcomes, Elissa Thursfield “our go to woman for these kinds of issues” Ollie – This may well be something that companies are thinking about, having someone on your staff, should they be expected to work?

Elissa – As an employer, we have a duty of care for our staff, we have to do risk assessments to ensure we are protecting against Covid and keeping the risk low. The sensible thing to do would be to stay home if someone tests positive, there is SSP for that purpose. Unfortunately, with there no longer being a legal requirement for these people to stay home, those who are on a lower income or struggling financially and feel they can’t survive on SSP, we are expecting to see them presenting for work and going into the workplace.

There are many roles which cannot be worked from home. We do still have the “self-isolation support scheme payments” available until June. After that we are expecting to see a spike in people presenting to workplaces who are Covid positive.

People who test positive who have the capability of working from home. If someone has the capability to work from home and refuse to do so, that would be seen to be unreasonable from the employers perspective. If someone has tested positive and are very poorly with it, if they are too sick to work, they shouldn’t be working from home.  On the flip side, most employees are asking to work from home, they want their full pay whilst they are off. The reluctance is often on the employers side, where they are unsure whether it will work, if they haven’t done it before.

What the pandemic has shown us is that people can be very productive and it can work.