The big news in the Chief Minister’s statement of the 17th of June was the change to border controls, and in particular the change to access for non-residents, and the testing regime for residents, who met the 2+2 vaccination criteria. The Chief Minister also commented on contact tracing:
“The protection offered by 2 + 2 means that we can now also take vaccination status into account as part of contact tracing where we have cases of the virus on-Island. If someone is fully vaccinated then, from 28 June they will no longer be required to isolate if they are identified as a close contact of someone with the virus. This will significantly reduce the impact on our society during an outbreak.”
The PHR (Amendment) (no.15), commented on earlier in this blog, comes into effect on the 28th of June. It clearly gives effect to the border changes announced by the Chief Minister, but it is less clear how it impacts on contact tracing.
The principal section on the 2+2 vaccine exemption is the new reg.5A. For those covered by reg.5A, there is a good argument for saying that self-isolation requirements do not apply. Reg 5A(6) states: “A person to whom the 2 + 2 vaccination exemption applies — (a) is not required to self-isolate and need not provide a biological sample (and accordingly Schedule 2 does not apply to such a person where that person would otherwise be a Category A person and subject to that Schedule)”. Schedule 2 deals with border control, but there is a good case for arguing that this section applies to self-isolation requirements in general. It does not, however, apply to a person who is infected or reasonably suspected of being infected (reg.5A(2)(c)(i)).
Unfortunately, reg.5A has been drafted very much to address border control, and not as a free-standing section on vaccination status in the abstract, which can easily be applied to other contexts. In particular the definition of this regulation excludes a person who has “travelled outside the common travel area in the 10 days preceding their arrival in the Island” (reg.5A(2)(c)(ii)). A fully vaccinated person whose last journey outside the Isle of Man was outside the Common Travel Area (for instance to Spain in 2019) and did not spend 10 days in the CTA before they continued back to the Isle of Man does not fall within the definition of a 2+2 vaccinated person under reg.5A. Accordingly, if reg.5A is being relied upon to remove self-isolation requirements on 2+2 vaccinated persons, it will not cover every Manx resident who has had two qualifying vaccinations more than two weeks earlier.
It may be that other routes are intended to give effect to this policy, for instance by individual decisions on persons who would otherwise be required to self-isolate (reg.15(1)). Dealing with 2+2 vaccinated persons under two quite different parts of the PHRs based on whether they had travelled outside the CTA within ten days of their (perhaps historic) last entry to the Isle of Man would not be ideal. In any case, if 2+2 status becomes more important for activities other than leaving and returning to the Island, an amendment of reg.5A to deal with the person whose last journey outside the Isle of Man was some time ago would be worth considering.
Peter Edge's Law Blog. 