COVID-19 patients only need to isolate themselves for five days until symptoms are gone, the CDC says

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People who test positive for the COVID-19 test only need to isolate themselves for five days until their symptoms have stopped, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention said Monday. The change in isolation guidelines from 10 days to five is based on data showing that people with COVID-19 are more likely to be contagious to others during the few days before and after they start showing symptoms, he said. the agency said in a statement.

After leaving solitary confinement, people should wear a mask around others for another five days, the CDC said.

The CDC also said on Monday that people who did not receive a booster dose of a COVID-19 vaccine but received the second dose of an mRNA vaccine six months ago, or who received a Johnson & Johnson vaccine two months ago, they should quarantine for five days if they are exposed to someone with COVID-19. This is a change from previous guidelines, which said that fully vaccinated people do not need to be quarantined if they are exposed to someone with the disease.

Changes to isolation guidelines for people with COVID-19 come just days after the CDC said healthcare workers only need to isolate themselves for seven days if they test positive for the virus, as long as they are asymptomatic and have a negative test. on the seventh day. The UK has also reduced the recommended isolation period to seven days, provided people have negative tests on the sixth and seventh days.

Today’s new CDC guidelines for the general public in the United States do not include a recommendation to take a test at the end of the five-day isolation period.

The highly contagious variant of omicron is causing unprecedented spikes in COVID-19 cases and, in many places, more people test positive for the virus every day than ever. As a result, the CDC has faced pressure from various sectors, including airlines, to shorten the period of isolation in order to reduce the shortage of people who tested positive and lose ten days of work.

Public health experts say a shorter isolation period is supported by research on the virus. However, people should be truly healed if they are going to return to daily activities. “What I don’t want to happen is for this to be used as an excuse to force people to return while they are unwell,” Megan Ranney, an emergency physician and associate dean at Brown University’s School of Public Health, told New York Times.

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