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The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention just announced one of the largest overhauls of coronavirus (COVID-19) isolation guidelines in years, ending the agency’s long-standing recommendation that people who test positive for coronavirus (COVID-19) remain isolated in their homes for… Five days and instead feel free to go out once they are relatively symptom-free. New guidance, reported last month, suggests that if you have COVID-19 and can survive 24 hours without telltale symptoms (without needing to self-treat), it’s okay to leave home.
This is the first time the agency, in the face of the evolving coronavirus, has revised its isolation recommendations since late 2021, when the CDC reduced the original 10-day isolation period for those who tested positive to 5 days. But in a broader sense, this episode highlights how public health policies are evolving alongside public health threats like the coronavirus — and how society is coexisting with a new class of pathogens.
“Our goal here is to continue to protect people at risk for serious illness while also reassuring people that these recommendations are simple, clear, easy to understand and can be followed,” CDC Director Dr. Mandy Cohen said at a news conference.
The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention’s (CDC) revisions come on the heels of a brutal respiratory virus season led by triple coronavirus (COVID-19), influenza, and respiratory syncytial virus (RSV). There were 135,073 emergency room visits linked to COVID-19, influenza and respiratory syncytial virus (RSV) in the week ending February 10, according to Centers for Disease Control and Prevention respiratory virus surveillance data, down from the season-to-date peak of 283,256 emergency room visits in United State. Week ending December 30, 2023.
Declining numbers of patients in hospitals will likely be a major factor in changes to isolation guidelines as COVID-19 joins other seasonal viruses that tend to peak during the winter months. “I think this is appropriate and something we expected,” Amesh Adalja, an assistant professor at Johns Hopkins University and an infectious disease expert, said recently. Fox News belonging to the capital. “We’re kind of compiling all of our guidance on respiratory viruses into one big guidance. . . . We’re in a much better position with Covid than we’ve ever been.”
Adalja and other experts remain cautious. COVID-19 is ultimately a more dangerous illness for some than the flu, and CDC data shows infections can also peak during the summer months. This was the case with the sub-Omicron variant last July. Another omicron subvariant, known as JN.1, is now expected to make up more than 92% of all COVID-19 cases in the United States and could exceed 96% in the coming weeks. But the CDC has noted a growing disconnect between infection and subsequent hospitalizations or deaths.
“COVID-19 infection is now causing severe illness less frequently than earlier in the pandemic. Levels of infection measured using wastewater and test positivity, which captures both symptomatic and asymptomatic infection, are higher than the previous year (currently estimated at 27% and 17% higher, respectively). The agency reported in January that levels of the virus in wastewater, in particular, had increased rapidly over the past few weeks, adding that “measures of COVID-19-related illness 19 and requiring medical attention, such as emergency department visit rates, also increased.” However, they remained “21% lower than at the same time the previous year.” . . . The number of hospitalizations due to COVID-19 is 22% lower than observed in the previous year, and the percentage of total deaths associated with COVID-19 is 38% lower. The numbers have improved since then.
There is also a nuance about when a person with COVID-19 is most infectious. A lot depends on when you get tested in the first place, and what type of coronavirus you may have. Up to 30% of COVID-19 cases may have no symptoms at all, and the incubation period for the virus can range from two to 12 days.
Ultimately, the unpredictability of the evolution of COVID-19 strains combined with available vaccines and treatments and general public awareness about a once-in-a-century virus make these kinds of changes in isolation guidelines inevitable.
Update, March 1, 2024: This article has been updated with new official Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) guidelines for coronavirus (COVID) isolation.
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