Americans who test positive for COVID-19 will no longer need to stay home from work and school for five days.
This is due to a new guidance planned by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, The Washington Post reported.
The CDC is loosening its COVID isolation recommendations for the first time since 2021. This is to align it with guidance on how to avoid transmitting flu and RSV, according to four agency officials and an expert familiar with the discussions.
CDC officials acknowledged how much the COVID-19 landscape has changed since the virus emerged four years ago, killing nearly 1.2 million people in the United States. The new reality, as most people have developed a level of immunity to the virus because of prior infection or vaccination — warrants a shift to a more practical approach, experts and health officials say.
“Public health has to be realistic,” said Michael T. Osterholm, an infectious-disease expert at the University of Minnesota told The Washington Post. “In making recommendations to the public today, we have to try to get the most out of what people are willing to do. … You can be absolutely right in the science and yet accomplish nothing because no one will listen to you.”
The CDC plans to recommend that people who test positive for the coronavirus use their symptoms to determine when to end isolation. Under the new approach, people would no longer need to stay home if they have been fever-free for at least 24 hours without the aid of medication and their symptoms are mild and improving, according to three agency officials who spoke on the condition of anonymity to share internal discussions.
Work on revising isolation guidance has been underway since last August, but was paused in the fall as covid cases rose.
Officials said they recognized the need to give the public more practical guidelines for COVID-19, acknowledging that few people are following isolation guidance that hasn’t been updated since December 2021.
Back then, health officials cut the recommended isolation period for people with asymptomatic coronavirus from 10 days to five because they worried essential services would be affected as the highly transmissible omicron variant sent infections surging. The decision was lauded by business groups and slammed by some union leaders and health experts.
The plan to further loosen isolation guidance when the science around infectiousness has not changed is likely to prompt strong negative reaction from vulnerable groups, including people older than 65, those with weak immune systems and long covid patients, CDCofficials and experts said.
Not everyone is on board with this new guideline.
This “sweeps this serious illness under the rug,” said Lara Jirmanus, a clinical instructor at Harvard Medical School and a member of the People’s CDC, a coalition of health-care workers, scientists and advocates focused on reducing the harmful effects of COVID-19.
The White House has not signed off on the guidance that the agency is expected to release in April for public feedback, officials said. One agency official said the timing could “move around a bit” until the guidance is finalized.