Since the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention launched a section of its website entirely dedicated to COVID-19, they have been regularly updating their guidelines to represent the latest research and developments in the battle against the highly infectious virus. On Friday mainly updated its orientation Aimed at people battling the virus at home, changing their suggestions on how long they should be quarantined after infection.
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Someone with symptoms
The CDC offers two approaches: one based entirely on time and symptoms and one based on evidence.
If you have tested positive for COVID-19, you should isolate it for 10 days after the symptoms first appeared, as long as 24 hours have passed without fever and without the help of fever-reducing medications and if key symptoms such as cough and shortness of breath have improved. If you have access to tests, you can leave the house if tests taken more than 24 hours apart are negative.
Someone without symptoms
If you tested positive for COVID-19 but have no symptoms, CDC offers two options: a time-based strategy and a test-based strategy.
If 10 days have passed since the first positive test and you have not developed symptoms, you can suspend the isolation. “Because symptoms cannot be used to assess where these individuals are in the course of their illness, the duration of virus shedding may be greater or less than 10 days after their first positive test,” says the CDC in the update.
However, if symptoms develop, then the symptom-based or testing strategy should be used.
Also, if you are asymptomatic but your result is positive, you can leave isolation if you receive two negative results taken within the next 24 hours.
Circumstances must be taken into consideration
The CDC urges you to make decisions to end the isolation “in the context of local circumstances.” For example, if you are a health worker or come into contact with high-risk people, you should isolate longer.
Those who have been exposed but have not been positive …
… you still need to quarantine for 14 days
The CDC still recommends that people who have been exposed to the virus, but have not tested positive or shown symptoms, still need to be quarantined for 14 days, the time it may take to develop the disease. “It is possible that a person known to be infected may leave isolation earlier than a person in quarantine because of the possibility that they are infected,” they write. And to get through this pandemic in the healthiest way, don’t miss out on these 37 places where you are most likely to get the coronavirus.
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