Most Americans recovering from Covid-19 can exit isolation without further evidence to show that they no longer carry the coronavirus, federal health officials said Wednesday.
Instead, patients can be judged to have recovered if it has been 10 days since they first felt sick; They no longer have any symptoms, such as shortness of breath or diarrhea; and they have not had a fever for 24 hours without taking fever-reducing medications.
The new recommendations are not rules but guidelines intended for patients, doctors and health policy makers. The reviews should help ease the burden on the country’s testing system, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention said.
Previously, one way out of isolation was to have two negative diagnostic tests, also called PCR tests, to detect the virus 24 hours apart. But there are now delays in testing of up to two weeks in some parts of the country, and numerous studies show that people with mild illnesses are almost never infectious 10 days after symptoms begin.
Public health experts generally agreed that the change was safe.
“This is anchored in the evidence,” said Dr. Wafaa El-Sadr, professor of epidemiology at the Mailman School of Public Health at Columbia University. “I think it makes sense.”
Nursing homes and hospitals are likely to feel the greatest effects of the change, said Dr. William Schaffner, a preventive medicine specialist at Vanderbilt University School of Medicine.
For example, many nursing homes will not accept hospitalized elderly patients after they recover until they pass both diagnostic tests. That has sometimes added weeks to these hospitalizations for no medical reason, she said.
The previous isolation guidelines were more conservative. When the disease first erupted in China, all patients with the disease, even mild cases, were immediately removed from their families for 14 days and were not discharged until they had two negative PCR tests.
But science has changed, and the situation in the United States is different. In this country, most sick people isolate themselves at home, despite the risk of infecting their families.
Many diagnostic tests remain positive even weeks after patients have fully recovered. Experts now believe those tests are reacting to dead viral fragments that the body is still removing, not to a live virus that can infect anyone else.
The guidelines also say that people who know they have recovered from a Covid-19 infection do not need to be retested or quarantined, even if they are exposed to another infected person.
The demand for evidence is so high, and the delays are so long, that it seemed useless to require more.
People who are seriously ill may take longer to rid themselves of the virus and may need to be isolated for up to 20 days, but they should seek the advice of a doctor, according to the new CDC guidelines.
The coronavirus outbreak>
Frequent questions
Updated July 22, 2020
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Why do the masks work?
- The coronavirus clings to moisture and enters and leaves the body through any moist tissue (the mouth, eyes, inside the nose). This is why people wear masks and eye protectors: they are like an umbrella for their body: they keep their droplets inside and other people’s droplets outside. But the masks only work if you use them correctly. The mask should cover your face from the bridge of your nose to below your chin, and should stretch almost to your ears. Make sure there are no gaps, those kinds of purpose defeats, right?
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Is the coronavirus in the air?
- Coronavirus can remain in the air for hours in tiny droplets in stagnant air, infecting people as they inhale, growing scientific evidence suggests. This risk is highest in crowded interior spaces with poor ventilation, and may help explain overcast events reported in meat packing plants, churches, and restaurants. It is unclear how often the virus is transmitted through these small droplets or sprays, compared to the larger droplets that are expelled when a sick person coughs or sneezes, or is transmitted through contact with contaminated surfaces, Linsey said. Marr, Virginia Tech aerosol expert. Aerosols are released even when a symptom-free person exhales, speaks or sings, according to Dr. Marr and more than 200 other experts, who have summarized the evidence in an open letter to the World Organization. Of the health.
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What are the symptoms of coronavirus?
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What is the best material for a mask?
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Does Covid-19 transmit asymptomatic?
- So far, the evidence seems to show that it does. A widely cited article published in April suggests that people are most infectious approximately two days before the onset of coronavirus symptoms, and estimated that 44 percent of new infections were the result of transmission from people who still had no symptoms. Recently, a senior expert at the World Health Organization stated that transmission of the coronavirus by people without symptoms was “very rare,” but later withdrew that claim.
Those who test positive but never experience symptoms can leave isolation 10 days after their first positive test.
The new isolation guidelines do not affect people who are asked to be quarantined for 14 days after their arrival in a new state or country, or after exposure to a known case.
That guide is based on the maximum incubation period for the virus, the time from infection to first symptoms, not recovery time.
But some experts speculated that the new change could lead to a shortening of the quarantine period as well.
Such a change could be made for scientific reasons. “But quarantine decisions for visitors from foreign countries could be made in conjunction with the US State Department, and there could be other considerations,” said Dr. Peter Hotez, dean of the National School of Tropical Medicine at the Baylor College of Medicine.
