The leading U.S. Federal Public Health Agency has rewritten its definition to include people who are at risk of coronavirus who come into close contact with infected individuals in several short outbreaks over a 24-hour period.
The new definition of “close contact” released by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) on Wednesday will rapidly expand the pool of people at risk of being infected by the virus.
This will have an effect on the authorities for contacting people who are potentially infected by infected individuals, and more and more people may need to go to quarantine.
Under the older definition, “close contact” was defined as being within 6 feet of an infected person on a solid block of 15 minutes or more. It has now improved the accumulated coverage of 15 minutes or more over a 24-hour period.
This change was also made behind a study released by the CDC on Wednesday, which showed how the virus can be passed between individuals who come into contact with everyone, but on multiple occasions. The study was based on an incident that took place in a Vermont prison in August.
A male correctional officer came in contact with six detainees who were placed in a quarantine unit at the facility. Prisoners at the time showed no symptoms and were awaiting coronavirus test results.
Footage taken by prison surveillance cameras showed that correctional officers came within 6 feet of inmates for a short period of about one minute at a time. But when the exposure was calculated it totaled more than 15 minutes in total.
Six inmates tested positive for the virus, and then the officer also got a positive result, even though he came in contact with no other possible source of infection.
Announcing the new directive, the CDC said the findings reiterated the importance of wearing a mask. At a time when the virus was spreading in three-quarters of the country, the advice was even more important, the agency said.
According to Johns Hopkins University, U.S. There have been 8.3 million confirmed cases. The U.S. death toll is now 222,000.
