BALTIMORE – The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention is dropping much of the remaining COVID-19-related guidance.
From isolation to mask-wearing, the company highlights hospitalization rates and deaths from the virus over the past season for updates.
The CDC says its goal is to offer guidance that combines federal recommendations for COVID-19 and other respiratory illnesses.
The company believes the tweaks will make the rules easier and more likely to follow.
This is the first time since 2021 that the CDC has replaced its COVID-19-related guidance.
“We now have better-aligned rules for treating respiratory infections, which are underreported and undertested,” said Dr. Stuart Ray, a professor of infectious disease medicine at Johns Hopkins University.
The CDC’s recommendations now mirror public health advice for other respiratory illnesses, such as flu and RSV.
They include: Stay home when you’re sick but return to work or school once you’re feeling better, and without a fever for 24 hours.
“You don’t want to isolate for five days after you’re diagnosed with COVID anymore,” Ray said.
The CDC says those most at risk still get tested so they can receive treatments.
As for recovery from COVID-19 or other respiratory viruses, the CDC still suggests wearing a mask for five days after not staying home, as a precautionary measure.
“The evidence supports that the mask prevents the transmission of those respiratory viruses and the tests can tell us what we are doing,” Ray said.
The updates were a blast for some Marylanders.
“You wear the mask if you have to pass out,” said Peggy Redmiles, a Baltimore resident.
“If it takes me more than a day, I take more than a day,” added Baltimore resident Ingrid Thornton. “I can pass it on with little resistance to an older person or a baby. “
The CDC says the rules are now being changed because most of the U. S. population has some immunity to the virus, leading to declining hospitalization and death rates.
Maryland knows hospital admissions are low in every county, with more than 260 patients hospitalized.
But fitness experts warn to be vigilant.
“We still don’t know the long-term consequences of COVID,” Ray said. “We’re seeing people with persistent symptoms and some of them, really severe, disabling symptoms after COVID and we don’t understand that completely.”
Now that those rules are easy and masking is optional, Ray says the safest way to get immunity to COVID is to vaccinate as many people as possible.