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Updated at 1:20 p. m. on Tuesday, July 30
We are now in the fifth year of the COVID-19 pandemic and the virus continues to spread; California is currently in the “very high” category of virus levels in wastewater. And after several years of evolving rules and more productive practices by public health officials, if you’re unsure of the existing recommendations about what anyone with COVID-19 deserves to do when it comes to what we all call ” quarantine”, you “I’m definitely not alone.
This spring, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) officially revised its national guidance on how long people with COVID-19 should isolate themselves from others, saying that COVID-positive people can now return to work or perform normal activities. once their symptoms go away, “they are improving overall” and have been fever-free for at least 24 hours without fever medications. The CDC’s new isolation rules have been in effect since March 1.
Previously, the CDC pleaded with others who tested positive for COVID-19 to stay home and isolate from others for at least five days, regardless of the severity of their symptoms, or even whether or not they had symptoms. Now, the CDC says that the number of days you isolate depends on how long you have symptoms, which can be more (or less) than five days.
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Continue reading to stay informed about the CDC’s 2024 COVID-19 isolation guidelines, how they differ from the recommendations you would possibly have become accustomed to in recent years, and how to think about the threat your positive COVID-19 test still poses. .
And remember, if you contract COVID-19, there is nothing that prevents you – if you are – from proceeding to carry out antigen tests at home and leaving isolation only when you obtain that negative result. (In fact, the Los Angeles County Department of Public Health still recommends “getting a negative check before leaving isolation. ”)
Unfortunately, this option has become much more complicated for many other people in 2024, due to the limited number of days of poor health and the fact that it has become much more complicated to locate loose COVID-19 tests to perform those repeat tests. In addition, you can always ask your mutual insurance company to reimburse you for up to 8 antigen tests per month.
According to the CDC, one isolates from others as long as they have symptoms of COVID-19 that don’t improve.
When can I start coming out of isolation, according to the CDC?
Once your symptoms begin and any fever you’ve had has gone away for 24 hours without the help of fever-reducing medications, the CDC says you can come out of isolation.
But you’ll need both of these things — symptoms improving for at least 24 hours and the absence of fever for at least 24 hours — to happen before you can leave isolation.
So, if your fever has gone for more than a day but your other symptoms haven’t gone away, you deserve to continue isolating until the CDC explains it. And if your other symptoms still have a new fever, it deserves to continue. isolate (or return to isolation) until the fever has gone away for 24 hours.
(Note that evidence is developing that it takes longer for some people to test positive in an at-home antigen test. If you have symptoms but test negative, do not assume that means you are not infected with COVID. The CDC recommends that you the antigen test is done 48 hours later and then the test is done after 48 hours (you can also order a PCR test, which is more sensitive).
What do I do when I come out of isolation, according to the CDC?
Once your COVID-19 symptoms are mild and improve for at least 24 hours, and your fever has gone without the help of medication at that time, the CDC says you should still take “additional precautions for the next five days. ” Precautions include:
The CDC recommends that you “be aware that you can still spread the virus that has caused your health problems, even if you feel better. ” “How much less contagious you really are this time” depends on things like how long you’ve been in poor health or how unwell you are,” the CDC says.
View CDC’s visualizations of other isolation schedules for others who test positive for COVID.
What happens if I test positive but have no symptoms?
“You’re possibly contagious,” the CDC says, so assume you are, to protect those around you.
The CDC recommends that for five days after testing positive without symptoms, you take the same extra precautions it advises other symptomatic people once they come out of isolation: wearing a mask, creating cleaner air, improving hygiene, and physical distancing. This is, according to the agency, “particularly important for people with conditions that increase the risk of serious illness from breathing viruses. ”
California’s own online resources on COVID-19 and other respiratory viruses now propose that Californians with COVID-19 consult the CDC’s rules related to isolation.
But if you’re under the impression that the state’s quarantine rules were different from the CDC’s, you’re not imagining it: they were. In January, while the CDC was still recommending that others who tested positive stay away from others for at least five days, regardless of whether they had symptoms, the California Department of Public Health announced it was relaxing those rules for Californians. and instead pleaded for a move away from the five-day rule in favor of “focusing on clinical symptoms and when to end isolation. “Then, in March, the CDC’s updated isolation rules looked almost exactly like the policy California had followed just a few months earlier.
The biggest difference between California’s January rules and the CDC’s revised recommendation is what other people who test positive for COVID but have no symptoms (known as asymptomatic infections) deserve to do regarding isolation and avoiding infecting others. The state said asymptomatic people with COVID should wear a mask indoors with other people for 10 days and avoid other people at higher risk for the same period of time. The CDC update noted that asymptomatic people “may be contagious” and only deserve to take “additional precautions,” adding possible mask-wearing for five days, a recommendation that California public health officials have now also adopted.
California’s January rules also allow people with COVID-positive symptoms to wear a mask when around others indoors for a full 10 days after their positive test or the onset of symptoms. Now that California public health officials are referring the state’s citizens to the CDC’s own guidelines, that 10-day requirement is no longer mentioned.
The March 1 update represented the first time during the pandemic that the CDC moved away from isolation periods established for others with COVID. At the beginning of the pandemic in 2020, the CDC stipulated a 10-day isolation period for COVID-positive people. Patients: A period shortened to five days in December 2021. This update was accompanied by rules related to wearing a mask that fits patients well. Five more days.
The CDC says those new rules “provide a unified strategy for managing risks from a variety of common respiratory viral illnesses,” grouping COVID guidance with guidance for other viruses such as influenza and RSV into a respiratory virus guidance package.
This, the firm said, “makes the recommendations less difficult to follow and more likely to be followed and is not dependent on Americans controlling their disease, a practice that knowledge shows is uneven. “
The CRPD states that in 2024, “the agency’s policies and intervention priorities now focus on protecting those who are at highest risk of serious illness, while reducing social disruption disproportionately compared to recommendations for prevention of other endemic respiratory viral infections.
After more than four years of public health policy at the federal and state levels that emphasized “If you test positive for COVID, stay away from others,” the 2024 update seems surprising to you.
There’s also the fact that since 2020 we’ve been told that other asymptomatic people can not only spread COVID-19, but they can also be to blame for much of the spread of COVID-19, because those other people are so unaware that even They have the virus.
“We know that you can be contagious without symptoms,” said Dr. Abraar Karan, an infectious disease physician and researcher at Stanford University. “We also know that symptoms can increase the threat of transmission. So if you cough and sneeze, we’re emitting more virus particles.
The latter states that symptomatic people pose the greatest threat to others, Karan noted, hence the continued advice for those other people to stay home until their symptoms disappear.
Karan says he would have liked California public health officials to give the public more information about “why they were doing it,” so the public could understand that those rules weren’t a green light to begin with. .
“If they had said, ‘People who don’t have symptoms can be contagious, but it’s less likely, and other people without symptoms will probably transmit less virus, so if you’re dressed in a high-filtration mask, your threat of infecting others it is quite low, and that is why we are doing it. “I think that would have made a lot of sense,” Karan says.
Calmatters reported that disability and equity advocates especially criticized the newer rules when they were first announced through California health officials, saying the rules may simply increase the threat of infection for Californians most vulnerable to severe illness or death from the virus.
“This policy is not based on science, equity or public health,” Lisa McCorkell, co-founder of the Patient-Led Research Collaborative that studies the effects of long COVID, told CalMatters. “It devalues the lives of other immunocompromised and disabled people. “friends and completely ignores the threat of long COVID. “
Michelle Gutiérrez Vo, a Kaiser Permanente registered nurse and president of the California Nurses Association, echoed those considerations when the CRPD announced its rules relaxing isolation requirements, calling them “steps backwards in protecting public health. ” ” and “very dangerous. “
“The other high-risk people don’t walk around with a flag that says, ‘I’m high-risk,’ so that other COVID-positive people can identify them and stay away from them,” Gutierrez Vo said. “It doesn’t work like that. “
“So, if you can’t choose the other people you want to stay away from, then there simply has to be a general agreement or a mandate – and that’s what we had – to ensure coverage of the general public. It’s the duty of the Ministry of Public Health with public health, and they are not doing it with these new guidelines,” said Gutiérrez Vo.
Regarding the dangers of long COVID, Gutierrez Vo said California’s isolation remainder protocol “puts everyone at risk. ” COVID, he said, “is not a respiratory illness like any other. When you have the flu and you get sick, it has no long-term effects. When you have RSV or any other respiratory illness like viral syndrome, it doesn’t damage your kidneys or your heart. ” .
This story features reporting by KQED’s Lesley McClurg. A previous edition of this story was published on March 4.
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