But they also work with local jurisdictions and businesses to assess the risks and benefits of that guidance, Zink said. Some state health officials said they feel more comfortable keeping the five-day isolation guidance, with the caveat that "no one protocol, no one CDC recommendation, no one state recommendation is going to work for every situation," said Zink, who is also chief medical officer of the Alaska Department of Health.įor example, health authorities in Alaska have kept the recommendation to isolate for five days after a positive Covid test. Anne Zink, president of the Association for State and Territorial Health Officials. Oregon is the only state so far to relax its isolation guidance, said Dr. While Chin-Hong believes that the changes the Oregon Health Authority made are "reasonable," he said it's not time for a symptom-based approach at a national level just yet. "Flu isn't still killing hundreds of Americans per day, but Covid-19 is," she said.Ĭhin-Hong agreed, saying that to have this many deaths from Covid in 2023 is a "tragedy." It's why the isolation question is so complicated. It's not appropriate to compare Covid to the flu, Nuzzo insisted. "The symptoms approach makes more sense, not just for Covid, but for lots of other infectious diseases that people don't normally isolate for." "If you're feeling fine the entire five days and have absolutely no symptoms, staying at home by yourself is not the same as somebody who's had symptoms and then after five days, they're going out and coughing on everyone," Chin-Hong said. Peter Chin-Hong, an infectious diseases specialist at the University of California, San Francisco. Like other viruses, people with Covid have varying degrees of sickness.Ī set number of days to isolate is "dumb if you think about it from a medical perspective," said Dr. People who test positive for influenza are advised to stay home "until at least 24 hours after their fever is gone" without the use of fever-reducing medicines, such as Tylenol.Ī common cold virus is most contagious within the first few days but can continue to spread for up to two weeks, according to Johns Hopkins All Children's Hospital research.
People with the flu are most contagious the first three or four days after the illness begins, according to the CDC. "I don't see a biological reason to end the five-day isolation period." What we know about being contagious "The ending of the public health emergency declaration doesn't change biology," Nuzzo wrote. "We know that most people with Covid-19 shed enough virus that they are likely still contagious for at least five days," Jennifer Nuzzo, director of the Pandemic Center at Brown University School of Public Health, wrote in an email. That remains the most reliable scientific data, experts say. There was also evidence that people are most contagious during those first five days of infection. Anthony Fauci, former scientific adviser to the Biden administration, said at the time about the isolation recommendation. "If you look at the safety of the public, and the need to have society not disrupted, this was a good choice," Dr. Recommending that everyone stay home - and out of work - for 10 days would have brought the country to a halt once again, so the five-day plan was put in place.
"It was there to stop everything from falling apart."Īt that time, a large chunk of the population was testing positive all at once because of the highly contagious variant. "It was not a reflection of evidence-based" science, he said. The current recommendation to isolate for five days is a "hangover" from when the CDC moved from a 10-day isolation recommendation to five days in late 2022, just as the first wave of omicron was taking hold in the U.S., said Harvard University epidemiologist Bill Hanage. So, who is still following the CDC guidance? Schools, nursing homes and businesses. With much of the Covid testing done in private or not at all anymore, it is likely that many Americans don't bother with isolation anyway. "CDC is continuously reviewing its guidance for needed updates and recognizes that states may choose to implement CDC recommendations based on the needs of their own communities," Kathleen Conley, a spokesperson for the agency, wrote in an email.
#COVID DEATHS IN US TODAY JOHNS HOPKINS UPDATE#
The agency won't say whether it plans to update its isolation guidance any time soon. National Covid trends are similar, according to CDC tracking. "That made us feel comfortable moving to a symptom-based recommendation for isolation." What's more, "our level of immunity is high," Sidelinger said. Covid-related hospitalizations are down in Oregon, and wastewater surveillance indicates spread is either holding steady or decreasing.
0 kommentar(er)
