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Updated at 1:20 p. m. 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 grades in wastewater. And after several years of evolving rules and more productive practices by public health officials, if you’re unsure of existing recommendations about what anyone with COVID-19 deserves to do when it comes to what we all call “quarantine,” you’re 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 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 learn about the CDC’s 2024 COVID-19 isolation guidelines, how they differ from the recommendations you might have become accustomed to in recent years, and how to think about the threat your positive COVID-19 test poses to others.
And remember, if you contract COVID-19, there is nothing stopping you – if you are – from taking antigen tests at home and coming out of isolation only when you get 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, you isolate yourself from others whenever you have COVID-19 symptoms that do not improve.
When can I start coming out of isolation, according to the CDC?
Once your symptoms start and the fever you’ve had has gone away for 24 hours without the help of fever medication, the CDC says you can get out of isolation.
But you want either of those things (improved symptoms for at least 24 hours and no fever for at least 24 hours) before you can come out of isolation.
Therefore, if your fever has been gone for more than a day but your other symptoms have not gone away, you deserve to continue isolating yourself until the CDC explains. And if your other symptoms still have a new fever, you deserve to continue. isolate yourself (or return to isolation) until your fever has been gone for 24 hours.
(Remember, there is increasing evidence that it takes longer for other people to test positive on a home antigen test. If you still have symptoms, the test is negative, do not assume that this means you are not infected with COVID. The CDC recommends that you get an antigen test. 48 hours later, and then carry out the control after 48 hours (you can also request a PCR control, 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 transmit the virus that made you sick, even if you feel better. “How much less contagious you really are this time around “depends on points like the duration of your illness or the degree of your illness,” the CDC says.
See CDC visualizations of other isolation schedules for other people who test positive for COVID.
What happens if I test positive but have no symptoms?
“You may be 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, the same extra precautions that they advise other symptomatic people once they come out of isolation be taken: wearing a mask, creating cleaner air, improving hygiene and physical distancing. This is, according to the agency, “particularly important for people with problems that increase the risk of severe illness from breathing in 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 other people 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 loosening 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 guidance is what other people who test positive for COVID but don’t have symptoms (known as asymptomatic infections) deserve to do when it comes to isolating and avoiding infecting others. The state said asymptomatic Other people with COVID deserve to wear a mask indoors in the presence of others for 10 days and avoid other higher-risk people for the same amount of time. The CDC update noted that asymptomatic people “can be contagious” and only deserve to take “extra precautions,” adding the possible use of masks, for five days, a recommendation that has now also been adopted by California public health officials.
California’s January rules also require people with COVID-positive symptoms to wear a mask around other people indoors for a total of 10 days after testing positive or increasing symptoms. Now that California public health officials are directing the state’s citizens to the CDC’s own advice, this 10-day requirement is no longer mentioned.
The March 1 update represented the first time in the pandemic that the CDC moved away from the isolation times explained for other people with COVID. At the beginning of the pandemic in 2020, the CDC stipulated a 10-day isolation period for COVID-positive patients, a period shortened to five days in December 2021. This update was still accompanied by rules related to dressing in well-fitting clothes. Mask for patients. Five more days.
The CDC says those new rules “provide a unified strategy to control the risks of a variety of common respiratory viral illnesses,” grouping COVID guidance with guidance for other viruses like influenza and RSV into one virus guidance package. respiratory.
This, the company said, “makes recommendations easier to follow and more likely to be followed and does not rely on Americans to test for disease, a practice that data shows is irregular. “
The CRPD states that in 2024, “the agency’s policies and intervention priorities are now focused on protecting those who are most at risk of severe disease, while reducing social disruption disproportionately compared to recommendations for the prevention of other endemic respiratory viral infections. “
After more than four years of public health policy at the federal and state levels emphasizing “If you test positive for COVID, stay away from others,” he finds the 2024 update surprising.
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 they even 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, you’re expelling more virus particles.
The latter states that symptomatic people pose the greatest threat to others, Karan noted, hence the continued advice that those other people stay home until their symptoms subside.
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 might be contagious, but it’s less likely, and other people without symptoms will probably transmit less virus, so if you’re wearing a high-filtration mask, your threat of infecting others is pretty low, and that’s why we’re 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 Gutierrez Vo, a Kaiser Permanente registered nurse and president of the California Nurses Association, echoed those considerations when CDPH announced the easing of isolation requirements, calling them “a step backwards in public health coverage” and “very dangerous. “
“High-risk people don’t walk around with a flag that says ‘I’m at higher risk,’ so that COVID-positive people can identify them and stay away from them,” Gutiérrez Vo said. “It doesn’t work like that. “
“So if you can’t pick and choose who you want to stay away from, then there just has to be a general understanding or mandate – and that’s what we had – to make sure that the general public is protected. It is the Department of Public Health’s duty to 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 remaining isolation protocol “puts everyone at risk. “COVID, he said, “is not a respiratory disease 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 harm your kidneys or heart.
This story comprises reporting via KQED’s Lesley McClurg. A previous edition of this story was published on March 4.
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