March 01, 2024
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The CDC said Friday that people with COVID-19 no longer have to isolate for 5 days if they are showing certain signs of improvement — the first time in more than 2 years that the guidance has been updated.
The new guidance pertains not only to COVID-19 but also to other respiratory diseases, including influenza and respiratory syncytial virus. It says people who become sick with a respiratory virus should “stay home and away from others” but can “return to normal activities” if, for at least 24 hours, their symptoms have been improving and any fever that was present has been gone without the use of fever-reducing medication.
The CDC said people with COVID-19 no longer have to isolate for 5 days. Image: Adobe Stock
The CDC last revised the guidance more than 2 years ago when it said people with COVID-19 could isolate for 5 days instead of 10, followed by 5 days of wearing a mask around other people.
CDC Director Mandy K. Cohen, MD, MPH, said the new update “reflects the progress we have made in protecting against severe illness from COVID-19.”
The CDC issued the guidance just days after recommending that older adults get another booster dose of COVID-19 vaccine this spring.
“The bottom line is that when people follow these actionable recommendations to avoid getting sick, and to protect themselves and others if they do get sick, it will help limit the spread of respiratory viruses, and that will mean fewer people who experience severe illness,” Demetre Daskalakis, MD, MPH, director of the CDC’s National Center for Immunization and Respiratory Diseases, said in a statement.
COVID-19 hospital admissions decreased more than 10% during the most recent week with available data, and the proportion of U.S. deaths attributed to COVID-19 have declined nearly 9% over the same time, according to CDC tracking.
The agency stopped aggregating COVID-19 cases and deaths last year and now uses hospital admissions and the proportion of COVID-19 deaths among all U.S. deaths as its primary surveillance metrics.
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Amesh A. Adalja, MD
I welcome the new CDC COVID-19 isolation guidance, which reflects the new context of humans and SARS-CoV-2. Similar guidance has already been in place in California, Oregon and almost all countries of the world.
This virus went from having no tools to use against it to being the respiratory virus for which the most tools have been developed — tools that many of us would like to see exist for other respiratory viruses — and no longer does the virus threaten hospital capacity. It has become the endemic respiratory virus that it was biologically destined to become, and its ubiquity — coupled with the tools and knowledge that exist — support integrating the guidance for it with the other endemic respiratory viruses.
Amesh A. Adalja, MD
Senior scholar
Johns Hopkins Center for Health Security
Disclosures: Adalja reports no relevant financial disclosures.
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