COVID-19 patients only need to be isolated for 5 days when symptoms disappear

According to The Verge, the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) said on Monday that people who have tested positive for the COVID-19 virus will only need to quarantine for 5 days after their symptoms disappear. The agency said in a statement that changing the isolation criteria from 10 days to 5 days is based on data showing that COVID-19 patients are most likely to infect others within a few days before and after the onset of symptoms.

The CDC stated that after the quarantine is lifted, people should wear masks around other people for another five days. CDC also said on Monday that people who have not received a booster shot of the COVID-19 vaccine but received the second dose of mRNA vaccine six months ago, or those who received the Johnson & Johnson vaccine two months ago, if they are exposed to COVID- 19 patients should be isolated for five days. This is different from the previous guidelines. In the previous guidelines, the CDC stated that if people who have been fully vaccinated come into contact with people with this disease, they do not need to be isolated.

A few days before the revision of the quarantine guidelines for people with COVID-19, the CDC stated that if medical staff test positive for the virus, as long as they have no symptoms and test negative on the seventh day, they only need to be quarantined Seven days. The UK has also shortened its recommended isolation period to seven days, as long as people test negative on the sixth and seventh days.

The new CDC guidelines for the general public on Monday do not include recommendations for testing at the end of the five-day quarantine period.

The highly contagious variant of Omicron is driving an unprecedented surge in COVID-19 cases, and in many places, more people test positive for COVID-19 every day than ever before. Therefore, the CDC is facing pressure from various industries, including airlines, to shorten the quarantine period to reduce the shortage of personnel who missed ten days of work due to a positive test result.

Public health experts said that research on the virus supports shortening the quarantine period. However, if people want to resume their daily activities, they

should really recover. Megan Ranney, an emergency physician and associate dean of the Brown University School of Public Health, told the New York Times: "What I don't want to see is that this is used as an excuse to force people to return when they are unwell."