CDC releases new guidelines on Isolation and ending isolation in COVID 19

By Dr Deepu Changappa Cheriamane

People who have been confirmed with mild to moderate COVID-19 can leave their isolation without receiving a negative test, according to recently revised guidance from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.

Increasing evidence shows that most people are no longer infectious 10 days after they begin having symptoms of COVID-19. As a result, the CDC is discouraging people from getting tested a second time after they recover.

The CDC has said

“For most persons with COVID-19 illness, isolation and precautions can generally be discontinued 10 days after symptom onset and resolution of fever for at least 24 hours, without the use of fever-reducing medications, and with improvement of other symptoms,” 

For people who have tested positive but don't have symptoms, "isolation and other precautions can be discontinued 10 days after the date of their first positive RT-PCR test for SARS-CoV-2 RNA.

There are exceptions for the 10-day guidance, including people with compromised immune systems who may be infectious for a longer period of time.

The CDC also notes that virus fragments have been found in patients up to three months after the onset of the illness, although those pieces of virus have not been shown to be capable of transmitting the disease.

“You could be positive by PCR test long after no longer being infectious,”

A PCR or polymerase chain reaction test detects coronavirus genetic material that’s present when the virus is active. Clinicians typically collect a nasal or throat sample from someone with a long nasopharyngeal swab.

Joseph Petrosino, the chair of virology and microbiology at the Baylor College of Medicine, said: “ I think one of the nice things about the CDC recommendation was that they pulled together a lot of data from a lot of different places from around the world that show that a lot of these long-term shedders are not associated with new infections or virus transmission.”

The recommendation of 10 days is specifically for those who test positive for the coronavirus and have been asked to self-isolate. It doesn’t apply to people who need to quarantine to keep from possibly spreading the virus. The incubation period for the virus is 14 days, health experts say, so anyone who has been exposed to the virus would need to quarantine to see if they become sick.

Most people who are infected develop symptoms after about five days, although approximately 20 to 40 percent who are infected don’t develop any symptoms.