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MADISON (WKOW) – The head of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) said the agency would likely reduce its recommendation on how long people exposed to COVID-19 should be quarantined.
Currently, people are supposed to quarantine for 14 days after exposure, but the new recommendation will likely be for a seven to 10 day quarantine associated with a negative COVID-19 test.
Dr Ajay Sethi, an infectious disease expert at UW-Madison, said the change made sense.
“The CDC is optimizing the length of the quarantine so that it is a bit more science-based,” he said.
Sethi said the data shows that 99% of people exposed to the virus and will develop symptoms do so within 14 days. This is how scientists envisioned the initial quarantine period.
“It’s conservative,” Sethi said. “It is to be careful.”
But 50% of people who develop symptoms do so within five days, and 97.5% of people do so within 11.5 days of exposure.
Sethi says this data shows that shorter quarantines could be just as effective as long as they’re associated with a negative test.
“If you test negative after seven to 10 days of this high-risk exposure, it’s just a very low probability that you would then be positive if the tests were repeated,” Sethi said.
He said he believed the shorter quarantine period would be easier for people to stick to, which could lead to the virus spreading even less.
“If you cut it down to seven to ten days it would be a lot more attractive to people, and if it makes more people try quarantine, then … it’s more effective in controlling the virus in the population,” Sethi said.
Sethi said the change in guidelines was not unexpected as the CDC has revised its recommendations several times throughout the pandemic as scientists learn more about the virus.
He warned that while shorter quarantines are good news, they are not a signal we can give up by following other pandemic precautions.
The shortened deadline would not apply if someone tests positive for COVID-19 after being quarantined for several days.
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