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The United States Centers for Disease Control and Prevention is considering shortening the recommended two-week quarantine period for people who have come into contact with people with it – a change welcomed by some medical experts who say the relaxed guidelines would be easier for people to follow. .
Current CDC guidelines recommend that anyone exposed to a person in coronavirus quarantine at home for 14 days, even if their test is negative for the virus. Scientists say it helps prevent the disease from spreading before it starts showing symptoms or those who don’t develop any symptoms.
However, CDC director Robert Redfield said in late October that those guidelines were developed when diagnostic tests were not as readily available as they are today. At the time, Redfield said the agency was trying to determine whether a quarantine period could be shortened to seven days with a negative Covid-19 test.
“It’s based on the data, it’s being evaluated, obviously we don’t want people to be quarantined for 14 days unnecessarily,” Redfield said during a press briefing Oct.21 at the CDC headquarters in Atlanta.
Dr Henry Walke, CDC’s incident manager for the Covid-19 response, said the agency is currently finalizing these new guidelines to recommend a seven to 10 day quarantine period with a negative Covid-19 test, according to the Wall Street Journal. Agency officials are still determining the exact length of the quarantine and the type of testing that would be needed to end it, the Journal reported on Tuesday.
“The CDC is still reviewing its advice and recommendations in light of new understandings of the virus that causes COVID-19, and will announce such changes where appropriate,” CDC spokesperson Belsie Gonzalez told CNBC on Wednesday.
Admiral Brett Giroir, Assistant Secretary of Health who is leading the federal government’s testing efforts under the White House Coronavirus Task Force, said during a press call Tuesday that it was starting to be “a preponderance of evidence that a shorter quarantine supplemented by testing might be able to reduce that 14-day quarantine period” to a shorter period.
“We are actively working on that type of guidance right now, reviewing the evidence, but we want to be absolutely sure,” Giroir told reporters. “These kinds of recommendations are not willy-nilly. They are developed with a variety of experts.”
“I should have done it earlier”
The shorter quarantine period might make it easier for people to follow CDC recommendations, as most people were likely shortening the two-week period on their own, former Food and Drugs Commissioner Dr Scott Gottlieb said on Wednesday. .
For people with Covid-19 but asymptomatic, which means they never develop symptoms, it is likely that they will no longer be highly contagious after seven to 10 days, Gottlieb said. The number of people who will contract the infection two weeks after their exposure is also “very low”, he said.
“I mean, frankly, we probably should have done it sooner,” Gottlieb told CNBC’s “Squawk Box”. “Asking people to quarantine themselves for two full weeks, to self-isolate for two full weeks from exposure is just going to lead people not to follow the rules. Something better be done. of practice. “
Former CDC Director Dr Tom Frieden, who served under President Barack Obama, told NBC News that the United States “must optimize quarantine” and that the greatest risk is four to seven days, then it decreases after that.
Dr Carlos del Rio, professor of medicine at Emory University, told CNBC the decision “made sense” and recommended that people get tested immediately after being exposed to Covid-19, whether they are quarantined for at least seven days and then retested to make sure they are negative.
“We spoke with the CDC and others about how to fit testing into a way out of quarantine,” he told CNBC’s Meg Tirrell.
White House coronavirus adviser Dr Anthony Fauci told ABC News’ Good Morning America on Wednesday that a two-week quarantine makes people reluctant to get tested for Covid-19 because a positive result could put them out of work.
“They don’t mean, ‘Well I’m tested, and now I have to stay out of work, I might lose money, I’m not subsidized and I might even lose my job,'” said to me . “So it could be that the balance – the best part of this equation – is to encourage more people to get tested so that they are not out of what they need to be, their job, their job. employment, their source of income. This is the real reason. “
– CNBC Kevin stankiewicz contributed to this report.
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