New Guidelines for Covid Isolation Could Be Coming
The four year anniversary of Covid-19 is rapidly approaching and since the pandemic began, the guidelines have evolved.
However, new changes to isolation guidelines for Covid-19 could be coming in the next few months. As Erie News Now Contributor and Epidemiologist Dr. Becky Dawson explained, "Having really clear new guidelines that hopefully are easier to understand and reflect the reality that when most of us get sick, we aren't getting tested anymore. We are staying home because we have symptoms, we aren't super worried, is it flu is it RSV, it is Covid, we're managing out symptoms and then we are returning to work or school when we are healthy again."
The CDC could lower the isolation period from five days to 24 hours without a fever and improving symptoms, at that point people would be allowed to return to work or school. "What we need to find out is does it reduce harm enough that we are really protecting the public? Those are questions that we will have to wait and see what happens", said Dr. Dawson.
Dr. Dawson believes there's still a lot to learn about the potential new guidelines, "It will be interesting to see, 'do they have a lot of science backing up some of the decisions that they are making?' or is this some kind of hazard reduction that we are going to do the best that we can."
According to Dr. Dawson, reducing the effects that come with Covid and mitigating the spread of the virus is most important, "We need to have harm reduction, we can't ask people to do gold standard disease prevention every time they get ill. We need to ask what is the most we can ask of people to reduce the greatest amount of harm."
The CDC is expected to put out the new guidelines in the spring for public comment, they would be finalized in the summer just in time for them to take effect for the coming school year.