How long should you be in isolation for COVID-19? – Telemundo New York (47)

What you should know

• The CDC recently announced changes to its COVID quarantine guidance, shortening the isolation window to five days for Americans who contract the virus and have no or only mild symptoms. But there is still confusion.
• A Manhattan ER doctor, Dr. Craig Spencer, who has been documenting his experience with COVID patients at his hospital during this latest wave, tweeted a post from the dean of the Brown School of Public Health Tuesday, Dr. Ashish K. Jha who is also a prominent researcher and graduate from Columbia.
• Jha answers the isolation question with four simple scenarios, all of which depend on rapid antigen testing being “cheap and ubiquitous.”

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NEW YORK – The CDC recently announced changes to its COVID quarantine guidance, shortening the isolation window to five days for Americans who contract the virus and have no or only mild symptoms.

Isolation should only end if a person has been fever-free for at least 24 hours without the use of fever-reducing medications and if other symptoms are resolving, the agency added. Similarly, he shortened the time close contacts need to be in quarantine, from 10 days to five, citing evidence that people with the coronavirus are most infectious two days before and three days after symptoms develop.

Yet even with this new data, Omicron variant-driven COVID hospitalizations are on the rise, locally and across the country. Additionally, the CDC has faced criticism for not including a testing requirement in its updated guidance.

So what is the ideal isolation time if you have COVID or if you were exposed to someone who tested positive during this Omicron surge?

A Manhattan ER doctor, Dr. Craig Spencer, who has been documenting his experience with COVID patients at his hospital during this latest wave, tweeted a post from the dean of the Brown School of Public Health Tuesday, Dr. Ashish K. Jha who is also a prominent researcher and graduate from Columbia.

Jha answers the isolation question with four simple scenarios, all of which depend on rapid antigen testing being “cheap and ubiquitous.” (New York has made efforts to make millions of them free, which is why they are already more available in this state than others, even as retailers seek to raise prices for home kits.)

According to the post on Twitter by Jha, it would be necessary to:

1. Isolate for the first five days
2. Then get tested daily
3. If you test negative for at least two days, your isolation may end.
4. Positive? Stay in quarantine until you get two negative tests or for 10 days.

“I think it’s that simple,” Jha tweeted.

There is also some leeway.

According to Jha, who has medical and master’s degrees in public health from Harvard and has been an elected member of the National Academy of Medicine since 2013, two consecutive negative tests “give you a lot of confidence,” but only one negative test after five days. of the isolation is “still quite useful”.

What if there is no test available?

For fully vaccinated people, Jha recommends five days of isolation and, if you have no symptoms after that, “diligently wear a high-quality mask at all times with other people.”

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