‘We’re in a new place and that’s fantastic,’ says CDC Director Dr. Mandy Cohen, noting that the COVID-19 threat has fallen significantly.
People who test positive for COVID-19 don’t need to isolate for five days anymore, according to updated guidelines from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC), which said that COVID-19 has become similar to—and in some cases less severe than—the common flu.
The new guidance, updated on March 1, says that the threat from COVID-19 has fallen to become more similar to that of other respiratory viruses, and so rather than providing additional virus-specific guidelines, the CDC is opting for a “unified, practical approach.”
This unified approach recommends that people with symptoms of COVID-19 (and other respiratory viruses) should stay home and away from others until at least 24 hours after their fever has resolved and their overall symptoms are getting better.
“This recommendation addresses the period of greatest infectiousness and highest viral load for most people, which is typically in the first few days of illness and when symptoms, including fever, are worst,” the CDC said in the new guidelines.
The changes do away with the CDC’s previous recommendations for people with COVID-19 symptoms to isolate from others for at least five days.
“This is similar to longstanding recommendations for other respiratory illnesses, including influenza,” the agency said.
The CDC pointed to substantial improvement in various COVID-19 metrics, including “far fewer” people getting seriously ill and complications like multisystem inflammatory syndrome in children becoming less common.
“Data indicate rates of hospitalizations and deaths are down substantially, and that clinically COVID-19 has become similar to, or even less severe in hospitalized people, than influenza and RSV,” the CDC noted, adding that its new guidelines are “tailored to the current level of risk posed by COVID-19.”
In further justifying its shift to the new guidelines, which basically treat COVID-19 like any other respiratory virus, the CDC said that many people with respiratory virus symptoms often don’t know which pathogen is causing their symptoms, so a unified approach is more practical.
By Tom Ozimek
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