The CDC Just Adjusted Some of Its Quarantine Recommendations
For months, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention has recommended that people quarantine for 14 days as a safety precaution if you suspect you have been exposed to COVID-19. Yesterday the federal entity revised its guidelines.
The new recommendation: You may end your quarantine period—which is meant to keep someone who might have been exposed to COVID-19 away from others— after 10 days if no symptoms have been reported, and seven days if no symptoms are reported and you have tested negative for the virus.
Keep in mind this change is for people who do not have confirmed cases of COVID-19.
Why a shorter quarantine period is likely OK
The change in quarantine recommendations places less of a burden on someone economically and mentally.
The CDC explains that the 14-day recommendation was based on the “upper bounds of the COVID-19 incubation period.” Quarantine is important if you have been exposed to the virus, even if you don’t have symptoms, as it’s now clear that you can transmit SARS-CoV-2 before symptoms develop, and even if symptoms never develop. “However, a 14-day quarantine can impose personal burdens that may affect physical and mental health as well as cause economic hardship that may reduce compliance,” the CDC says.
In other words, “one of the biggest challenges with the previous recommendations was compliance,” explains Nikhil Agarwal, MD, an internal medicine physician at North Austin WellMed Clinics in Texas. “As more data is available now, it is found that for most people the new recommendations will help improve compliance with quarantining, which in turn will help in decreasing the spread especially in asymptomatic patients.”
But 14 days is still best, if you can do it
Even with the new recommendation, the CDC still says that the 14-day period is preferred. And for good reason. The lessened time period “is a slightly higher risk as opposed to the full 14-day quarantine,” explains Dr. Agarwal. The thinking, though, is that the 7- to 10-day spread should be sufficient, “still staying within the peak transmission periods.”
Another silver lining: Lessened time required indoors alone may help with mental health issues, which have seen an increase during this pandemic. “Not having contact with others or being involved with the world and the regular sensory input we get with the world, doesn’t allow for the body to self-regulate anxiety and keep that at a level where people find that to be manageable,” explains Amanda Jurist, LCSW, a board-certified licensed clinical social worker who specializes in child, adolescent, family and adult psychotherapy. “Being isolated leaves more time and space for individuals to cycle through anxious thought patterns and get stuck in their own mind, whereas social contact with others, families and friends or even colleagues, break that anxious cycle or thought pattern because you are engaged in another task outside of yourself.” For Jurist, the shortened quarantining time as it relates to mental health is a good thing, noting that “we just have to find a safe way to do it.”
Mental health benefits aside, should you still quarantine for 14 days if you can? Probably. Dr. Agarwal says this is especially true for people who are living in close contact with people who are symptomatic, who are high risk, and those with significant medical problems like heart and lung problems, those with cancer, or those on immunosuppressant drugs. He also says practicing COVID-19 precautions—wearing a mask, social distancing and frequent hand washing—at all times is still important, as “this disease can present in a variety of forms and does not spare anyone, young people included.”
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