Americans are receiving updated guidance on how to cope with the COVID from federal health experts as the virus spreads broadly across the nation.
The updated guidance, which the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) released on Thursday, eliminates the recommendation to test-to-stay after potential exposure to the virus and removes the need to quarantine those who have been exposed. It also downplays the importance of screening those who have no symptoms and updates COVID-19 protocols in schools.
The CDC’s Greta Massetti said in a statement that the advice “acknowledges that the pandemic is not over, but also helps us get to a position when COVID-19 no longer substantially interrupts our daily life.”
According to Dr. Marcus Plescia, chief medical officer for the Association of State and Territorial Health Officials, the update doesn’t necessarily represent a significant overhaul of the current advice, but it does reflect a growing emphasis on individuals making their own decisions about their level of risk and how they want to mitigate that risk.
Additionally, it aligns the recommendations for those who have not received all of the recommended vaccinations with those who have â a recognition of the high levels of population immunity in the United States, which can be attributed to vaccination, prior COVID-19 infections, or both. According to the most recent data, 95% of the population is protected against serious sickness, therefore Massetti added, “It truly makes the most sense to not differentiate.”
In Kâ12 schools, the reforms can have some of the biggest effects. The recommendations do away with the “test-to-stay” approach, which enabled those who had been exposed to the coronavirus but had not had their vaccines to continue attending in-person classes as long as they continued to test negative and shown no symptoms.
For school purposes, the test-to-stay policy has replaced quarantine, thus “the practice of treating exposures would require masking rather than a quarantine,” according to Massetti.
