You can still be contagious if you’re fever-free and feeling better.
3 COVID Experts on Why the CDC’s Isolation Guidelines Are Bad for Public Health
You can still be contagious if you’re fever-free and feeling better.
Article Date: March 7, 2024
Article Blurb:
Given that COVID is still very contagious, Lara Jirmanus, MD, MPH, a clinical instructor at Harvard Medical School and fellow at the FXB Center at the Harvard T. H. Chan School of Public Health, says the newest guidelines are more confusing—and that they’re even misleading. She tells SELF that the CDC’s messaging implicitly communicates two falsehoods: that COVID has “ceased to be a threat,” and that it “stops being transmitted when people stop having a fever.” According to Dr. Jirmanus, infectiousness has little to do with specific symptoms, since you can be sick (and contagious) without a fever and with few, mild, or even no symptoms at all. And if you’re testing positive on rapid tests, you’re very likely still able to infect others, even if you feel fine.
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“Shortening isolation below five days supports economic interests and is not in the interest of protecting health, as the contagious period can vary with current variants,” Kaitlin Sundling, MD, PhD, director of cytology at Wisconsin School of Medicine and Public Health and member of the People’s CDC, tells SELF. She believes that the CDC’s updated recommendations are moving in the wrong direction. “COVID isolation should be expanded, not reduced or eliminated. There is no change in the scientific evidence around COVID transmission that would support reducing the recommended isolation period below five days,” she says. “Extending isolation beyond five days would be a safer approach, both to prevent viral spread and to allow people adequate time to recover.”
Despite what the CDC guidelines say, Dr. Sundling’s advice is to isolate for 10 to 14 days, if you have that option, and take two rapid tests with negative results at least 24 hours apart before going about your daily life as usual again. (Because Americans do not have universal paid sick leave, Dr. Sundling recognizes that many people will have to return to work or other responsibilities earlier than this. In that case, she says, people should be “wearing a well-fitting respirator and limiting in-person activities only to what is essential.”)