White House COVID-19 Response Team stands by shorter isolation, quarantine recommendations

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US & Florida deed COVID-19 records

FILE - Dr. Anthony Fauci, White House Chief Medical Advisor and Director of the NIAID and Dr. Rochelle Walensky, Director of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, get to enactment successful the White House COVID-19 Response Team's regular telephone with the National Governors Association successful the South Court Auditorium successful the Eisenhower Executive Office Building connected the White House Campus, Monday, Dec. 27, 2021, successful Washington. (AP Photo/Carolyn Kaster) (Carolyn Kaster, Copyright 2021 The Associated Press. All rights reserved.)

JACKSONVILLE, Fla. – New cases of COVID-19 successful the U.S. person soared to their highest level connected grounds astatine implicit 265,000 per time connected average, a surge driven mostly by the highly contagious omicron variant.

The Miami Herald reported Wednesday that Florida surpassed 4 cardinal cases, and Florida deed a caller grounds for regular cases connected Tuesday with 46,900 caller cases successful a day. Since Christmas, the state’s seven-day mean of regular cases has surpassed erstwhile records acceptable during past summer’s surge, rising to 29,400 infections.

The White House COVID-19 Response Team connected Wednesday stood by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention’s recommendations to chopped isolation restrictions for asymptomatic Americans who drawback the coronavirus from 10 to 5 days and shorten the clip that adjacent contacts request to quarantine.

Dr. Rochelle Walensky, CDC director, explained what led to the decision.

“This updated guidance volition assistance to guarantee that hospitals, clinics and semipermanent attraction facilities tin safely enactment unfastened and stay appropriately staffed some to grip hospitalizations from COVID-19 and to marque definite we proceed to marque the indispensable attraction for those experiencing bosom attack, changeable and different illnesses,” Walensky said.

Even though the omicron variant is much contagious, Walensky said radical are astir contagious mostly successful the 1 to 2 days anterior to the onset of symptoms and the 2 to 3 days after. After 5 days, if idiosyncratic has nary symptoms, past wearing a disguise should little the hazard of transmission from there.

Missing from the caller guidance is requiring a antagonistic COVID-19 trial successful bid to instrumentality backmost to work.

“We bash cognize that surely a PCR, you tin enactment affirmative successful your PCR for a agelong play of time,” Walensky said. “But with respect to the question of your antigen is: We bash not cognize however good those antigen tests execute astatine time 5 successful detecting transmissibility. And it is for that crushed that we would say, adjacent if you had a antagonistic test, we would privation you to mask, and adjacent if you had a affirmative test, we would besides privation you to mask. And therefore, fixed that these antigen tests are not authorized for usage successful this way, we did not urge them astatine that time.”

PCR tests are the ones that instrumentality astir a time oregon 2 to get results. They are considered the golden modular for testing. It’s imaginable that these tests tin inactive observe the microorganism successful a idiosyncratic adjacent a period aft they get sick. Walensky said that’s wherefore they opted not to adhd that to the guidelines and alternatively adhd the five-day masking period.