Federal health officials are likely to shorten their recommendation for how long people should quarantine to reduce the risk of spreading the coronavirus from the current 14 days to as few as seven.
Current Centers for Disease Control and Prevention recommendations call for two weeks of isolation from the last contact with a person known to have COVID-19. However, Adm. Brett Giroir, a member of the White House Coronavirus Task Force, said Tuesday that health officials were rethinking that recommendation, citing “a preponderance of evidence that a shorter quarantine complemented by a test might be able to shorten that quarantine period.”
“We are actively working on that type of guidance right now, reviewing the evidence, but we want to make absolutely sure,” he said, adding that “these kind of recommendations aren’t willy nilly.”
The exact language of the new guidelines and when they might be announced remains unclear, but according to a federal official who asked not to be named because they weren’t authorized to speak publicly about the issue, the recommended quarantine time is likely to be just seven to 10 days for people who then test negative for the virus.
Jennifer Nuzzo, a senior scholar at the Johns Hopkins Center for Health Security, said she would welcome such a revision.