WISCONSIN (NBC 26) — If you’ve been exposed to COVID-19 or contracted the virus over the holiday season, you may not have to quarantine or isolate for as long as you thought.
The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) is shortening the recommended time for isolation from 10 days for people with COVID-19 to five days, if asymptomatic, followed by 5 days of wearing a mask when around others.
Additionally, CDC is updating the recommended quarantine period for those exposed to COVID-19.
For people who are unvaccinated or are more than six months out from their second dose, or more than two months after the Johnson & Johnson vaccine and not yet boosted, the CDC now recommends quarantine for five days followed by strict mask use for an additional five days.
Alternatively, if a five-day quarantine is not feasible, the CDC says it is imperative that an exposed person wears a well-fitted mask at all times when around others for 10 days after exposure.
Individuals who have received their booster shot do not need to quarantine following an exposure, but should wear a mask for 10 days after the exposure. For all those exposed, best practice would also include a test for COVID at day five after exposure. If symptoms occur, individuals should immediately quarantine until a negative test confirms symptoms are not attributable to COVID-19.
The CDC says change is motivated by science demonstrating that the majority of COVID transmission occurs early in the course of illness, generally in the one to two days prior to the onset of symptoms and the two to three days after.
Therefore, people who test positive should isolate for five days and, if asymptomatic at that time, they may leave isolation if they can continue to mask for five days to minimize the risk of infecting others.
Click here to learn more about the new CDC guideline.
For the Clintonville Police Department, the Chief of Police says they plan to implement the new guidelines right away.
“We will be doing that,” said Chief Craig Freitag. “In the last month, we had not had anybody out with COVID thankfully. But if we were to have somebody in the next day or so, we would follow the guidelines.”
Chief Freitag also says he’s constantly having multiple conversations with the city administrator regarding how to move forward with COVID guidelines.
“She’s encouraging to follow the CDC guidelines and use what works best for your department because every department within the city is different. We have some departments who have one person working by themselves, so they are not intermingling with others,” Freitag said.
For now, Freitag says he’s counting his blessings as their department has been very fortunate throughout the pandemic.
“We have not been impacted all at once. We did have a few months ago a few staff members out with COVID but we kept them away from the department. They returned back once they had those symptoms and had quarantined the required time. In speaking with other departments, they have not been as fortunate, they’ve had it run rampant through their building and it has caused problems with staffing,” Freitag said.
The chief of police hopes these new CDC guidelines will help prevent any potential staffing shortages.
“That has been our fear from day one, what do we do if we have several officers out but we’ve put things in place to prevent stuff. With the cleaning, UV lights in our squad cars, interview rooms, and in the buildings,” Freitag said.
And while they still have to go to people’s houses and respond to calls, he hopes the guidelines will help lessen the time people are out due to COVID exposures.
“We are hearing lately again our ambulance services responding to houses, COVID positive patients, and there are times we have to assist them. Unfortunately, we’re going to have contact with people who do have symptoms or are COVID positive,” Freitag.
Locally, Dr. Robert Mead at Bellin Health says he can understand why the CDC decided to lessen the quarantine and isolation guidelines.
“I think it’s a good compromise and it’s based in science that shows that the omicron infects people quicker and gets out their system quicker than the previous variant,” Dr. Mead said.
He says while most people agree with it, he says there are still some concerns from folks.
“I think there’s some people that are a little bit worried about it and that it could open up things susceptible to some infections especially if people are still contagious after the five days, but I think in general from a medical perspective it makes sense and then from a business perspective it makes sense because you’re getting employees back sooner as long as they’re masking,” Dr. Mead said.
Dr. Mead says while there are still some risks of infections or transmitting the infections after five days, he believes that could be minimal.
On Tuesday, the Wisconsin Department of Health Services responded to the CDC recommendations to shorten isolation and quarantine periods.
Here's a statement from Secretary-designee Karen Timberlake:
“The Wisconsin Department of Health Services (DHS) supports Center for Disease Control (CDC) recommendations [lnks.gd] to shorten isolation and quarantine periods for the general public, given what we know right now about COVID-19 and the Omicron variant. Science shows that the majority of SARS-CoV-2 transmission happens early in the illness, so CDC has shortened the recommended length of isolation from 10 days to five days for people with COVID-19 who do not have any COVID-19 symptoms, followed by five days of wearing a well-fitting mask [lnks.gd] to minimize the risk of infecting others."
