In December of 2021, the Center for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) shortened the recommended Covid-19 isolation period to just five days.
The move was made following new data, which suggested that the virus is most infectious during the two to three days after the onset of COVID-19 symptoms.
In turn, five days was deemed a long enough quarantine period to help curb the spread.
However, a new collaborative study conducted by the Broad Institute of MIT and Harvard, the National Emerging Infectious Diseases Laboratories, and the Brigham and Women’s Hospital has found otherwise.
The research, which has since been published in JAMA Network Open, found that some individuals are still able to transmit COVID-19 after a five-day isolation period.
The supporting data was collected by performing viral cultures and rapid antigen tests (RATs) on forty COVID-19 infected patients residing in the Boston area.
These patients were not deemed high-risk for severe symptoms, and all had received appropriate doses of respective COVID-19 and booster shots.
Each day following confirmed infection, each patient was instructed to fill out symptom logs.
They also performed COVID-19 self-tests daily using a RAT test beginning on the sixth day following infection and subsequently submitted culture swabs directly to the researchers.
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And after confirming the COVID-19 lab test results against the patients’ self-test results, the research team found that seventy-five percent of the patients were still antigen positive on day six.
Interestingly, these patients all reported no persisting symptoms– but still would have been released from quarantine according to current CDC isolation guidelines.
Now, the researchers believe that the current CDC recommendation is not a one-size-fits-all approach to the pandemic. Nonetheless, they are still at a loss about how to improve the guideline.
“A universal requirement of a negative RAT result may unduly extend isolation for those who are no longer infectious. Meanwhile, a recommendation to end isolation based solely on the presence of improving symptoms risks releasing culture positive, potentially infectious individuals prematurely,” the researchers concluded.
In turn, they have underscored the importance of continuing to wear a mask until at least day ten of infection in order to avoid high-risk transmission.
To read the study’s complete findings, visit the link here.
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