The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention announced on Friday that it is dropping several guidelines specific to COVID-19, including the five-day isolation policy after testing positive for the virus.
These changes mark the first time that the CDC has revised its COVID-19 guidelines since 2021.
“We’re in a different situation,” CDC Director Mandy Cohen told reporters on Friday, “but we must use the tools that work to protect against respiratory viruses.”
The new guidance from the agency eliminates virus-specific protocols and replaces them with prevention strategies common among various types of respiratory infections, including influenza and RSV.
“COVID-19 remains an important public health threat, but it is no longer the emergency that it once was, and its health impacts increasingly resemble those of other respiratory viral illnesses,” the guidance document published on Friday reads.
Agency officials said the more comprehensive guidance “brings a unified, practical approach to addressing risk from a range of common respiratory viral illnesses … that have similar routes of transmission and symptoms and similar prevention strategies.”
Weekly hospital admission rates for COVID-19 have decreased by more than 90% from January 2022, the peak of the omicron variant wave, according to the CDC. The rate of severe complications, such as long COVID and multisystem inflammatory syndrome, also has been declining steadily.
The agency also reports that “more than 98% of the U.S. population now has some degree of protective immunity against COVID-19 from vaccination, prior infection, or both.”
Cohen told reporters that the guidance is generally for individuals and employers rather than for healthcare professionals.
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“Folks often don’t know what virus they have when they first get sick, so this will help them know what to do, regardless,” Cohen said.
The CDC is strongly encouraging individuals to stay home from work or school when sick, regardless of whether it is COVID-19.
