CDC Issues Updated Quarantine Guidelines

Lots of news out of the CDC recently when it comes to COVID-19. First, the CDC said that the standard 14 day quarantine can be shortened to 10 days or even seven if certain criteria are met. It can be 10 days if you are showing no symptoms at all, and seven if you get a negative test. New guidelines were also released when it comes to testing before and after travel. Joel Achenbach, science reporter at The Washington Post, joins us for the latest guideline adjustments.

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Episode Transcript

Speaker 1 (00:00):
It's Thursday, December three. I'm Oscar Ramrors from the Daily
Dive podcast in Los Angeles, and this is reopening America.
Lots of news out of the CDC recently when it
comes to COVID nineteen. First, the CDC said that the
standard fourteen day quarantine can be shortened to ten days
or even seven days of certain criteria are met. It

(00:20):
can be ten days if you're showing no symptoms at all,
and seven days if you get a negative test. New
guidelines were also released when it comes to testing before
and after travel. Joel Achenbach, science reporter at the Washington Post,
joins us for the latest guideline adjustments. Thanks for joining us, Joel,
thanks for having me. I wanted to talk about some
new guidance from the CDC. This has to do with

(00:43):
quarantine periods. For a while now, we've heard that if
you're gonna be quarantining, it's gonna be fourteen days. Now
the new guidances, they're dropping that down to ten days,
possibly seven days, depending on the circumstances of it all.
So Joel, help us walk through some of these new guidelines.
Now is a little complicated, so I'll do my best
and you know, this is a science based decision, but

(01:08):
it's also one based in how do people actually behave
They felt that anecdotally they were hearing from the various
public health agencies, you know, the county health departments. Hey,
people are not cooperating with the quarantines. They're not doing it.
So keep in mind, let's say you've become exposed to

(01:29):
the virus. That's when you get quarantined. Not that you
have it, not that you're infected, but you might have it.
You get identified it through contact tracing. You were at
the party where someone was known to have the virus.
The health department says, okay, you got a quarantine for
fourteen days. Well, what happens is people they don't want
to do that for fourteen days. It's too long. They're

(01:49):
gonna miss work, they're gonna lose their job, maybe they
need the money, and it creates a kind of a
lack of cooperational, lack of compliance. So they looked at
it and said, okay, what if we make it a
little bit easier, will still get captured most potential infectious people.
Will make it a little bit easier. Will give two alternatives.
One is ten days if you monitor symptoms every single

(02:14):
day and never have any symptoms. You're supposed to make
sure that you don't have a fever, don't have a cost,
aren't fatigued. The second thing is you can cut it
to seven days if you have a negative test within
forty eight hours of the end of that seven day period.
Does that make sense? Yeah, definitely. And you know, this
is kind of what a lot of people were probably

(02:35):
doing already keeping quiet about it. Let's see if I
have any symptoms. If not, I'm all good in their heads, right,
because they want to avoid this very strict fourteen days.
As you mentioned, for a lot of people, they can
miss work, they could lose out on a job, a
lot of stuff like that. So definitely it makes sense
that they could reduce it that way. But it also
depends on testing. You know, you've got to make sure

(02:55):
you get tested in the right period of time. I
did ask this and they clear find that either of
the two main kinds of tests can be used in
that last forty eight hour period, either the rapid response
antigen test or the PCR test. The PCR is more accurate,
but it takes a little longer to get the result
and sometimes a couple of days or more the three days.

(03:18):
But you know, to some extent, like you said, people
are doing what they're gonna do. The government is not
going door to door checking on people. A lot of
this is voluntary. But the contact tracers, I mean, they're
trying to do their job. They call someone up and say, hey,
you know, we think you may have been exposed. People
don't answer the phone when when they get a call
from the health department. They're like, hey, I don't want

(03:40):
to know about it. I don't want to be part
of this system. So they're trying to get better compliance.
The eases the burden on the health departments and it's
a little more realistic for people, and it will still
capture probably the cases. Obviously, they hope that if the
quarantine period is lower, you might be more willing to

(04:01):
cooperate with a contact tracer. The CDC also released new
guidelines about testing before and after traveling. We know that
was a huge issue with Thanksgiving people just rushing to
go get tests and Christmas and New Year's is coming up.
What's the new guidance there? What they said before I
mean like a week or so ago is and what
people have said as well, try to get a test

(04:22):
before you take a trip. Now they've gotten a little
more specific. They're saying one to three days before your trip,
get tested. Number one. Number two is when you return
for a trip three to five days afterwards, get tested.
And there's another wrinkle in it, which, now that I
think about it, I need to maybe add to my

(04:44):
latest story. Is they're saying that when you come back
from a trip you should essentially stay home. You should
essentially quarantine when you get back from the trip, as
if you got it on the trip. And they're saying
for seven days, cut out all non essential activities, which
is again like are people really gonna do that? I mean,
I you know, I I have not been traveling, but

(05:06):
I have friends who are, and you know, when they
come back from a trip, they come wandering by, you know,
socially distance. So I mean it's been I think it's
good to put the message out there that when't you
have been on the road or in an airplane, when
you come home, you need to spend seven days of
assuming that you might have gotten no parties, no running around,

(05:26):
just take it easy for seven days. And that's a
tough thing to write when people take some vacation time,
days off of work. They only a lot the days
that they're actually gonna be gone, and when you come
back on you know, Saturday or something, you're back to
work on Monday. And this is the difficulty in controlling people.
People are gonna do what they want. It's tough. That's
why they say it's not worth it. Maybe just don't
go travel. But yeah, I mean it's very tough all around.

(05:50):
So we'll see how these new guidance maybe helps, but
who knows. I just still get this overwhelming sense that
people are gonna do what they want to do. And
that's and that's the tough part. When we just cases
rising everywhere. People are gonna do, They're gonna behave in
a certain way. But if you can nudge behavior toward

(06:10):
a better path, that will make a difference, particularly you
know right now where we're in the middle of a
bad period and I think people understand what's going on,
but it bears repeating that we're in the middle of
a surge and the numbers are gonna keep going up
as the virus spreads more easily in some of the

(06:32):
big population centers over the next few weeks, and so
We're in for a very rough patch before we hit
the sunshine, if that makes any sense. Joel Achenbach, science
reporter at the Washington Post, thank you very much for
joining us. Well, thank you for having me. I'm Oscar
Ramirez and this has been reopening America. Don't forget the

(06:54):
difference today's big news stories. You can check me out
on the Daily Dive podcast every money to Friday, so
Alwison I, Heart Radio or wherever you get your podcast.