CDC Relaxes Covid Guidance For Testing, Distancing, And Quarantine

Stat: CDC Eases Covid-19 Quarantine And Testing Guidelines As It Marks A New Phase In Pandemic
People who are not up to date with their Covid-19 vaccines and who are exposed to someone infected with the coronavirus no longer need to quarantine, according to updated recommendations issued Thursday by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. Instead, they should just wear a mask for 10 days in indoor settings and test on day 5,  according to the guidance. They were previously recommended to stay home. The new guidelines could also ease the testing burden on schools. (Joseph, 8/11)

The Washington Post: CDC Loosens Coronavirus Guidance, Signaling Strategic Shift 
The CDC is putting less emphasis on social distancing — and the new guidance has dropped the “six foot” standard. The quarantine rule for unvaccinated people is gone. The agency’s focus now is on highly vulnerable populations and how to protect them — not on the vast majority of people who at this point have some immunity against the virus and are unlikely to become severely ill. (Sun and Achenbach, 8/11)

CIDRAP: CDC Unveils Streamlined COVID-19 Guidance 
One of the biggest changes is quarantine guidance for people exposed to the virus. Instead of quarantining, the CDC recommends wearing a high-quality mask, watching for symptoms for 10 days, and getting tested on the fifth day. People who are mildly sick with COVID-19 should still isolate for at least 5 days while wearing a high-quality mask. After isolating, people who are recovering should avoid contact with vulnerable people for 11 days. The CDC recommends longer isolation periods for people with moderate and severe illness. Another major change is that the CDC no longer recommends screening asymptomatic people who don't have known exposures. (Schnirring, 8/11)

AP: CDC Drops Quarantine, Distancing Recommendations For COVID 
The changes, which come more than 2 1/2 years after the start of the pandemic, are driven by a recognition that an estimated 95% of Americans 16 and older have acquired some level of immunity, either from being vaccinated or infected, agency officials said. “The current conditions of this pandemic are very different from those of the last two years,” said the CDC’s Greta Massetti, an author of the guidelines. (Stobbe and Binkley, 8/11)

What it means for K-12 schools —

NPR: With New Guidance, CDC Ends Test-To-Stay For Schools And Relaxes COVID Rules
The changes could have some of the biggest impact in K-12 schools. The guidance eliminates the strategy known as "test-to-stay" – a schedule of testing for people that were exposed to the coronavirus but not up to date with their vaccinations – that allowed them to continue in-person learning, so long as they continued to test negative and showed no symptoms. The test-to-stay protocol has been an alternative to quarantine for school, so now "the practice of handling exposures would involve masking rather than a quarantine," CDC's Greta Massetti said. (Stone and Huang, 8/11)

Politico: New CDC Guidance For Schools Aims For Normalcy
The agency’s general masking guidance for schools remains unchanged, recommending a mask in medium-level community risk areas for only immunocompromised or high-risk individuals or those with high-risk close contacts, and recommending that everyone ages 2 and older should don one indoors in areas of high-level community risk. “We know that Covid-19 is here to stay,” said Greta Massetti, author of the CDC report that outlines the new guidelines, during a Thursday briefing. “Currently, high levels of population immunity due to vaccination and previous infection and the many tools that we have available to protect people from severe illness and death have put us in a different space.” (Mahr, 8/11)