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CDC defends new Covid isolation guidelines

Director Rochelle Walensky acknowledged that the decision to shorten the quarantine period “really had a lot to do with what we thought people would be able to tolerate.”

By QUINT FORGEY

CDC Director Rochelle Walensky on Wednesday sought to deflect several lines of skepticism about the agency’s newly shortened, five-day period of recommended isolation for asymptomatic individuals who test positive for Covid-19.

The multi-part defense from Walensky — who appeared on at least five TV networks on Wednesday morning — comes as the Biden administration has begun instituting new guidance and considering further restrictions to curb an explosion of U.S. coronavirus cases caused by the surging Omicron variant.

But the shifting instruction from federal health officials has prompted some criticism that the administration is prioritizing a return to economic normalcy over the safety of Americans who could still be infected by asymptomatic co-workers, even after they self-quarantine for five days.

On Wednesday, Walensky acknowledged that the CDC’s decision to alter the recommended isolation period “really had a lot to do with what we thought people would be able to tolerate.”

“We have seen relatively low rates of isolation for all of this pandemic. Some science has demonstrated less than a third of people are isolating when they need to,” Walensky told CNN. “And so we really want to make sure that we had guidance in this moment — where we were going to have a lot of disease — that could be adhered to, that people were willing to adhere to and that spoke specifically to when people were maximally infectious.”

Indeed, the U.S. on Tuesday logged its highest single-day total of new Covid-19 cases, with 441,278 infections surpassing the previous daily record by close to 150,000. The dire state of the pandemic across the country demanded a change in CDC guidance, Walensky said on Wednesday.

“Our guidance was conservative before. It had said 10 days of isolation,” Walensky told CNN. “But in the context of the fact that we were going to have so many more cases — many of those would be asymptomatic or mildly symptomatic — people would feel well enough to be at work, they would not necessarily tolerate being home, and that they may not comply with being home, this was the moment that we needed to make that decision and those changes.”

Last Thursday, the administration announced that health care workers who test positive for Covid-19 would be allowed to return to work after seven days, as opposed to the previously recommended 10 days, if they tested negative and were asymptomatic after their isolation period.

Furthermore, the CDC advised that health care workers’ isolation period could be cut to five days, or even fewer, in the event of severe staffing shortages at U.S. hospitals.

Then, on Monday, the CDC announced that individuals who test positive for Covid-19 and are asymptomatic need to isolate for only five days, not 10 days, citing increasing evidence that people are most infectious in the initial days after developing symptoms.

“This was really a way to tell people: Make sure you isolate in those first five days, when you’re maximally infected,” Walensky told NBC on Wednesday.