Well the days of isolating after testing positive for covid-19 May soon be over according to the Washington Post the CDC is considering easing its guidelines for how long people should quarantine after receiving a positive test for the virus under newly proposed recommendations Americans will no longer have to isolate for 5 days before returning to work or school instead they can return to their routines depending on symptoms and can get back out in the public once their fever for at least 24 hours without medication it's a huge shift as the pandemic recedes for more on what this means I'm joined by Montclair State University epidemiologist Stephanie Silvera.

Stephanie Silvera, always good to talk to you I want to ask you first about why we're seeing this shift in the rationale behind how long we need to isolate um what constitutes needing to isolate what's changed so I think there's two things that have really changed one is that um in the last Peak for covid that we saw hospitals essentially were not overwhelmed the way we had seen them in previous covid seasons and so if we're looking at this from a capacity perspective our hospitals were not at maximum or over their maximum capacity to deal with people there are fewer people who are hospitalized and deaths are down I think the other aspect of this is people simply are not testing as much so we know that people people are out and about living their lives and are not necessarily adhering to the guidelines that currently exist but we still have such a low uptake on folks who have gotten boosters who continue to get boosters are we at the point from a public health standpoint that we've reached enough herd immunity um that this is a safe way to go so I would argue from a public health perspective this actually is not the best way to provide guidance and I know a a lot of people will make the comparison to cold and flu and that we don't you know enforce isolation for people with the flu for 5 days my sort of counterargument to that is maybe we should that we could reduce a lot of death and illness and impact on the a negative impact on the economy if we ask people with these highly contagious respiratory illnesses to isolate or at a very minimum mask when sick if they have to go to school or work yeah we know it's certainly cut down on the amount of viruses being shared Among Us uh in the workplace at schools when people have taken those precautions so does it raise an eyebrow then that so far at least in the preliminary information we have there's no talk about maske wearing during that time uh after testing positive but being asymptomatic absolutely and I think one of the things that has gotten lost in the conversation is that the isolation period went from 14 days to 10 days to 5 days but even after the five days the recommendation or the guidance was to continue to wear a mask for an additional five days after you got out of isolation and so the fact that the conversation about masking when ill has completely dropped off is really concerning because we are putting people who were going to be spreading their virus um back out into the world with no precaution I'm also thinking Stephanie about places like nursing homes and other medical facilities where you have these um medically frail and vulnerable patients what do you think about these recommendations being used there does it put those Folks at greater risk when New Jersey anyway is still dealing with some of those repercussions absolutely and I think that what we may need to see is um sort of tiered or differential guidance for different locations I think in medical spaces where individuals might be medically frail or at higher risk we need to have a different set of prec ctions in place the CDC I don't have to tell you faced a lot of scrutiny when they changed the guidelines specifically down to the 5 days of isolation there were folks who accused the agency of looking at the economy and getting people back to work as the real metric there is there room for that argument to be made here uh based on where we're at now I think that there are some arguments to be made about the impact that this has on individuals and Families so thinking about having to keep a child out of school for five days and isolate and the impact that has on parents who may then have to stay home with them so some of this is reflecting the reality of what we've seen But there needs to be a balance I think that taking them away entirely ignores the risk for some individuals Stephanie Silvera is an epidemiologist with Montclair State University Stephanie thanks so much thank you [Music]