Americans no longer have to quarantine if exposed to Covid-19, test-to-stay in school, or socially distance, according to new guidance from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.
The CDC says people no longer have to remain 6ft apart to reduce the risk of exposure as a very high percentage of the population now has immunity through vaccination, having had the virus, or both.
It also ends quarantine for anyone exposed to Covid, but who is not actually infected.
“The current conditions of this pandemic are very different from those of the last two years,” said Greta Massetti, branch chief of the Field Epidemiology and Prevention Branch at the CDC, at a Thursday briefing.
“High levels of population immunity due to vaccination and previous infection and the many available tools to prevent to the general population and protect people at higher risk allow us to focus on protecting people from serious illness from Covid-19.”
And she added: “This guidance acknowledges that the pandemic is not over, but also helps us move to a point where COVID-19 no longer severely disrupts our daily lives.”
The policy of “test-to-stay” at American schools was scheduled testing for those who were not up to date with vaccinations and exposed to the virus. It meant that pupils could stay in school as long as they showed no symptoms and continued to test negative for Covid as an alternative to quarantine.
The new guidance says that contact tracing should only be used for hospitals and high-risk group situations such as nursing homes. It also ends regular testing to screen for Covid, except in high-risk situations such as nursing homes and prisons.
“I think they just overall come into alignment with what people are doing anyway,” Dr Peter Chin-Hong, an infectious disease specialist at the University of California at San Francisco, told CNN.
