COVID-19 is becoming more like the flu and, as such, no longer requires its own virus-specific health rules, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention said Friday alongside the release of a unified “respiratory virus guide.”
In a lengthy background document, the agency laid out its rationale for consolidating COVID-19 guidance into general guidance for respiratory viruses—including influenza, RSV, adenoviruses, rhinoviruses, enteroviruses, and others, though specifically not measles. The agency also noted the guidance does not apply to health care settings and outbreak scenarios.
“COVID-19 remains an important public health threat, but it is no longer the emergency that it once was, and its health impacts increasingly resemble those of other respiratory viral illnesses, including influenza and RSV,” the agency wrote.
The most notable change in the new guidance is the previously reported decision to no longer recommend a minimum five-day isolation period for those infected with the pandemic coronavirus, SARS-CoV-2. Instead, the new isolation guidance is based on symptoms, which matches long-standing isolation guidance for other respiratory viruses, including influenza.
I worked for a company that absolutely took Covid seriously. If you went into the office, you walked through a visual IR scanner to make sure you did not have a fever. Conference rooms that could house 12 were restricted to for people with masks (nobody used the rooms). Anyone that came in had to check off that they sterilized their desk before leaving. The production line was masked up and properly distanced. I don’t know anyone in the building that died of COVID which seemed to be an extreme rarity in manufacturing. I visited a biopharma company and the first day I was there someone swung by to mention that one of their coworkers just died of COVID. They had a mask policy but it was also Indianapolis so masks outside of that workplace were pretty few and far between.
My company still requires regular testing and notifies of cases. In a company of ~100 or so employees I get an email every other week or so notifying of a new case. When the new CDC recommendation was brought up in our department meeting of scientists and engineers the reaction was bemused laughter and my boss immediately said “well, we’re definitely not doing that”.
Much better than Tyson Foods that wrote the executive order to stay open during the pandemic, ignored masking, and made bets on how many of their workers would die.