4. Isolation guidelines for COVID
Isolate for five full days after symptoms start, according to the most recent advice from the US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. The way it works is simple: the day you start to feel sick is day zero. Then you start to count the five days from the next day, day one. The guideline is to isolate for five whole days following the positive test. If you tested positive but showed no symptoms, you are asymptomatic.
But why isolate for five days and not more or less? You have to do this because those five days represent the time when you have the most infections. That means you have a higher chance of infecting others.
Keep in mind that these five days are the minimum number of days you can isolate. Now, if you are on day six, this doesn’t mean that you should not use any kind of precaution anymore, such as the mask or social disconnection.
How do you determine if you need to stay in isolation for more than five days? All you need to do is ask yourself a few simple questions. Are your symptoms better? Also, have you been fever-free for more than 24 hours? If you’ve answered yes, then you are safe to exit isolation.
