National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Disease Director Anthony Fauci announced on Sunday at ABC's "This Week With George Stephanopoulos" that the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention will be reconsidering the quarantine policy released recently for asymptomatic individuals.
The Daily Wire said Fauci's remarked on the backlash experienced by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention for reducing isolation guidelines of asymptomatic individuals to five days from the previous ten-day quarantine period. The new guidelines also removed COVID-19 testing requirement for those whose symptoms have already disappeared after five days.
The CDC released on December 27 updates on its "recommended isolation and quarantine period" for the "general population." The update is in line with current knowledge gathered by the center regarding the Omicron variant. The guideline raised that isolation is shortened but masking is required for asymptomatic individuals or for those whose symptoms are resolved--particularly fever is gone for 24 hours--"to minimize the risk of infecting people they encounter."
"The change is motivated by science demonstrating that the majority of SARS-CoV-2 transmission occurs early in the course of illness, generally in the 1-2 days prior to onset of symptoms and the 2-3 days after," the CDC said.
ABC "This Week's" host Stephanopoulos raised the backlash to Fauci and asked about the need to add an "extra layer of protection" through the negative test result of those quarantined. Fauci admitted there is a "pushback" regarding the new CDC guideline. He focused on the need to wear a mask for asymptomatic individuals after the five day quarantine is completed.
"Well, let's talk about the first principle, George. The idea of if a person is without symptoms and infected, that they need to be isolated for five days. Normally that would be ten days. The CDC decided that they would cut that down to five days if the person remains asymptomatic so long as when they do go out in the second five days of that ten-day period, back to work or back into society, that they diligently wear a mask," Fauci responded.
"You're right there has been some concern about why we don't ask people at that five-day period to get tested. That is something that is now under consideration. The CDC is very well aware that there has been some pushback about that. Looking at it again, there may be an option in that, that testing could be apart of that, and I think we're going to be hearing more about that in the next day or so from the CDC," he added.
The Daily Wire explained that the backlash comes from CDC Director Rochelle Walensky stating during an interview with CNN regarding the new guidelines giving leeway for those who will go back to work to have at least isolated themselves when they were "maximally infectious."
CNN host, Kaitlan Collins, then pointed out that the guidelines then was more concerned for business than "it did with the science." Walensky admitted that it was more a matter of people's toleration.
"It 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 that less than a third of people are isolating when they need to," Walensky elaborated.
"We really want to make sure we have 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 to specifically when people were maximally infectious. So it really spoke to both behaviors and to what people were able to do," she added.
