SAN FRANCISCO, Calif. (KRON) - A new study finds people with COVID are likely still contagious after day five of isolation.
This is in contrast with the CDC's guidelines that call for five days of isolation for people with COVID.
“The CDC knew and we all knew that this wasn't going to be perfect if we said five days. If you say ten days it's not perfect there still will be a small procedure people will still be potentially contagious after ten days so you can't let the perfect be the enemy of the good here,” Dr. John Swartzberg said.
Dr. John Swartzberg UC Berkeley Infectious Disease Expert referring to a recent study posted in pre-print, not yet peer-reviewed, suggests people with COVID-19 are likely still contagious regardless of symptom status after day five of isolation.
“CDC guidelines were based upon data from primary data and before. This new study has not yet been peer-reviewed, it's only in preprint form. This new study suggests that we may need to re-address how long people are contagious after period of isolation,” Dr. Swartzberg said.
Dr. Swartzberg is not surprised by the data.
“If you have a positive rapid test after day five even if your symptoms are gone, you're still contagious and we need to do everything we can to prevent spreading that virus to other people. Ideally, it would be staying in isolation that's what the studies showed about healthcare workers,” Dr. Swartzberg said.
"An interesting thing about this study is that it's looking at how long basically the rapid antigen test stays positive but that is not the best measure for viral load,” Dr. Monica Gandhi said.
Dr. Monica Gandhi, UCSF Infectious Disease doctor supports the CDC's five-day guideline and says COVID tests are not perfect.
“Your rapid antigen can stay positive but it doesn't mean that your virus is alive. It's just picking up antigens so the problem is from interpreting from these rapid antigen tests without doing culture is that you can look like you're positive and you may not be,” Dr. Gandhi said.
Both health experts acknowledge data is always changing.
“I've had several friends who had COVID like all of us who had friends or ourselves who had COVID and many of them have continued to test positive after day five, some after day 10 and I've told them all if you're testing positive after a rapid test you have to still consider yourself contagious,” Dr. Swartzberg said.
“PCR can pick up a little bit of virus in your nose and it can stay positive for 90 days and the rapid antigen tests do not tell you if you're infectious because they don't culture the virus so we have limitations of both type of tests. In a perfect world, we'd actually culture out the virus and see if they're infectious but that's too hard to do so perfect tests - I think five days is prudent,” Dr. Gandhi said.
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