CDC considering shorter coronavirus quarantine recommendation

The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) is considering shortening the amount of time it recommends people who may have been exposed to the coronavirus quarantine in hopes of convincing more people to follow its advice.

The CDC is finalizing rules to shorten the quarantine period for a potentially exposed person from 14 days to seven to 10 days, a senior agency official told The Wall Street Journal.

That official, Henry Walke, the CDC’s coronavirus incident manager, said the agency would recommend that someone quarantining for the shorter period of time also receive a negative test.

“We do think that the work that we’ve done, and some of the studies we have and the modeling data that we have, shows that we can with testing shorten quarantine,” Walke told the Journal.

A CDC spokesman confirmed that the agency is considering making a change to its quarantine recommendations, though no final decisions have been made.