New Quarantine Guidelines

The CDC currently recommends a quarantine period of 14 days but there are circumstances that allow for a shortened quarantine.

As we all know, public health officials, including the CDC recommend, a quarantine period of 14 days. However, based on local circumstances and resources, the following options to shorten quarantine are acceptable alternatives.

• Quarantine can end after Day 10 without testing and if no symptoms have been reported during daily monitoring.
  • With this strategy, residual post-quarantine transmission risk is estimated to be about 1% with an upper limit of about 10%.
• Quarantine can end after Day 7 if a diagnostic specimen tests negative and if no symptoms were reported during daily monitoring (when diagnostic testing resources are sufficient and available).
  • The specimen may be collected and tested within 48 hours before the time of planned quarantine discontinuation (e.g., in anticipation of testing delays), but quarantine cannot be discontinued earlier than after Day 7.
  • With this strategy, the residual post-quarantine transmission risk is estimated to be about 5% with an upper limit of about 12%.

In both cases, additional criteria (e.g., continued symptom monitoring and masking through Day 14) must be met and are outlined in the full text.

Washington and King County are both following the new CDC guidelines.

For more information visit the CDC's quarantine information page.