Health Update: New isolation guidance for COVID-19

Requested actions

• Counsel patients recovered from COVID-19 to maintain isolation for:

  • at least 10 days after illness onset and

  • at least 3 days (72 hours) after recovery.

Definitions:

Illness onset: Date symptoms begin.

Recovery: Resolution of fever without the use of fever-reducing medication with progressive improvement or resolution of other symptoms.

Background information:

The Centers for The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention on May 3, 2020 updated their recommendation for persons discontinuing isolation after COVID-19 illness.  This change increases the period of recommended isolation by 3 days, from 7 to 10. This more cautious approach is intended to more stringently limit transmission that may occur from persons following recovery from illness and thereby enhance ongoing efforts to control COVID-19 illness.

 The CDC’s complete recommendations are available at https://www.cdc.gov/coronavirus/2019-ncov/community/strategy-discontinue-isolation.html?deliveryName=USCDC_2067-DM27395.

Situation update

Grays Harbor County has 14 confirmed cases of COVID-19.

·         March 2020: 2 cases 

·         April 2020: 10 cases

·         May: 2 cases

Grays Harbor Public Health Incident Management Team (IMT) remains prepared to respond if any additional cases are identified.

Additional resources

·         Our web page for healthcare providers: http://www.healthygh.org/directory/providers

·         Our web page for COVID-19 guidance: http://www.healthygh.org/covid19guidance

·         Our web page for general COVID-19 information: http://www.healthygh.org/covid19