The Centers for Disease Control announced an update to their COVID-19 guidelines Friday in a press release. The updated guidance suggests individuals remain at home until they have been fever-free for at least 24 hours without medication, in place of recommending a five-day period of isolation for anyone who tests positive for COVID-19.

Professor of population health sciences in the University of Wisconsin School of Medicine and Public Health Ajay Sethi said the guidelines reflect a shift in the strategy the CDC is employing to reduce instances of severe illness, hospitalization and death from the disease.

“COVID is still circulating, but we are in a very different position than we were a year ago and certainly two years ago.” Sethi said. “Because there’s a lot of immunity out there, people may not get the same kind of illness or the severity of illness that they used to, and a lot of people are vaccinated or have been infected and have developed some immunity.”

In an email statement to The Badger Herald, University Health Services associate director of marketing and health communication Sarah Clifford Glapa said UHS continues to maintain disease surveillance for COVID-19 and other respiratory viruses to monitor trends and provide campus guidance as needed.

Students experiencing upper respiratory symptoms are encouraged to follow public health best-practices including wearing a mask, staying home when sick, and keeping their spaces clean. The community is encouraged to consult the CDC for the most up-to-date recommendations for COVID-19 and other respiratory illnesses, Glapa said.

The updated guidelines come at a time when rates of COVID-19 are low. During the week ending Feb. 24, nearly 2,500 people across the U.S. were admitted to the hospital for COVID-19 each day, marking a greater than 50% decrease in the hospitalization figures since January 1, according to data from the CDC. 

The new recommendations for combating the spread of COVID-19 closely resemble their guidelines for other respiratory illnesses such as influenza and RSV, Sethi said.

“There’s been a shift over the years towards asking people to reduce their risk for severe disease individually, moving away from having policies or guidelines that affect everybody but instead having people decide for themselves what their personal risk is.” Sethi said.

These efforts have largely been successful because of the immunity that’s been built up over time, Sethi said, however they would be more effective if more people took booster shots.

Today, most of the deaths and hospitalizations are concentrated in older adults and in people with immunocompromising conditions – where hospitalizations and deaths among younger people like in 2020 generally aren’t seen anymore, Sethi said.