Illinois public health adopts new COVID guidelines
CHAMPAIGN, Ill. (WCIA) — The CDC changed its longstanding guidance for Americans Friday, shortening the wait time after a positive COVID-19 test from five days to one.
A year ago, COVID was the third leading cause of death in the United States. Now, it is the tenth. Reasons like this are why medical officials throughout the community are clumping COVID with other upper respiratory illnesses.
“The whole point of the guidance basically is to streamline the guidance for respiratory viruses,” said Robert Davies, Director of Planning and Research at the Champaign-Urbana Public Health District.
The new guidelines only require a 24-hour wait period after a positive test or fever before resuming regular activity.
In a statement, CDC Director Mandy Cohen said:
“Our goal here is to continue to protect those at risk for severe illness while also reassuring folks that these recommendations are simple, clear, easy to understand and can be followed.”
Both the state and Champaign County departments of public health have adopted the new guidelines.
“It still remains a public health threat, but it’s starting to look more similar to other respiratory viruses. Again, it just provides a unified approach to respiratory viruses,” Davies said. “It’s simpler, it’s streamlined it’s better than having separate guideline for reach specific virus.”
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Looser guidelines have been a popular trend as of late, with both California and Oregon relaxing them in January. Dr. Janet Jokela, a physician of infectious diseases with Carle says these states set the stage for Illinois.
“There have not been spikes after they relaxed their guidance, their guidelines. So, they did not see again, increased hospitalizations or emergency room visits after they relaxed their guidance,” Jokela said. “So hopefully you know here, in Central Illinois and also the rest of the country we won’t see that either.”
The University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign also followed suit with these guidelines for campus moving forward.
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The Director of McKinley Health Center at the university, Dr. Awais Vaid said this is yet another step back to normalcy.
“So this will really help those students, our healthy population, our healthy cohort on campus to get back to classes, to get back to work, to get back to their normal routines much faster,” Vaid said.
This new guidance is only for community situations. Medical settings are not changing their guidance at this point.
The CDC says the main groups that are still particularly vulnerable include the elderly, immunocompromised and pregnant women.
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