CNN’s Kaitlan Collins challenged CDC director Dr. Rochelle Walensky over the CDC’s new guidelines for how long people should isolate after testing positive for Covid-19.
Walensky spoke to Collins on New Day, where the focus was on the new guidance that recommends people can emerge from quarantine after five days if they no longer have symptoms. Asked how the CDC decided to cut the recommended isolation time in half, Walensky referred to new scientific findings on Covid transmission and the timeline for the emergence of symptoms.
“If you map that out, those five days account for somewhere between 85 to 90 percent of all transmission that occurs,” Walensky said. “So we really wanted to make sure that during those first five days you were spending in isolation, that’s when most of it occurs.”
Walensky added that “behavioral science” played a role in the CDC’s updated recommendations — that is, “what will people actually do,” as they seek to return to work after an infection.
“If we can get them to isolate, we do want to make sure that they’re isolating in those first five days when they’re maximally infectious,” she said.
“So from what you’re saying, it sounds like this decision had just as much to do with business as it did with the science,” Collins replied.
“It really had a lot
“We have seen relatively low rates of isolation for all this pandemic,” she continued. “Some science has demonstrated less than a third of people are isolating when they need to. We really want to make sure we have guidance in this moment where we were going to have a lot of disease that could be adhered to, that people were willing to adhere to, and that spoke to specifically when people were maximally infectious.”
Collins followed up by questioning why the CDC didn’t change their guidelines sooner if they had this data already. Collins also questioned Walensky about what the new guidelines means for Covid testing protocols, and why tests aren’t more affordable and accessible by now.
Watch above, via CNN.