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With growing concern over hospital staff shortages as cases of Omicron spread rapidly, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention shortened isolation times for healthcare workers who contracted Covid-19 on Thursday.

This agency recommended Noting that asymptomatic healthcare workers returned to work after seven days and the test was negative, he added that “if there is a shortage of personnel, the isolation period can be shortened even more”.

The agency also said that workers who receive all recommended doses of vaccines, including boosters, do not need to be quarantined at home after high-risk exposures.

The new guidelines apply to all healthcare facilities that deal directly with patient care. This includes hospitals, nursing homes, dental offices and other medical facilities.

While infections with Omicron more often lead to milder illnesses, the variant is highly contagious and hospitals are preparing for the influx of vulnerable Americans.

Many major hospital systems have already been forced to move forward on their own in recent days and have established a set of guidelines regarding infected workers in anticipation of a winter wave.

The shortest such policy for return to work—five days, along with some other prerequisites—is half the 10-day standard previously set by the CDC.

The agency’s new recommendations do not apply to the public. Early in the pandemic, the CDC He had set a 14-day isolation period. For infected Americans, this was reversed to reduce the risk of transmission, but only after more research confirmed that a typical patient would be contagious for a shorter period of time.

Criticized for routing and mixed messaging, the CDC’s decision to only recommend the changes for healthcare professionals is likely to add to confusion among Americans, especially since the UK on Wednesday issued a broad recommendation for shortened isolation that applies to everyone.

England’s Health Safety Authority reduces the time from 10 days to seven days for all infected individuals if they have tested negative twice with rapid antigen tests.

Some medical professionals have pointed to limited evidence that a person infected with the Omicron variant may no longer be contagious. But other researchers are requesting shorter deadlines, and CDC revisions have been delayed, they said.

“They’re constantly lagging behind in updating the advice that’s needed, especially now that we’re facing the daunting prospect of a spike in cases,” said Angela Rasmussen, a virologist in the Vaccines and Infectious Diseases Organization at the University of Saskatchewan in Canada.

Dean of the Brown University School of Public Health, Dr. Ashish Jha said it would make sense for the public to shorten isolation times as well – especially for those who have been vaccinated.

Dr. “Given that a large proportion of healthcare workers, like other Americans, will be infected, finding a shorter period for isolation is critical,” Jha said. “I think we have reasonably good evidence that people vaccinated with Delta clear the virus much faster. There is no reason to believe that would not be true for Omicron.”

Hospital administrators stressed that the new changes that allow employees to return to work sooner will not put patients at risk.

Head of the medical department, Dr. Given that healthcare workers are frequently tested, heavily vaccinated, and need to be masked, “the chances of causing a significant amount of infection seem very low” if isolation times are shortened, Bob Wachter said. at the University of California, San Francisco.

“When you consider the impact on health, the implications of keeping them out of the workforce are huge,” he added. UCSF is also weighing whether to reduce the isolation period for workers to five days: “I don’t know if five days will save us, but better than seven and better than 10.”

Still, Jha stressed that more research is needed to definitively answer questions about how long someone with an Omicron infection can remain contagious. The variant is much more contagious than previous versions of the coronavirus.

The pandemic has exacerbated the labor shortages that plagued both hospitals and nursing homes: Nurses, aides and other workers suffered intense burnout, and many left the field for more lucrative jobs. Just this week, President Biden said that 1,000 military medical professionals will be deployed to assist hospitals. The National Guard is already working To address understaffing in some nursing homes and hospitals in some states.

Many policy changes in hospitals reporting higher caseloads are aimed at getting healthcare professionals back to work sooner. Along with a shorter time frame for isolation, policies include requirements regarding testing, vaccination status, and symptoms.

Hospitals welcomed the revised guidelines. “Today’s announcement from the CDC will enable healthcare professionals to safely return to patient care sooner, which will help alleviate the severe workforce shortage crisis facing hospitals across the country,” said Nancy Foster, vice president of quality and patient safety policy. For the American Hospital Association.

In New York State, which has reported an average of more than 4,600 seven-day hospitalizations as cases of Omicron increase, major hospitals have recently changed their isolation protocols for vaccinated workers.

NYU Langone has shortened its return-to-work policy to five days after an employee has tested positive or three days after a fever has subsided, whichever is longer. NewYork-Presbyterian has reduced the isolation period to seven days. On Thursday, the Mount Sinai Health System was also shifted from 10 to seven days.

“Our current protocols, driven by cutting-edge science, allow fully vaccinated workers to return to work after seven days,” said Joy Valenzuela, spokesperson for NewYork-Presbyterian.

Northwell Health’s guidelines now allow fully vaccinated employees to return to work after eight days after a positive test or onset of symptoms if their symptoms are improving and they have not had a fever for 24 hours.

Many hospitals are already overloaded, especially with patients who are unvaccinated and delay essential care during the pandemic.

D., an emergency room physician and academic dean at Brown University’s School of Public Health. “Speaking for Rhode Island, we are already in a catastrophic level of maintenance,” Megan Ranney said.

We don’t have a bed in the emergency room. We don’t have a staff-filled intensive care bed. We’re making decisions about treatment and triage that are demoralizing and beyond what I think we’re going to do at this point in the pandemic.”

Research on how long people stay contagious with Omicron is very weak. A study in Norway Looking at a large group of people infected with the variant at a Christmas party in Oslo, he suggested the incubation period was shorter than Delta’s, about three days.

Frode Forland, specialist director of infectious diseases at the Norwegian Institute of Public Health, said the study’s authors sent out a questionnaire this week to find out how long those infected remained symptomatic.

CDC guidance, vaccinated individuals infected with delta are more likely to be contagious for a shorter period of time than unvaccinated people.

Ann Marie Pettis, president of the Association of Infection Control and Epidemiology Specialists, acknowledged that decisions were made with limited data. He said federal officials should weigh the risk of letting people return to work too soon against the potentially greater risk of not having enough healthcare workers to care for patients.

“Staff shortages are a dire situation right now, across almost the entire board,” he said. Hospitals moving forward with shortened isolation times are most likely concerned about large numbers of staff being infected and being out for 10 days.

“They can’t take care of the patients they’re trying to see,” said Ms Pettis.

He said that although the situation wasn’t as dire as at the start of the pandemic, the election now reminds us of a time when federal officials are facing a severe shortage of personal protective equipment and have loosened guidance on face coverings.

Deciding how best to protect workers and patients is a challenge, and she said: “I’m not jealous of the CDC calling.”

Others expressed some frustration with the situation the medical and health professions find themselves in at this stage of the pandemic. Doctor and epidemiologist Dr. “The fact that we need to discuss this before clarifying the guidance from public health officials is indicative of the impact that the spread of the Omicron variant will have on an already highly stressed health system,” said Daniel Diekema. University of Iowa Carver School of Medicine.

Some healthcare professionals say they are concerned that the shortened isolation times could endanger both staff and patients. “That would be absolutely unreasonable,” said Jane Thomason, a leading industrial hygienist at National Nurses United, a major union that has openly voiced the need to protect its members.

Ranney cautioned that new protocols should be followed carefully: “This should not be tantamount to ‘I don’t care if you have N95, you go and see patients anyway’,” he said. protective masks. “It’s not fair to workers, it’s not fair to patients either.”