When you have covid, here’s how you know you are no longer contagious

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Updated March 2, 2024 at 7:00 a.m. EST|Published August 1, 2022 at 6:00 a.m. EDT
(Paul Hanna/Bloomberg)

Update: This article was updated March 1.

The United States has entered a different stage in the pandemic. Four years after the virus emerged, the covid-19 landscape has changed dramatically. The virus is no longer the emergency it once was, when the population had no protection against the novel pathogen SARS-CoV-2. By the end of 2023, 98 percent of people in the United States had disease-fighting antibodies from vaccination, prior infection or both, which confers the strongest immunity.

Coronavirus infections are continuing at levels similar to those in years past, but new infections are now causing less severe illness and far fewer hospitalizations or deaths, according to data from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.

In response, the CDC has streamlined its guidance for covid-19 to bring it in line with how other common viruses, such as influenza and respiratory syncytial virus, are managed.

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So now you’ve got covid-19. When can you exit isolation? If you do resume activities outside your home, can you be sure you’re no longer contagious? The important thing to consider, experts say, is that every person and every case of covid is unique. There is no hard-and-fast rule for how sick a person will get or how long a person remains infectious. The guidelines offer a framework, but patients should take into account their circumstances, priorities and resources to assess risk.

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