CDC has been telling U.S. health care workers to check with county/state officials. The county/state officials are likely to default to CDC guidance, which says “Persons Under Investigation” are limited to someone who has traveled to China or had contact with a confirmed coronavirus patient. Unless the patient is “severely ill.” https://www.cdc.gov/coronavirus/2019-ncov/hcp/clinical-criteria.html
That guidance was updated about two weeks ago.
The problem is that at the early stages of a novel coronavirus outbreak without local community transmission, 100% of tests will yield negative results. So when do you start them? It’s not an easy question to answer, especially because the novel coronavirus’ symptoms are pretty close to annual influenza. It depends on the availability of testing resources.
So CDC could have screwed up in a big way. Or they could have been acting prudently (if the patient was presenting with symptoms consistent with influenza and test kits are limited). We don’t know yet.
CDC has been telling U.S. health care workers to check with county/state officials. The county/state officials are likely to default to CDC guidance, which says “Persons Under Investigation” are limited to someone who has traveled to China or had contact with a confirmed coronavirus patient. Unless the patient is “severely ill.” https://www.cdc.gov/coronavirus/2019-ncov/hcp/clinical-criteria.html
That guidance was updated about two weeks ago.
The problem is that at the early stages of a novel coronavirus outbreak without local community transmission, 100% of tests will yield negative results. So when do you start them? It’s not an easy question to answer, especially because the novel coronavirus’ symptoms are pretty close to annual influenza. It depends on the availability of testing resources.
So CDC could have screwed up in a big way. Or they could have been acting prudently (if the patient was presenting with symptoms consistent with influenza and test kits are limited). We don’t know yet.