MercoPress. South Atlantic News Agency

WHO updates isolation recommendations for Covid-19 patients

The UN health agency report specifies that these were only recommendations and that each country should issue its own guidelines

The World Health Organization Friday shortened to 10 the number of days that a patient testing positive for Covid-19 should remain in isolation. Before Friday, WHO suggested people with symptoms stayed 13 days in isolation while 10 days was only for asymptomatic cases.

“We are issuing a conditional recommendation of 10 days of isolation for symptomatic persons due to SARS-CoV-2 infection; and five days of isolation for asymptomatic persons,” the United Nations international health agency said in a document published Friday. WHO also favored the discontinuation of transmission-based precautions.

In its update, WHO justified that symptomatic people “are much more likely to test positive than asymptomatic people and therefore much more likely to transmit SARS-CoV-2.” WHO also spoke in favor of rapid antigen detection tests. The organization based its recommendations on 12 studies involving almost 3,000 participants, after which a document was released. The UN health agency report specifies that these were only recommendations and that each country should issue its own guidelines.

According to the latest WHO data, as of January 12, a total of 660,746,894 confirmed cases of Covid-19 were recorded worldwide, with 6,692,538 deaths since the beginning of the pandemic.