Nurses Blast New CDC Emergency Guidance That Allows Healthcare Workers Infected with COVID to Return to Work

Healthcare workers are up in arms over a new U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) emergency guidance that allows healthcare workers who have had “higher risk exposures” to COVID, and even those infected with COVID to return to work after a five day quarantine as long as they’re asymptomatic.

Nurses groups are condemning the CDC’s guidance as  “potentially dangerous” for both workers and patients.

Earlier this month, the CDC issued the alert to health care workers across the United States as a “contingency” plan for anticipated staffing shortages due to the highly transmissible Omicron variant.

The new recommendations seek “to enhance protection for healthcare personnel, patients, and visitors, and ensure adequate staffing in healthcare facilities,” according to the CDC’s guidance.

“Under conventional conditions, healthcare facilities can allow asymptomatic healthcare personnel with SARS-CoV-2 infection, regardless of vaccination status, to return to work after seven days and a negative test in accordance with CDC guidance,” the alert states.

But  “under contingency conditions, healthcare personnel with SARS-CoV-2 infection can return to work at five days, if asymptomatic, with facilities having the option to include a negative viral test in the criteria to return to work,” according to the guidance…. (Excerpts from the Virginia Star)