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WEDNESDAY, Aug. 26, 2020 (HealthDay News) — Experts are alarmed about revised U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention guidelines advising that people who do not have symptoms of COVID-19 do not need to be tested, even if they have recently been exposed to the new coronavirus.<\/p>\n
The guidelines were changed this week and prompted concern among infectious disease professionals, The New York Times<\/i> reported. They noted the importance of identifying infected people in the short period of time immediately before they develop symptoms and may be most contagious. About half of COVID-19 transmissions can be traced back to people in this presymptomatic stage, models suggest. Experts warned that the revised CDC guidelines could delay treatment and lead to wider spread of COVID-19.<\/p>\n
“Wow, that is a walk-back,” Susan Butler-Wu, M.D., a clinical microbiologist at the Keck School of Medicine of the University of Southern California, told The Times<\/i>. “We’re in the middle of a pandemic, and that’s a really big change.” She is concerned that people could misinterpret the change in testing guidelines as meaning that people without symptoms cannot pass the coronavirus on to others, a misconception that experts have long tried to dispel. “If people are getting exposed, and they’re not getting tested, and they’re not isolating, that’s a huge problem,” Kuppalli warned.<\/p>\n
“Testing capacity has massively expanded, and we are not utilizing the full capacity that we have developed,” a U.S. Department of Health and Human Services spokesperson told The Times<\/i>. “We revised the guidance to reflect current evidence and the best public health interventions.”<\/p>\n