Close Contacts Now have Quarantine Options

Quarantining keeps people who are sick or who may get sick away from healthy people. It is a critical tool for helping us stop the spread of COVID-19.The CDC issued new recommendations for how long people without symptoms need to quarantine, and those recommendations have now been adopted by the Wisconsin Department of Health Services. The new recommendations are as follows:

You can develop COVID-19 anytime during the 14 days after your last close contact with someone who has COVID-19. In order to prevent spreading COVID-19 to others, you must quarantine, which means you must stay home from work, school, and other activities.

When quarantining, you should always:

• Monitor your symptoms for 14 days after your last exposure to COVID-19.
• Stay home from school, work, and other activities and get tested as soon as possible if you develop symptoms. If positive, follow isolation guidance for people who test positive; if negative, continue quarantining.

It is safest if you quarantine for 14 days after your last exposure. No test is required to end quarantine.

If you have no symptoms, other quarantine options are to:

• Quarantine for 10 days after your last exposure. No test is required to end quarantine. Monitor yourself for symptoms until 14 days after your last exposure.
• Quarantine and get tested for COVID-19 6 or 7 days after last exposure. If your test is negative, you could end quarantine after 7 days of quarantine. You must have your negative test result before ending quarantine and the test cannot be before day 6. Monitor yourself for symptoms until 14 days after your last exposure.

We made a graphic to help illustrate these options:

 

Example

A coworker of Diane’s tested positive for COVID-19. Diane sat within six feet of him while they were both eating lunch. Since she was possibly exposed, she needs to quarantine. The last day she had contact with her coworker was December 9.

Diane has no symptoms and never develops symptoms during her entire quarantine period. She can choose to either:

• Quarantine for 14 days. This means staying home from work, the store, and other activities and isolating from others in the household. She can leave quarantine on December 24. This is the safest option and preferred for anyone who has the ability to quarantine for this long.
• Quarantine for 10 days. This means staying home from work, the store, and other activities and isolating from others in the household. She can leave quarantine on December 20. She must continue to monitor herself for symptoms until December 23. 
• Quarantine for 7 days and get tested. This means staying home from work, the store, and other activities and isolating from others in the household. She gets tested on day 6 of her quarantine, December 15. She must continue to quarantine until she has her results. She learns she tested negative on December 18 (day 9 of her quarantine). She can leave quarantine as soon as she has her results. She must continue to monitor herself for symptoms until December 23. 

Learn More

• If you are sick or were possibly exposed, you can find more information about what to do on our website.
• Having trouble identifying what’s close contact and what’s not? Our blog post has 13 examples, all based on common situations we’ve heard from the community.