COVID-19: Shorter Isolation Period? / Revised CDC Forecasts / Dry Heat Guidance / Vaccine Allocation

By Kelly Young

Edited by Susan Sadoughi, MD, and André Sofair, MD, MPH

Here are a few of the recent developments on COVID-19:

Shorter isolation period?: The CDC is considering whether to shorten the recommended home isolation time for people with COVID-19 from 10 days down to as few as 5 days, the New York Times and others report. Recent research suggests that people are most infectious 2 days before they develop symptoms to 5 days after.

Revised CDC forecasts: The CDC released new forecasts for COVID-19 last week. They predict that COVID-19-related deaths will likely rise in the coming 3 weeks. In the week of Dec. 19, an estimated 1.1 to 2.5 million new cases and 10,600 to 21,400 deaths are predicted. At that point, the models predict that a total of 294,000 to 321,000 Americans will have died from COVID-19.

Dry heat guidance: The FDA has provided guidance on using dry heat to help reduce bioburden on N95 respirators and other particulate filtering facepiece respirators. The agency says that it "does not intend to object to the use of certain dry heat systems for the purpose of reducing bioburden and supporting single-user reuse of otherwise disposable [respirators] that are compatible with dry heat bioburden reduction systems without marketing authorization." Existing reuse recommendations say that respirators should be stored in a breathable paper bag for at least 5 days between uses and that each respirator should be limited to a maximum of five wears.

Vaccine allocation: The CDC's Advisory Committee on Immunization Practices is scheduled to hold an emergency meeting on Tuesday to address how to allocate the initial COVID-19 vaccines once they are approved.