Exactly how long to quarantine for coronavirus?

Question

I was exposed to coronavirus on January 30th and have been in quarantine since Wednesday, which is when I found out I had been exposed. I tested negative for COVID last Tuesday (for unrelated reasons), but then had to quarantine. I was set to be able to stop quarantining tomorrow, but I started coughing yesterday, so now I have to quarantine even longer. So should I quarantine 10 days after I stop having symptoms? 10 days after I start? What should I do? Thank you

A Hunch · Accepted Answer

The quarantining starts when you last had "close contact" with the infected person.
Anyone who is going out in public has "casual contact" with infected people, unless the are in an area with very low covid rates.

Close contact is within 6ft for 15minutes during a 24 hour period.
If you did not have this, you don't need to quarantine.

If you had close contact with the infected period, you would start the counting in Jan 30th.

If you don't have symptoms, you need to quarantine for 7 days and then get a negative test.
If you don't have symptoms and don't want to test, you can quarantine for 10 days.

At this point, since you are having symptoms = if you don't want to test, you will have to quarantine for 10 days once your cough occurred.  Or you can test, now and get out of confinement.

A cough is super general - it could be from allergies.Also, the 10 days doesn't mean you can't get sick after that.  It's 97% of the people get sick in 10 days or less.  The CDC changed their requirements from 14 days to 10 days because the risk to the public is very minimal.

Anonymous · Answer

Why not just get tested again?

Matt · Answer

you should quarantine either for 10 days after exposure or 10 days after you are symptom free if you have gotten symptoms, since you have become symptomatic you will have to wait till 10 days after your symptoms have subsided

Exactly how long to quarantine for coronavirus?

3 Answers