New CDC guidelines not being followed by some Augusta area employers

New guidelines meant to speed up and ease the transition back to work and normal life are not being heeded by employers in the Augusta area, doctors said.

Dr. Frank Carter at Medical Specialists Inc. in Waynesboro said their office is swamped with people trying to get tested because employers require it before they are allowed back.

“The problem we are having is we are getting so overrun with people just simply coming in who served their quarantine time and want to get tested because their employers are requiring them to have a negative test to return,” he said.

The practice can only process about 35 tests a day but are having to run 50 to 60 tests a day just to keep up with the demand, Carter said. Multiple employers are requiring a negative results even from people who are asymptomatic or have completed a quarantine period because they came in contact with a positive case, he said.

New guidelines from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention were meant to address this testing conundrum and speed up the transition, said Dr. Rodger MacArthur, a professor of infectious diseases at Augusta University. For instance, the time for self-quarantine has been shortened from two weeks to 10 days for those with mild to moderate illness, assuming symptoms have improved, he said.

“The reason for that is they now have good data that after seven days they are no longer felt to be infectious,” MacArthur said. Also, the the time for that period is now dated back to when symptoms first appeared as opposed to the date of a positive test result because of the problem with testing, he said.

“Some individuals are having a really hard time getting a test and then they have to wait for four days or more for the results to get back,” MacArthur said.

The CDC now does not recommend requiring a negative test before being allowed to return to work, MacArthur said. Part of that is from reports that some people will continue to test positive, even though they are no longer infectious, because the sensitive test is picking up “dead viral particles, which are not able to infect anyone else,” he said. At University Hospital, some patients have tested positive for weeks and months even though they are no longer infectious, said Dr. Ioana Chirca, medical director for infectious diseases, infection prevention and microbial stewardship.

One tested positive for around 80 days even though “it is a dead virus” at that point, she said.

Updated guidelines also now recommend an absence of fever for 24 hours, as opposed to three days, for someone to be considered no longer infectious, MacArthur said.

For health care workers who were severely ill, those who were hospitalized, the self-quarantine time is 20 days from symptom onset, CDC said.