Happy New COVID Year! Hawaii has endured two full years of this virus, but there’s hope 2022 will be different. With a winter surge fueled by a new variant driving high numbers, it’s hard to imagine that COVID-19 could be receding in importance this year.
And yet that is what some experts have been saying.
To begin with, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention has reduced the guidance on how long those who test positive should isolate, from 10 to five days, assuming they are asymptomatic. Once out, these people can return to work or daily routines, but they’re instructed to remain masked for the remaining five days.
The state Department of Health (DOH) has adopted this guidance.
This is because the contagion risk is not gone but significantly reduced, according to the CDC: Most transmission occurs between one or two days before the onset of symptoms and two to three days after.
This change in protocol is not being endorsed everywhere, though. Some critics assert that requiring two consecutive negative rapid antigen tests before leaving isolation would be safer, and they have a good point.
These tests detect a protein that’s on the surface of the virus, a measure of how infectious a person is at the moment. It’s considered less accurate than the polymerase chain reaction (PCR) nose-swab tests, but a pair of two negative results would be a helpful indicator that the danger has passed.
One problem: These tests are in short supply.
DOH officials have said that a person who tests five days out is likely to still show a positive result, despite the lowered risk. Even if that’s true, the state should consider this shorter-isolation move a tentative one and monitor the results. The hope is that the federal government ramps up production of rapid tests quickly enough to make their routine use possible.
Meanwhile, employers in particular need to ensure that returning workers are well masked and keep distant as much as possible.
It is a question of balance. Plainly, after two years of upheaval, socially and economically, it is time to find a reasonable pathway through which people can pursue what they want and need with as little disruption as possible.
There are now at least more aids — vaccines, therapeutics, remote communications — to light the path. And for that, there’s reason to be hopeful in 2022.