
Dr. Dave
COVID: When am I no longer contagious?
Updated to differentiate isolation (for people who tested positive or are symptomatic) from quarantine (asymptomatic people with significant COVID exposure).
In any new disease there is a lot of testing and research that needs to take place before we can make generalizations. With COVID-19 out of an abundance of caution the recommendation was to assume contagiousness for 14 days after testing positive or from the first presentation of symptoms and to wait at least 72 hours after conclusion of fever beyond that point. This was a fairly liberal catchall to limit the risk of exposing others.
