The WHO cuts to 10 days the isolation recommendation for people infected with Covid-19 with symptoms

The World Health Organization (WHO) has updated its recommendations for people infected with Covid-19now advising a 10-day isolation period after testing positive if there are symptoms and 5 days if they are asymptomatic.

Until this Friday, the WHO recommended 13 days of isolation for people infected with symptoms, and 10 days for those who did not have them.

“We issue a conditional recommendation of ten days of isolation for symptomatic people due to SARS-CoV-2 infection; and five days of isolation for asymptomatic people,” the United Nations international health organization collects in a document published this Friday. .

In its update, the WHO has justified that the symptomatic “are much more likely to test positive than the asymptomatic and, therefore, much more likely to transmit the virus.” SARS-CoV-2“.

The WHO also advises the use of rapid antigen detection tests to check if the infection has passed and thus reduce the isolation period. In this way, it could be agreed to interrupt the precautions to avoid transmission and discharge could be agreed.

The WHO has based its recommendations on 12 studies with almost 3,000 participants. The United Nations health agency specifies in its document that these are only recommendations, so each country can publish its own guidelines.

According to the latest WHO data, as of January 12, a total of 660 million 746,894 confirmed cases of Covid-19 have been registered in the world with 6 million 692,538 deaths since the start of the pandemic.