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This is Lindsay Smith Rogers.

The CDC is again changing its isolation guidelines for COVID-19, reducing the amount of time

those infected need to stay home after a positive test.

Today, Stephanie Desmond talks to Johns Hopkins virologist Andy Peckoshe about why the guidelines

are changing and why it's imperative for those 65 and older to get another dose of the

COVID vaccine. Let's listen.

Andy Pecosh, thanks so much for joining me again. Oh, always a pleasure to be on.

So I wanted to talk today about these new CDC isolation guidelines we're hearing about. You know,

it used to be 10 days and then it was was five days, and now we have none?

Well, it's getting shorter. And I guess we could start by saying, I think the CDC's main goal here

is to try to make these guidelines consistent across a couple of different respiratory viruses.

So we heard this year that things like RSV, influenza, COVID-19,

a couple of these other viruses as well, you know, all have a tendency to get you sick with

respiratory symptoms. And the question is always, when am I ready to go back to work? And I think

these guidelines are meant to try to be as broad as possible

while maintaining some level of safety to ensure that you're not going back too early to spread

infectious diseases. The guidelines are essentially, you want to wait 24 hours after your fever is

gone or after your symptoms are starting to abate before you can think about going

...