Posted November 12, 2020. Past health advisories and alerts are archived for historical purposes and are not maintained or updated.
Cases of COVID-19 continue to rise across Spokane County. As of November 10, 2020, the two-week case rate per 100,000 was 374, nearly double what the rate was at the start of September. Case data available at srhd.org/covid19cases.
For consistency and clarity, please advise patients accordingly:
- Isolation:
- Patients must isolate while awaiting test results. If COVID-19 is highly suspected, the patient’s household members should be strongly advised to quarantine as well.
- Patients with COVID-19 must isolate for a full 10 days after their symptom onset or positive test result (returning to normal activities on the 11th day) and fever must be absent for 24 hours without the use of fever-reducing medications.
- Severe illness requiring hospitalization or severely immunocompromised patients must isolate for a full 20 days after symptom onset.
- Patients who are asymptomatic at the time of their positive test who later develop symptoms must isolate for 10 days after symptom onset, not the date of their positive test.
- Repeat COVID-19 testing after someone has met initial isolation criteria should not occur.
- Quarantine:
- People with known exposure must quarantine for 14 days after last exposure. A negative test during these 14 days does not release someone from quarantine.
- Mask usage (by either the case or the exposed person) does not negate the need for quarantine in the exposed person, except in exposed healthcare workers wearing proper PPE.
- Household members of a COVID-19 case must quarantine for 14 days from the day of last contact with the case while they were infectious (this can be as long as 24 days [10 days of infectiousness for case plus 14 days of standard quarantine after exposure]).
- Household members of a single exposed person (such as a child exposed in school) do not need to quarantine with the exposed person unless the exposed person develops symptoms and/or tests positive.
Additionally, SRHD would like to make you aware of a letter from the Food and Drug Administration on the potential for false positive results with rapid antigen tests for COVID-19.
