Michigan’s health department announced Wednesday that it will not shorten its Covid-19 isolation guidelines after the CDC recommended cutting quarantine time from ten days to five days.
The state’s Department of Health and Human Services released a statement saying it will “retain current quarantine and isolation guidelines including guidelines for K–12 and congregate care settings” until it can review “the supporting evidence behind the guidance, while awaiting additional information from the CDC.”
The CDC said Monday that individuals who test positive for Covid-19 should quarantine for five days, after which they can emerge from isolation as long as they are asymptomatic and wear a mask around others for five more days.
Dr. Anthony Fauci on Thursday said the CDC’s decision was made in an effort to strike a balance between prioritizing public health and keeping society running.
“The reason is that now that we have such an overwhelming volume of cases coming in, many of which are without symptoms, there’s the danger that this is going to have a really negative impact on our ability to really get society to function properly,” Fauci said in an interview on NewsNation’s Morning in America.
“The CDC made a decision to balance what’s good for public health at the same time as keeping the society running,” he added.
He argued that the CDC “thought it out well” but acknowledged that the decision is not “100 percent risk-free.”
Throughout the pandemic, Michigan has had some of the most stringent Covid-19 policies in the nation under Democratic governor Gretchen Whitmer. The governor and members of her administration, however, came under fire again and again for flouting their own strict rules.
Whitmer defied her own indoor masking rules at least once and traveled out of state just before asking Michiganders to abstain from such travel, according to the Daily Caller.
In April, Michigan HHS director Elizabeth Hertel went on a vacation to Alabama as the state’s Covid-19 cases soared and officials urged residents to stay home. Just before that, Tricia Foster, Michigan’s chief operating officer who was tasked with overseeing the state’s vaccine rollout at the time, also traveled out of state for spring break in Siesta Key, Fla.
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