Respiratory Illness Prevention: Updated CDC Guidelines
The CDC has streamlined its recommendations for preventing respiratory illnesses, including COVID-19. These guidelines are designed to be easier to follow and aim to protect those most vulnerable to serious health impacts.
Core Prevention Strategies
- Stay Up-to-Date with Vaccinations: Ensuring you are current with your vaccinations is a key measure to guard against severe illness, hospitalization, and death. This includes vaccines for flu, COVID-19, and RSV, where applicable.
- Practice Good Hygiene: Simple actions like covering your coughs and sneezes, frequent hand washing or sanitizing, and cleaning commonly touched surfaces can significantly reduce the spread of viruses.
- Ensure Cleaner Air: Improving air quality by increasing fresh outside air circulation, using air purifiers indoors, or opting for outdoor gatherings can help lower the transmission of respiratory viruses.
If You Become Ill
When you may have a respiratory virus...
Stay home and away from others (including people you live with who are not sick) if you have respiratory virus symptoms that aren't better explained by another cause (such as allergies). These symptoms can include fever, chills, fatigue, cough, runny nose, and headache, among others.
You can go back to your normal activities when, for at least 24 hours, both are true:
- Your symptoms are getting better overall, and
- You have not had a fever (and are not using fever-reducing medication).
When you go back to your normal activities, take added precaution over the next 5 days, such as taking additional steps for cleaner air, hygiene, masks, physical distancing, and/or testing when you will be around other people indoors.
If you develop a fever or you start to feel worse after you have gone back to normal activities, stay home and away from others again until, for at least 24 hours, both are true:
- Your symptoms are improving overall, and
- You have not had a fever (and are not using fever-reducing medication).
Then take added precaution for the next 5 days.
If you are not experiencing symptoms, but tested positive for a respiratory virus, you still may be contagious. Follow the recommendations described above. This is especially important to protect people with factors that increase their risk of severe illness from respiratory viruses.
These updated guidelines reflect the CDC’s commitment to adapting its advice to the evolving landscape of respiratory illnesses and the tools available to combat them. For more detailed information, please visit the CDC’s official guidance.
Last Updated: 4/15/2024
