COVID-19 cases rise amid Omicron, CDC shortens isolation guidelines for health care workers

Yahoo Finance's Anjalee Khemlani discusses how the CDC is shortening isolation guidelines for health care workers as the spread of Omicron continues.

Video transcript

JULIE HYMAN: But first, let's talk about the latest in the coronavirus pandemic and what we are seeing in terms of cases and in terms of what we are hearing from public officials. Our Anjalee Khemlani is with us on what's the latest, what do we need to in terms of what we may have missed over the weekend.

ANJALEE KHEMLANI: Well, Julie, unfortunately we know that Omicron is really doing a number on the United States right now. We're seeing cases continue to rise and Dr. Anthony Fauci said to expect more of this weekend in an interview with ABC, saying that we saw about 150,000 cases daily on average last week. And we should be expecting that to continue to rise and result in hospitalizations as well. That's largely because how this virus works, as we've seen over the past two years, is that when there is more transmission around the potential for a breakthrough or for someone else to get infected increases along with that. We do not-- no estimates yet on sort of what the peak might be. If you recall earlier this year, at the start of the year when we saw that huge wave it was about 300,000 cases daily. But at that time, vaccines were just starting to roll out. So we may or may not get to that point just yet.

Meanwhile, looking at how companies need to start managing the breakthrough cases or those cases that come in, we've seen the struggle that has happened in certain industries so far. But healthcare workers got a bit of a reprieve just last week. At the end of the week, the CDC changed official guidelines to allow healthcare workers who test positive but are asymptomatic to come back to work within five days. That's a significant reduction from 14 days, which is a current isolation time other companies are pushing for continuing to decrease to about a week, if possible. The UK has already taken on that reduction and the difference being, of course, because with the vaccinations, and with more protection and tools, the ability for someone to come back to work sooner is possible compared to the start of the pandemic, which is when that initial 14 day guidance was initially set. Back to you.

JULIE HYMAN: And Anjalee, you know we talked to Dr. Monica Gandhi on Friday, or on Thursday, of UCSF who really has been advocating for some of the changes that you've been discussing including shortening that quarantine window. But she also talks about getting rid of blanket mask mandates, and just a more general sort of acceptance of the virus as part of our lives and something we're going to have to deal with on a more regular basis. Besides that quarantine shortening, are we seeing whether it's federal or municipal governments sort of adopting some of these changes?

ANJALEE KHEMLANI: To a degree we're actually seeing more targeted mask mandates. So for example, experts are really pushing for the idea that indoors, especially is where mask mandates are more needed because the idea is the virus is sort of airborne or travels through the air. And so you need to be able to protect yourself in close quarters rather than outdoor. So definitely that's part of it. Also the reliance on testing has been a really significant-- needing to do more testing. And Dr. Anthony Fauci did also discuss that over the weekend, the idea that the federal government has to put pressure on the testing sector to make sure that they are able to meet the demand that we're going to need within the next month or so in order to be able to find these cases, and sort of stop-- to your point really-- just doing blanket or broad strokes strategies in order to curb the trend.