nursing wearing PPE, holding head

The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention on Friday introduced new guidance for managing asymptomatic healthcare personnel exposed to COVID-19, incuding those who work in nursing homes. The guidance is meant to mitigate workforce shortages.

Key points: 

  • Maintaining appropriate staffing in healthcare facilities is essential to providing a safe work environment for healthcare professionals and for safe patient care.
  • Maximizing interventions to protect healthcare professionals, patients and visitors is critical at all times, including when considering strategies to address staffing shortages.
  • CDC’s mitigation strategies offer a continuum of options for addressing staffing shortages.

In most instances, according to the CDC, asymptomatic workers do not require restrictions, regardless of vaccination status, if they do not develop symptoms or test positive for the virus.

In addition, CDC updated its recommendations for healthcare settings. According to LeadingAge, the agency “retired the nursing home-specific guidance that recommended more stringent mitigation measures for nursing homes than other healthcare settings, though additional considerations for nursing homes and other special settings are included in the updated healthcare setting guidance.”

Changes:        

  • Updated to note that vaccination status is no longer used to inform source control, screening testing or post-exposure recommendations
  • Updated circumstances when use of source control is recommended
  • Updated circumstances when universal use of personal protective equipment should be considered
  • Updated recommendations for testing frequency to detect potential for variants with shorter incubation periods and to address the risk for false negative antigen tests in people without symptoms.
  • Clarified that screening testing of asymptomatic healthcare personnel, including those in nursing homes, is at the discretion of the healthcare facility
  • Updated to note that, in general, asymptomatic patients no longer require empiric use of transmission-based precautions following close contact with someone with SARS-CoV-2 infection.
  • Archived the Interim Infection Prevention and Control Recommendations to Prevent SARS-CoV-2 Spread in Nursing Homes and special considerations for nursing homes not otherwise covered in Sections 1 and 2 were added to Section 3: Setting-specific considerations
  • Updated screening testing recommendations for nursing home admissions
  • Clarified the types of long-term care settings for whom the healthcare infection prevention and control recommendations apply

Local, territorial, tribal, state and federal requirements may be more restrictive, CDC noted, including those promulgated by the Occupational Safety and Health Administration.