The CDC recommends... What Twitterati had to say on the latest US Covid-19 isolation rules

The US Centers for Disease Control's (CDC) decision to reduce the isolation period for asymptomatic Covid-19 patients evoked a mixed bag of responses, with many social media users mocking the guidelines.

On December 27, 2021, the CDC halved the recommended isolation period for people with asymptomatic Covid-19 infections from 10 to five days, with a surge of cases causing travel chaos and threatening wider social disruption.

The agency said the new guidelines were "motivated by science," which had demonstrated that the majority of Covid-19 transmission occurs early in the course of illness, generally one to two days prior to the onset of symptoms.

Experts, however, have expressed concern over the absence of a testing requirement and fear that the omission could hasten the spread of the highly contagious Omicron variant.

Twitteratti, on the other hand, saw it from another perspective. Following the CDC announcement, the microblogging site was flooded with a barrage of memes.

With the surge in cases driven by the Omicron variant, US President Joe Biden's administration has faced criticism for failing to prepare adequate supply of tests. People are queueing up at malls and around city blocks, sometimes for hours, to get tested.

Another concern voiced by epidemiologists is that the new recommendation fails to distinguish between vaccinated and unvaccinated people, who recover from the virus at different times.

"Vaccinated people are much less likely to get infected and less likely to be infectious for a long period of time," said Aaron Caroll, a pediatrician at Indiana University.

(With agency inputs)

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