The Peru Gazette

With a beautiful fall weekend approaching, residents are reminded that the risk for COVID-19 remains high. Take precautions by avoiding crowds, wearing a mask, keeping physical distance (6 feet) from others, washing your hands frequently and staying home if you are sick.

A: The word “recovered” is used to describe someone who is no longer infectious, or able to pass the virus to another person. This also means that when a person is “recovered,” isolation can be discontinued. A person who is recovered may still experience ongoing effects from the virus.

For full details on when a person is considered “recovered,” or when isolation can be discontinued, visit https://bit.ly/32nBUXM. In general, for an individual with symptoms of COVID-19, isolation starts when their symptoms began and continues for a minimum of 10 days, and until there is no fever for at least 24 hours (without the use of fever-reducing medications) and symptoms have improved.

A: There are multiple criteria that may place an individual in the probable category. For the probable case definition used by NYS, visit https://bit.ly/3en5n7o. Some examples of criteria that may place an individual in the probable category can include an indeterminate test result or antibody test results. If a person is found to have antibodies, they may also already be considered “recovered.” If a person receives indeterminate test results, they may be retested and subsequently test positive or negative. A person in the probable category may remain in the probable category, may be moved to the confirmed case category, or may be removed from numbers if they are determined to not be a COVID-19 case, all based on epidemiology criteria. Note that this is not a category that CCHD developed. A case definition is a set of uniform criteria used to define a disease for public health surveillance. These enable public health officials to classify and count cases consistently across reporting jurisdictions.