When Should Healthcare Workers With Coronavirus Disease 2019 (COVID-19) Return to Work? An Analysis of Follow-up Antigen Test Results After a Positive COVID Test

Abstract

A high percentage of healthcare workers (HCWs) who had met the CDC criteria for returning to work 5 days after symptom onset remained positive for their return-to-work COVID-19 antigen test, suggesting continued infectiousness. Boosted HCWs were more likely to be antigen positive on their return-to-work test compared to unvaccinated HCWs which merits further research.

COVID-19 in non-hospitalised adults caused by either SARS-CoV-2 sub-variants Omicron BA.1, BA.2, BA.5 or Delta associates with similar illness duration, symptom severity and viral kinetics, irrespective of vaccination history

“…Using data from both prior negative screening tests, and symptomatic onset, we were able to show peak Ct, and therefore presumed peak infectivity, occurred 2-5 days after symptoms onset, in line with other work capturing known viral trajectory studies (27,40) and indicative of ongoing infectivity up to 7-10 days across all variants tested (41)(42)(43).…”

“…The remaining 460 episodes, across 433 individuals, were then analysed (Table 1). These individuals had the same age distribution (median 39 years [IQR 31 -49], as the whole Legacy study (40 years [31][32][33][34][35][36][37][38][39][40][41][42][43][44][45][46][47][48][49][50]), and were gender matched to Legacy (68 vs 68% female). Symptom questionnaires were completed for 432/460 episodes (94%).…”