Local Health Departments Want to Know if You Test Positive for Covid at Home

With cases continuing to rise after people gathered for the holidays over the weekend, many wonder how they should go about testing positive at home.

As the New Year approaches and with the Omicron variant causing new symptoms, people are looking for information on how long they might be contagious, quarantining, and the best time to get tested after exposure.

The Center for Disease Control and Prevention released new guidelines on what to do if you test positive or believe you were exposed to someone who has.

According to the CDC, COVID symptoms can appear anywhere from two to 14 days after someone experienced the virus. Anyone with symptoms should get tested for COVID.

According to the newest guidance from the CDC, those who have been fully vaccinated and around someone who has COVID, are recommended to get tested between five and seven days.

At-home covid-19 testing kits can be used to get those results in a controlled and safe environment.

Health officials say that although it’s not mandatory, it is encouraged to report at-home test results.

The Center for Disease Control and Prevention doesn’t specify that those who self-test for Covid report their result to local health departments. Instead, it recommends sharing positive results with health care providers, who will report the results.

The CDC also recommends informing close contacts — defined as anyone you were less than 6 feet away from 15 minutes or more over 24 hours — of your positive result, whether from a home test or a lab test.