The Centers for Disease Control last week expanded who counts as a “close contact” after a study conducted in Vermont revealed that one correctional officer tested positive for the coronavirus after multiple, brief encounters with infectious prisoners.
Federal health authorities had previously defined a “close contact” as someone who spent at least 15 minutes consecutively within 6 feet of a confirmed coronavirus case. The updated guidance now defines a close contact as someone who was within 6 feet of an infected individual for a total of 15 minutes or more over a 24-hour period.
The new definition of a close contact is expected to have important implications for contact-tracing efforts nationwide, and substantially increase the number of people asked to quarantine and test for the virus.
This will have the most impact on congregate living settings such as nursing homes and correctional facilities, said Natalie Kwit, one of the study’s authors and the Vermont Health Department’s outbreak prevention and response team co-lead. Schools could be affected as well, she said, but to a lesser extent.
“There’s really good, you know, social distancing practices and mitigation measures that can be implemented — and are implemented — in school settings to prevent those frequent, close interactions between individuals,” she said.
Using the previous definition of a close contact, health officials at first allowed a prison guard to continue working after prisoners with whom he’d had brief interactions tested positive at the end of July.
But at the end of his shift on Aug. 4, he experienced loss of smell and taste, muscle pain, runny nose, cough, shortness of breath, headache, loss of appetite, and gastrointestinal symptoms. The guard stayed home the next day and took a test; results returned Aug. 11 were positive for Covid-19.
Vermont Health Department and corrections staff reviewed surveillance footage and found that, during one eight-hour shift on July 28, the correctional officer was within 6 feet of infectious prisoners 22 different times, for an estimated 17 total minutes of cumulative exposure.
The guard opened and closed doors to allow inmates to enter and exit their cells, the recreation room and showers, collected dirty laundry, conducted health checks and dispensed medication. Throughout all interactions, the correctional officer wore a microfiber cloth mask, gown and goggles, according to the study’s authors, but the prisoners themselves were not always masked.
The prison guard in the study tested positive on Aug, 11, but Vermont health officials waited for the CDC to publish the study and update its definition of a close contact before re-evaluating their own protocols.
Health Commissioner Mark Levine said Friday the state had not wanted to act prematurely and overhaul their processes before outside experts had taken a look at their findings, given that the incident appeared to be more of an outlier.
“We’ve learned that so often during this pandemic, where many studies come out about a particular topic, then one further study comes out that all of a sudden people want to pivot on, even though it’s not consistent with anything that came out previously. So you have to be very careful in that endeavor,” Levine said.
