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If you have symptoms, plan to continue to stay home. these tests are in short supply in many parts of the country. i expect there to be many more available in january. that doesn't help the people that are infected right now. that's why the current recommendation is to leave isolation only if you don't have symptoms and to continue to wear a mask for five more days to lower the risk of infecting people. >> let's talk about the rapid antigen tests. there are people calling for the five-day isolation period to get one of those tests. this has not been recommended by the cdc, why not? >> that's a...

They've already been infectious. that's why a rapid test, these antigen tests, are very specific. they'll only turn positive when you are infectious, which is why they are the better public health tool even if pcr is the better tool for a doctor who may be as interested in asking the question, have you been infected in the last couple weeks or even possibly months? >> okay. that's very interesting to me, but do the at-home rapid tests that you're talking about, do they detect you at the beginning of your infection? or are there some days where you're infectious or you're just developing antige...

During the first five days of that period versus the second five days, most of the risk is segregated in those first five days. m and so the risk is very, very low of transmitting, as you get into days 6, 7, 8, 9, and 10. and the tests that are used, the antigen tests, don't really have a good predictive value as to whether or not you're transmitting. they have a good value early on to say if you're infected. tanti but 5, 6, 7, 8, 9 days later, whether it's positive or negative, we have no studies at all that have shown, and in fact the original fda approval of thn test was not for the purpose...

So it's always wise to use, you know, one or more of these things if you want to be doubly certain. that most of them only dramatically reduce the risk and i think what we will probably find here is that, you know, there are periods of time when omicron's infectious at the beginning where the antigen test isn't yet able to pick it up. but i think the recommendation will very likely be that you get two antigen tests in a box. take one on a monday, and then take a second one on a tuesday. and that way, you can be much more certain of the results of the test. >> and let's talk about these new cdc...

Today's six, seven, eight, nine and ten. and the tests that are used. the antigen tests. don't really have a good predictive value as to whether or not you are transmitting. they have a good value early on. to say if you are infected. but saying five, six, seven days later, whether it's positive or negative. is not good. because we don't know any studies at all. an original fda approval of the test. was not for the purpose of determining whether multiple days following infection that you are able to transmit. for that reason, the cdc said, it was not necessary to have a test. because the risk ...