I am a nurse at a 240 bed hospital. I am subject to weekly COVID-19 PCR test due to my status as unvaccinated. This week my routine test detected I was COVId positive and asymptomatic. (This is my second time testing positive for COVID, the first was in December of 2020 and I had mild symptoms then.) It has been three days since I tested and I remain asymptomatic. My employer has instructed me to work from home until she is able to share the updated CDC guidelines. Effective today per the CDC, healthcare workers are able to return to work immediately after testing positive for COVID if they are truly asymptomatic as determined by their manager’s digression. Apparently in recent weeks we have seen a drastic spike in the volume of asymptomatic employees testing positive. Today our safety huddle report showed we have greater than 290+ team members out with symptoms or positive test. We normally start hearing some frantic discussion when we hit 50 team members out.

How can the cdc require routine testing for unvaccinated employees but yet allow unvaccinated employees who test positive to resume working if they are not displaying symptoms?

Are these PCR test starting to show that we have reached herd immunity? If we have a high volume of people testing positive with no symptoms… who aren’t vaccinated… who Have had COVID before… what does that mean?!?

If they are just doing this to prevent the total collapse of the healthcare system by allowing nurses to continue working…. Won’t we see an even bigger outbreak in the coming days ? I have a small screen shot from our safety huddle that talks about the volume of employees currently off of work and the plan to announce e updated guidelines to employees today. I would be willing to upload it as a comment below if I can get some guidance on how to add an image to a comment.