Do you still need to tell people if you have COVID?

Rebecca Corey
Telling others about a positive COVID test can help them get treatment early, if needed.
Telling others about a positive COVID test can help them get treatment early, if needed. (Getty Images) (OKrasyuk via Getty Images)

Like COVID vaccine cards and social distancing signs, many of the precautions and etiquette so rigidly observed during the height of the pandemic have been discarded. One such custom? The habit of sending notifications out to anyone you came in contact with if you test positive for COVID-19.

“The dynamic and the frequency of disclosing exposures has changed, and probably appropriately,” Dr. Mindy Sampson, assistant professor of infectious diseases at Stanford University, tells Yahoo Life. “I think we're in a much different place in the pandemic than we were in 2019, 2020.”

But with an uptick in summertime COVID cases — including most recently, President Biden — what responsibilities do people now have when it comes to sharing if they get a positive COVID test?

Experts say there are likely a few factors behind the societal shift.

  • We know more about COVID now than we did in 2020. “As knowledge grows, treatments arise and the pathogen mutates to become less virulent, so do the rules we use to guide us,” Dr. John McGeehan, a bioethicist and physician at Rowan University, tells Yahoo Life.

  • More people have immunity. Whether through vaccines or prior infection, more people have some protection against the virus now than they did at the start of the pandemic — which means that interacting with someone while you’re contagious doesn’t necessarily mean you’ll infect them. “At the beginning, if you were with somebody in close contact [while contagious], that would likely lead to infection,” Sampson says. “But now, sometimes it does and sometimes it doesn't, so I think people probably have a feeling that they aren't personally responsible.”

  • Contact tracing is harder. Sampson also points out that when people were still social distancing, it was easy to reach out to those few people in your COVID bubble to let them know if you tested positive. But now that our social circles have expanded again, it’s harder to do personal contact tracing and notify every person you may have interacted with.

  • 'COVID fatigue' has settled in. Many Americans may just be tired of the COVID precautions enforced earlier in the pandemic. “It's sort of dropped in priority, I think, a little bit relative to other diseases,” Arthur Caplan, professor of bioethics at the NYU Grossman School of Medicine, tells Yahoo Life. “COVID kind of disappeared from the national discussion due to COVID exhaustion.”

Some people may feel protective of and reluctant to share their personal health information with others. Confidentiality is taken very seriously in health care, McGeehan says, and patient autonomy “is a major pillar of medical ethics.”

Still, Caplan believes that people should feel some moral obligation to share certain diagnoses with others — including COVID.

“There are tests which are private, and then there are tests for diseases that cause harm to others through infection,” he says. “So I don't think you have to put forward the results of your cancer test, but I do think if you're HIV-positive, COVID-positive or have herpes, you definitely should be telling others and trying to avoid exposures.”

And while certain diagnoses like sexually transmitted infections can carry some stigma, Caplan notes that you really have nothing to lose by telling others if you have COVID.

The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) doesn't currently have any guidance on informing other's if you test positive.

"CDC previously updated its guidance to focus on the core measures that provide the most protection across respiratory viruses," the agency said in an email to Yahoo Life. "There is not specific guidance on informing others if you test positive for COVID-19. The updated guidance emphasizes the importance of staying home and away from others when sick from respiratory viruses, regardless of the virus, as well as additional preventive actions."

But while disclosing if you have COVID may not be a requirement or a social obligation the way it was at the beginning of the pandemic, Sampson says it’s still probably a good idea.

“I do think that it's the kind thing to do — particularly if you have somebody that you had a lengthy exposure with,” she says.

Experts say that’s especially true if you’ve interacted with someone at a higher risk of complications from the virus, or with someone who could spread COVID to other high-risk individuals. That includes:

  • Pregnant people or parents of newborns

  • The elderly

  • The immunocompromised

  • People with underlying health conditions such as diabetes or heart disease

  • Health care workers

  • Nursing home employees

“It is my opinion that anyone who unknowingly exposes an at-risk patient who could become seriously ill should notify that person so that they can be treated earlier,” McGeehan says. “We must protect those who cannot protect themselves. That is part of the medical ethics principle of social justice.”

Apart from notifying others, experts say there are other tried-and-true steps you can take to protect people if you’re sick:

  • Stay home. “If you're sick, not being around people is the responsible and the kind thing to do,” Sampson says. “Whether it's COVID or flu or RSV, you probably don't want to expose your colleagues, your friends [or] people in the public.” Once you've been fever-free and without symptoms for at least 24 hours, you no longer need to stay home.

  • Wear a mask around others. If you do need to venture outside while you’re still contagious, wear a mask to protect others — especially around those who may be high risk.

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