Small-business owners express confusion over the C.D.C.’s changed guidelines on isolation.

Jesus Caicedo-Diaz climbs into bed most nights by 9. He eats raw garlic and onions to give his dulled taste buds a jolt. Four months after getting Covid-19, he is still wading through an interminable recovery. So when he thinks of his five employees at Skål, his restaurant in the Bedford-Stuyvesant neighborhood of Brooklyn, he can’t imagine offering just five days off work when they get sick.

Some small-business owners, including Mr. Caicedo-Diaz, are perplexed by shifting messaging on how long people should isolate after testing positive for the coronavirus. On Monday, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention halved to five days the recommended isolation period for those without symptoms and those without fevers whose other symptoms are resolving. Those leaving isolation should wear masks around others for an additional five days under the new guidelines.

“Every few weeks there’s a new rule, a new mandate, a new thing,” Mr. Caicedo-Diaz, 36, said, adding that he plans to ask workers to continue taking at least 10 days when they get Covid. “It’s very confusing,” he said.

Business owners are concerned for their workers as the Omicron variant rips through the country, driving a surge in Covid cases. They’re also struggling to keep their businesses staffed, with the new spate of cases adding to a worker shortage that they have been reckoning with for months.

While a briefer isolation could help people get back on the job more quickly, some owners also worry about how to determine when someone is healthy enough to return.

“It does feel like a short amount of time given most people that I know still test positive at five days,” said Diana Mora, who owns Friends and Lovers, a bar in Brooklyn that is temporarily closed because of the Omicron surge in New York City but will reopen for New Year’s Eve.

But some hospitality workers said they were cautiously optimistic about the changing guidelines, having seen the new variant’s relatively mild effects in some cases.

“I’m a fan of the shortened quarantine, but I’m going to keep an eye on myself and try to make sure I’m as well as I think I am,” said Amelia Smoak, 29, who works at a restaurant and bar in the East Village and planned to return to work on Wednesday after testing positive for the coronavirus on Thursday. Her symptoms have remained minimal: “I sneezed more than I normally do,” she added.

The Main Street Alliance, a nonprofit business education group, is hopeful that the C.D.C.’s new guidelines can “provide confidence” and support for businesses in rapidly bringing their employees back to work without risking their health and safety.

Still, with isolation guidelines evolving — and often left to individual discretion — employers said they remained focused on preventing workplace outbreaks.

“By maintaining vaccination and sanitization, we can hopefully keep it at bay,” said Marcia St. Hilaire-Finn, 55, who runs Bright Start Early Care in Washington, D.C., which requires its 30 staff members to get Covid vaccines.

Over the holidays, Ms. St. Hilaire-Finn pressed her workers to get a vaccine booster by offering a $100 incentive: “It’s cheaper for me to do that than having to shut down for months,” she said. “You have to think big picture.”

For all the latest business News Click Here 

Read original article here

Denial of responsibility! TechAI is an automatic aggregator around the global media. All the content are available free on Internet. We have just arranged it in one platform for educational purpose only. In each content, the hyperlink to the primary source is specified. All trademarks belong to their rightful owners, all materials to their authors. If you are the owner of the content and do not want us to publish your materials on our website, please contact us by email – [email protected]. The content will be deleted within 24 hours.