Nursing Homes: CDC Releases Updated Consolidated Testing Guidelines

Posted on June 16, 2020 by Jonathan Lips

Testing a nursing home resident for COVID-19 more than once in a 24-hour period is not being encouraged, according to consolidated recommendations released by the Centers for Disease Control & Prevention (CDC) over the weekend. The updated guidance includes: 

• recommends providers test symptomatic residents for other causes of respiratory illness, like the flu, in addition to coronavirus testing. 
• calls for providers to coordinate repeat testing efforts — after initially testing all residents and staff members — with local, territorial and state health departments in response to a new outbreak.
• recommends repeat testing until there are no new cases among residents or workers at least 14 days since the most recent positive result. 
• suggests suggests in areas where testing capacity is limited that repeat rounds of testing be focused on residents who leave and return to a facility or those that have had known exposures. 
• allows for essentially only looking at high-risk cases if there is inadequate access to testing and labs that can turn test results around quickly.