If you’re planning to visit family for Thanksgiving, you should have started your quarantine on Thursday, according to experts.
Thursday marked exactly 14 days before turkey day, which is the recommended period of time someone should quarantine to make sure they don’t spread the coronavirus to others, according to the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.
Even if you don’t think you’ve been exposed to the coronavirus, after a 14-day quarantine can help make sure you won’t spread the virus to your loved ones on Thanksgiving, according to Dear Pandemic, a website run by a group of all-female public health scientists called the “Nerdy Girls.”
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“Self-quarantine is helpful for two reasons,” a Dear Pandemic post about pre-Thanksgiving quarantine said. “It allows adequate time for the infection to present if you were already exposed and limits new exposures you may encounter in the next 2 weeks that you could inadvertently share with loved ones.”
To truly follow the quarantine, you shouldn’t go grocery shopping, attend in-person school or work anywhere but in your house, Lindsey Leininger, a clinical professor at Dartmouth College and the leader of the “Nerdy Girls” told The Associated Press.
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“Every effort you make to shrink your network over the next 14 days decreases the risk of post-Thanksgiving surges in your family and for others,” the Dear Pandemic post said. “Now is the time to stop all non-essential outings. This will help decrease community transmission as a whole while also decreasing infection risk at Thanksgiving gatherings.”
If you plan on visiting family for Thanksgiving, experts recommend you start quarantining now, to avoid spreading the coronavirus to loved ones. (iStock)
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Anne Rimoin, an epidemiologist and professor at UCLA’s Fielding School of Public Health told FOX 11 that a 14-day quarantine is “the best thing you can do” if you want to see your family without spreading the coronavirus on Thanksgiving Day.
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“We know this virus has been transmitted through events just like a Thanksgiving dinner,” she told the station. “In fact, last week alone, 10 percent of the COVID positive cases that were reported in [Los Angeles] County had been to a gathering of ten people or more.”
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Even Illinois Gov. J.B. Pritzker told residents they should follow a 14-day quarantine if they want to see family on Thanksgiving Day.
“If you’re choosing to travel, it is even more important that you take extra caution in the coming weeks,” Pritzker said at a press conference Thursday. “If you do choose to have a small in-person Thanksgiving, have every single person more or less quarantine for two weeks prior, which would be today.”
