What Does Self-Quarantine Really Mean?
You may have been asked to “work from home” or prepare for “self-quarantine” if you may have been exposed to COVID-19. But there is some confusion as to what this means. Can you work in a cafe? Walking your dog?
First, let’s clarify some definitions:
- The quarantine is for people who might be sick but don’t know yet. If you are asked to “stay at home and monitor your symptoms,” that is quarantine.
- Isolation is for people who are really sick. If you are coughing, you have a fever and there is reason to believe you have COVID-19 , then it is you. You may be in “self-isolation” (or you may be isolated in a hospital) and you will be very careful when you cough.
Quarantine can turn into isolation if you get sick, so the concepts are related but not exactly the same. And if you just work from home, that’s a whole different level. Let’s take a look at a few scenarios.
If your school or place of work has asked everyone to stay at home
Whether you have been asked to work from home or your school has moved to online lessons, the goal is to exclude that school or workplace as a potential hub for the virus. In this case, I am assuming that you have not personally been exposed to the virus (which you are aware of), this is just a precautionary measure.
This is not quarantine or isolation, it just reduces the risk of becoming a link in the chain of transmission. There are no hard and fast rules in this case, but it would be wise to avoid other gathering places. This means that you probably shouldn’t work in a busy café.
It sucks because many tips for working from home ( including ours ) include mental health tips like: Get out of the house! Have lunch with a friend! Exercise during your lunch break! Unfortunately, if these activities lead you to crowded places, you should probably keep them to a minimum.
This does not mean that you should completely avoid public places, but limit your walks. I dine out less often than I used to. Sometimes I go to the gym when I’m less loaded and remember to wash my hands afterwards.
If you could have contracted a virus
If a public health professional contacts you because you have been in contact with someone with the virus, follow their instructions. Be sure to ask questions about what you can and cannot do; their information will be more useful and up-to-date than anything I am going to tell you here.
If you’ve returned from a trip to a high-risk area, or have been advised to stay home and monitor for symptoms, it’s time to go into quarantine.
The idea behind quarantine is to stay away from other people . You should avoid anything that could lead to accidentally breathing into people’s faces or touching surfaces that others are touching. If you can keep six feet away from other people, you can do things like:
- Walk the dog
- Work in the yard
- Run
In this case, you should definitely avoid working in cafes, dining out in restaurants, going to work or school, going to events or parties, and it is probably best if you are not shopping or running on business; let someone do it for you. And don’t have any meetings. Bringing friends over is a great idea, but not the point.
If you know that you are sick
If you are sick with COVID-19 (or the infection that you think is COVID-19), you are not in quarantine, but in isolation. The idea is the same – to avoid people, but this time you know you are sick. This means you will be even more vigilant about the possibility of disease transmission in your home.
The CDC has guidelines for households with a sick person , including instructions for the sick person to wear a mask if possible, and to use a separate bedroom and bathroom from other family members if you can arrange it. You will also want to clean surfaces frequently.
How to prepare for quarantine
You don’t need a million rolls of toilet paper or a bunker full of supplies for the apocalypse. Preparing for a possible quarantine in the future means you won’t have a problem staying at home for a few days.
As Lisa writes in our guide on how to stock up , eligible supplies include a few extra days of what you would normally buy. You will need soap to wash your hands, food that will last for a while (think frozen meals, not necessarily dried beans), and any medical or health-related supplies you usually need or may need during your illness, such as tissues.