Local public health authorities determine and establish the COVID-19 quarantine options for their jurisdictions. The CDC currently recommends a quarantine period of 14 days. However, based on local circumstances and resources, options to shorten quarantine are acceptable alternatives.

According to the Chariton County Health Center, quarantine can end after Day 10 without testing and if no symptoms have been reported during daily monitoring. With this strategy, residual post-quarantine transmission risk is estimated to be about 1 percent with an upper limit of about 10 percent, according to the CDC.

The Chariton County Health Center went to a 10-day quarantine for close contacts to a positive case of COVID-19 on January 1. It says close contacts must be asymptomatic (not experiencing symptoms) to quarantine for 10 days; but if close contacts are experiencing any symptoms of COVID-19 such as fever or chills, cough, shortness of breath or difficulty breathing, fatigue, muscle or body aches, headache, new loss of taste or smell, sore throat, congestion or runny nose, nausea or vomiting or diarrhea, they should be tested for COVID-19 and stay quarantined until they receive their results.