This quick reference highlights key COVID-19 Clinical Care information for healthcare providers and provides selected links to full guidance and research for easier CDC web navigation.

Caring for Patients

• Signs and symptoms of COVID-19 can include fever, chills, cough, shortness of breath, fatigue, muscle aches, headache, loss of taste or smell, sore throat, nasal congestion or rhinorrhea, vomiting or diarrhea, and skin rashes.
• Some patients with COVID-19 may progress or dyspnea and severe disease about one week after symptom onset.
• Clinicians who wish to consider the use of therapeutics or other available investigational therapies should review the COVID-19 National Institutes of Health (NIH) Treatment Guidelines.

Ending Isolation

• For most people with a current laboratory-confirmed SARS-CoV-2 infection, isolation and precautions can be discontinued 10 days after symptom onset and after resolution of fever for at least 24 hours, without the use of fever-reducing medications, and with improvement of other symptoms.
• For adults who never develop symptoms, isolation and other precautions can be discontinued 10 days after the date of their first positive viral test.
• Some severely immunocompromised persons with COVID-19 may remain infectious beyond 20 days after their symptoms began and require additional SARS-CoV-2 testing and consultation with infection disease specialists to determine the appropriate duration of isolation and precautions.

Reinfection

• Confirmation of SARS-CoV-2 reinfection requires confirmation of initial infection and virus detection at two distinct time periods with genetic sequencing data that support reinfection.
• A toolkit and criteria have been developed to support state and local health departments investigations of suspended cases of SARS-CoV-2 reinfection.

People at Increased Risk of Severe Illness

• People of any with underlying medical conditions on CDC’s evidence-based list can be more likely to get severely ill from COVID-19.
• Older adults are at highest risk for severe illness from COVID-19.
• The risk of severe COVID-19 increases as the number of underlying medical conditions increases in a person.
• Long-standing systemic health and social inequalities have put various groups of people at increased risk of getting sick and dying from COVID-19.
• CDC highlights key findings from a large cross-sectional that examined risk factors and comorbidities associated with severe outcomes of COVID-19.

Multisystem Inflammatory Syndrome (MIS)

• Multisystem inflammatory syndrome is a rare but serious complication associated with COVID-19 in which multiple organ systems become inflamed.
• MIS can affect children and adolescents (MIS-C) and adults (MIS-A).
• The MIS-C healthcare provider page provides information on clinical presentation, case definition of MIS-C, case report form (CRF), and more resources about MIS-C.
• CDC has developed a MIS-A case definition for healthcare providers.

Post-COVID Conditions

• Post-COVID conditions describe a range of new, returning, or ongoing health issues that persist four or more weeks after being infected with the virus that causes COVID-19, sometimes after initial symptom recovery.
• New or ongoing symptoms can occur in people who have varying degrees of illness during acute infection, including patients who had mild or asymptomatic infections.
• Medical and research communities are still learning about post-acute symptoms and clinical findings.

To learn more, please visit https://www.cdc.gov/coronavirus/2019-ncov/hcp/clinical-care-quick-reference.html.