Bridesmaid Covid Exposure

Have any of the rapid tests came back positive? If so, I would kindly tell her that for the health and safety of yourself and other guests you ask her not to come. It sucks, but not worth it at all to risk covid exposure.

View Quoted Comment As of today, no. She is getting one everyday through Friday. I also considered having her get tested Saturday morning and her daughter. If any came back positive I would definitely tell her not to come.

They need to follow the current CDC guidelines, but there’s no real safe way for them to attend. They definitely need the full PCR test, not the rapid test. Rapid tests are not very accurate. For actual known exposure, people are supposed to isolate for a few days until the test, & then isolate until the results are back. Obviously if they’re positive they can’t come. But even if they’re negative, I think the current guidance is to still stay home for at least 10 days as you can become positive for many days after. I think it might be a bit less if they’re fully vaccinated, but that wouldn’t apply for the flower girl.

If they’re vaccinated, it’s totally safe for them to attend. If they’re not vaccinated, it’s irresponsible to put everyone in attendance at risk through that exposure.

They are supposed to quarantine 7 days after exposure with a negative test at the end. So I think it's likely they can attend if they are negative

View Quoted Comment That’s how I feel. I’d have her test the day of too out of caution.

View Quoted Comment You can still get and pass on Covid even if you're vaccinated. Being vaccinated just means that your symptoms won't be as bad if you do get it.

View Quoted Comment This situation really sucks, but it sounds like she likely won’t be able to attend. I understand her doing her due diligence with testing but at the end of the day, I’d be upset as a guest to learn someone in attendance had been supposed to be quarantining.

Hello! There is a lot of back and forth on this as I can see and I will tell you...I just had covid, so I'm VERY up to date on what exactly you should do in the situation of being exposed because my fiance and I live together, so the daily phone calls I received from the covid people told me what to do.

If she is not showing any symptoms, she is supposed to quarantine for 5 days after exposure, which would mean she should be okay by May 13th if she has not tested positive at all. If she or her daughters are showing symptoms or test positive, they all have to quarantine and the time depends on the person having it. For example, say her daughter tests positive for covid. Her daughter is expected to quarantine for 10 days after receipt of the positive test or the first day of her symptoms if she has any. Your friend's quarantine time wouldn't start until after the daughter completes her quarantine time, and then your friend would need to quarantine for 5 days after that if she has no symptoms. After 5 days, if she tests negative, she's in the clear.

If she's been vaccinated, there is no quarantine time at all. I exposed my mom, who was fully vaccinated, and she was told she did not have to quarantine at all and she never got covid from me.

It can be a very complicated issue, especially when so few people actually know what the current guidelines are because they're constantly changing them. But to me it sounds like as long as she keeps testing negative and doesn't display signs and her daughter is the same, she should be okay to attend your wedding. The rapid test IS accurate, with little room for error just as any other test. The whole it's not accurate thing is not true and it's rare that it's not accurate anymore because they've evolved the tests. However, if you don't feel comfortable having her and her daughter there because of this, then I would say continue to plan without her.

View Quoted Comment Being vaccinated or not is irrelevant. They could still potentially pass it to others even if they are vaccinated.

It's very much relevant. I work for a major medical center & level 1 trauma center. Our head of ID has been working with the CDC and has frequently been a spokesperson on national news. Per hospital policy if we are vaccinated and have an exposure we can keep on coming to work, keep caring for patients. Just get a test 5 days after the exposure. Evidence increasingly suggests that the risk of transmission from someone who is vaccinated is low due to decreased viral load. No, not zero - we will never reach zero. But low. We have got to stop purporting the idea that vaccination is "irrelevant" in cases such as this because it's a big reason why people are declining the vaccine. Just this weekend someone said to me "well if I get the vaccine they say I can still get covid and still spread covid, so why should I get it?"

As a COVID Compliance Director you should follow your local Department of Health (DOH) guidelines. If your friend received a call from the DOH, and were notified as a "close contact", then they must quarantine for 10 days from contact. Per law, you cannot test out of quarantine. Your friend should not be at work or leaving her house.

If your friend did not get a DOH contact tracing call, then look at the type of interaction. A "risky" interaction is if she and the daughter were within 6' of this person for 15 minutes or longer (CDC). Masks do not lower risk, but certainly being mask-less elevates risk. The 48-hour period where a person is infectious is 48 hours back from when they first started symptoms, or if asymptomatic, 48hrs from testing date. Did they interact during this time? If so and the interaction had risk (as described above), then are a close contact and must quarantine. Ultimately, your friend could seek consult from her doctor who by law uses CDC and DOH guidelines.

I think you should prepare to not have them at your wedding. You put yourself and others at risk. This is very stressful for you, but worrying about contagion will make it worse. You will still marry the person you love the most.

View Quoted Comment I understand what you’re saying and that is all good and well… But I don’t think the bride wants someone at her wedding that is positive with Covid . vaccine or not. If someone got sick, even if it wasn’t from that vaccinated Covid positive person, that would be a heavy responsibility/burden for her to carry knowing that she let someone in that was Covid positive.

The CDC no longer recommends or requires quarantine for fully vaccinated individuals as long as they are not showing symptoms.

It's possible, but the chances that they will contract Covid-19 and therefore pass it on is MUCH, MUCH lower. It's not irrelevant to take your probability of having and passing on an illness from high to very, very low.

View Quoted Comment We locked down the entire world for this thing. I can’t imagine anyone would knowingly put their elders at risk.

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There is risk in everything we do everyday, and we make decisions based on the level of risk. There is risk in driving but we consider it an acceptable amount of risk because it is low. The same is true of basically every activity we do everyday. Whether you think about it on the day to day or not, most activities have risk but we decide to do or not do them based on the level of risk. Driving: low risk. Driving on the highway at night going the wrong way: high risk. Golfing: low risk. Golfing during a lighting storm: high risk. If you don't think that there are low level risk activities that you undertake everyday, think again every time you walk up a flight of stairs, get in a car, walk across the street, eat food prepared by another person, go to any public place... The level of risk matters, and vaccination matters.

View Quoted Comment Yes I understand all that, but when talking about risk, you drastically increase your risk by KNOWINGLY having a Covid positive person attend your wedding sitting at the table with others that may or may not be vaccinated for whatever personal reasons. To out right say a Covid positive person is OK to attend a wedding simply because they have the vaccine is sort of irresponsible.

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But we aren't talking about a covid positive person. We are talking about someone who was exposed to covid (we don't know the details of the exposure - were they wearing masks at an outdoor little league game or were they having an intimate dinner?) who has no symptoms and has had multiple negative tests so far. Alyssa hasn't said whether her bridesmaid is vaccinated, and we are making the argument that if she is, her risk of having contracted covid is low, the chances that she did contract it and is asymptomatic and still testing negative 7 days later are lower, and even if turns out that she was positive and somehow managed to test negative the morning of the wedding, the chances of her spreading the virus are also low.

Yes of course if you are known to be covid positive please do not come to my wedding, vaccine or no vaccine. But you said being vaccinated is irrelevant, and it 100% isn't. If one of my vaccinated bridesmaids was in this situation I would feel fine with her being present.