Dr. Rochelle Walensky, the director of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, on Sunday defended the agency’s recommendations for a shorter isolation for many people who test positive for the coronavirus.Credit…Cheriss May for The New York TimesThe Centers for Disease Control and Prevention faced fresh blowback on Sunday for its muddled messaging on the agency’s new isolation and quarantine guidance.The C.D.C.’s new guidelines, released on Dec. 27, say that people infected with the coronavirus can end isolation, in most cases, after five days instead of 10 and do not need a negative result on a virus test to do so. But some experts have said that five days might be too short, and that letting people mingle with others before first testing negative was risky.On Sunday, Dr. Rochelle Walensky, the agency’s director, fielded questions about her decision to drop the testing requirement, and maintained that antigen tests are less sensitive to the Omicron variant, which is surging across the United States, than to previous versions of the virus.“We have ever-evolving science with an ever-evolving variant, and my job is to provide updated guidance in the context of rapidly rising cases,” she told “Fox News Sunday.”But other experts disagreed with that assessment, saying antigen tests, while flawed, only missed Omicron cases very early in the course of infection.“I think they are a bedrock …
