Stay inside, don’t meet with friends, don’t go to work — these are the messages coming from public health officials at every level of government. But increasingly, experts say they believe those stark warnings must be augmented with another message:
If you think you might be sick, even a little sick, get tested for coronavirus.
“Everyone staying home is just a very blunt measure. That’s what you say when you’ve got really nothing else,” says Emily Gurley, an associate scientist at the Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health. “Being able to test folks is really the linchpin in getting beyond what we’re doing now.”