The agency recommended that health care workers who are asymptomatic return to work after seven days and a negative test, adding that “isolation time can be cut further if there are staffing shortages.”

The agency also said that those workers who had received all recommended vaccine doses, including boosters, do not need to quarantine at home following high-risk exposures.

Many major hospital systems had already been forced to move ahead on their own in recent days, creating a patchwork of guidelines regarding infected workers in anticipation of a winter surge.