Hunh, that's interesting - I work in healthcare and my institution has us return to patient-facing work regardless of positive or negative follow-up test results on Day 6. The caveat is no eating or drinking around anyone and remain masked at all times, which is harder than it might seem.

Did your doc's office say the 5-day rule was garbage from an infection prevention standpoint or from a "people aren't recovering in 5 days" standpoint? I am getting over my second case of COVID and tested negative six days after symptom onset. Still followed the 5-day quarantine guideline and have been masking religiously around everyone who hasn't also had it in the past month/only eating or drinking when alone. The CDC is saying if you have two negative tests 48 hours apart you can stop masking before day 10, but I didn't bother repeat testing since I was going to be masking religiously either way.

Even though I'm not a danger to others, I am still operating at about 60-75%. It was like this the first time I got COVID, although that time it took until right around day 10 to test negative and I was bedridden for a solid week. Guess the previous infection and bivalent booster gave me a little edge.