When going back out in public is considered safe after testing positive for COVID-19

On Friday, A new walk-up testing site is opening up in Fort Myers at Yawkey Park.

If you think the only thing you have to do is quarantine for two weeks after testing positive for coronavirus, you might want to think again.

There are several other boxes you need to check before you go back out into society and potentially expose others.

“Some of the things that they’re looking for are for people to go for three days without a fever, so they’ve had a normal temperature for at least three days, they’re not having any respiratory symptoms, they’re not coughing they’re not having shortness of breath, they’re not sneezing frequently any of the common respiratory complaints that we have seen with Covid,” said Dr. Robert Hawke, Director, Physician Assistant Program FGCU.

We told you the story of Dana Walsh a couple of months ago. She tested positive for COVID-19 back in March.

After she quarantined she was symptom-free, so her doctor told her it was fine to go back to work. She did just that, but Walsh found out she actually wasn’t fine.

All of this came to light after she wanted to donate plasma.

She needed a negative result to do so and ended up getting two more positives and one inconclusive.

Now she’s stressing the importance of getting a negative test.

“I do, just because there are people walking around who never get symptoms in the first place and still test positive. I don’t know if I was still contagious? They were saying I wasn’t… But who’s really sure because there are people who don’t have symptoms at all ever and they’re contagious,” Walsh said.

Bob Hawkes with FGCU also stressed if you live with other people who have tested positive, everyone in the household should have zero symptoms before going out in public.