If you’re sick with a respiratory virus, staying home and separating yourself from others in your household is the most effective way to prevent spread. Current guidance says to stay home until your symptoms have been improving and you’ve been fever-free without medication for at least 24 hours. After that, take extra precautions for five more days. Here’s how to set up an effective quarantine at home, step by step.
Choose and Prepare Your Isolation Room
Pick a room with a door that closes and, ideally, its own bathroom. If you have a bedroom with an attached bathroom, that’s your best option. The goal is to create a space where air flows away from the rest of the house rather than toward shared living areas.
Ventilation matters more than most people realize. Open a window in your room if weather allows, even a few inches. If you have a portable HEPA air purifier, place it in the room and run it on high. In healthcare settings, HEPA systems that filter the air at least 12 times per hour reduce airborne contaminants by 98 to 99 percent. A consumer-grade purifier won’t match that, but it still meaningfully reduces the concentration of virus particles floating in the air. Position the purifier so it pulls air from near where you’re resting, and keep the bedroom door closed as much as possible.
If your home has central heating or cooling, the return air vent in your isolation room can pull contaminated air into the system and redistribute it. Temporarily covering that vent with plastic sheeting and tape helps prevent this. Keep the door’s gap at the bottom small by placing a rolled towel against it.
How to Share a Bathroom Safely
Not everyone has a second bathroom. If you’re sharing one, clean and disinfect high-touch surfaces after every use: faucet handles, the toilet flush lever, light switches, door handles, and countertops. Use a standard household disinfectant spray or wipes and follow the contact time listed on the label (usually 3 to 10 minutes of wet contact before wiping dry).
Keep your towel, toothbrush, and toiletries completely separate from everyone else’s. A simple system: store your items in a caddy you carry in and out. Healthy household members should wait as long as practical after you’ve used the bathroom before entering, and opening a window or running the exhaust fan during that gap helps clear the air.
Masks for Household Members
When you need to leave your room, or when someone enters it to bring you food or check on you, both of you should wear a well-fitting mask. An N95 or KN95 provides the best filtration, but a snug surgical mask is far better than nothing. The fit matters as much as the material: gaps around the nose or chin let unfiltered air in and out.
For the five days after you start feeling better and return to normal activities, the CDC recommends continuing to wear a mask around others, keeping distance, and practicing careful hand hygiene. This transition period accounts for the fact that you can still shed virus even after your symptoms improve.
Meals and Dishes
Have someone leave your meals outside the door rather than entering the room. A small table or tray in the hallway makes this easy. Wash your hands with soap and water for at least 20 seconds before eating.
You don’t need disposable plates and utensils, though they simplify things. If you’re using regular dishes, the sick person should place used dishes in a bin outside the door. Whoever handles them should wash their hands afterward and clean the dishes with hot, soapy water or run them through a dishwasher on a normal cycle. The heat and detergent are enough to neutralize common respiratory viruses on surfaces.
Laundry and Trash
Dirty laundry from the isolation room, including bedding, towels, and clothes, can go in a regular washing machine. Use the warmest water setting appropriate for the fabric and dry thoroughly. The person handling dirty laundry should avoid shaking it (which can release particles into the air) and wash their hands immediately afterward.
For tissues, masks, and other waste, line your trash can with a bag and tie it shut before carrying it out of the room. A single sturdy bag is sufficient unless the outside gets visibly soiled, in which case place it inside a second bag. There’s no need for special biohazard disposal at home.
Monitoring Your Symptoms
A pulse oximeter, the small clip that fits on your fingertip, is a useful tool during home quarantine. Oxygen saturation should stay above 94 percent for a healthy adult. If yours drops below that level, or if you notice it trending downward over several readings, that warrants a call to your doctor or urgent care.
Check your temperature at least twice a day. Beyond the numbers, pay attention to the overall direction of your symptoms. A cough or fever that improves and then comes back or worsens is a specific warning sign worth acting on.
Emergency Warning Signs in Adults
Some symptoms mean you need emergency care right away, not a scheduled appointment:
- Difficulty breathing or shortness of breath
- Persistent pain or pressure in the chest or abdomen
- New confusion, dizziness, or inability to stay awake
- Seizures
- Not urinating
- Severe muscle pain or weakness
Emergency Warning Signs in Children
Children can deteriorate differently, and some red flags are age-specific:
- Fast breathing or visible rib pulling with each breath
- Bluish lips or face
- Severe muscle pain (a child who refuses to walk)
- Signs of dehydration: no urine for 8 hours, dry mouth, no tears when crying
- Not alert or not interacting when awake
- Fever above 104°F that doesn’t respond to fever-reducing medicine
- In babies under 12 weeks, any fever of 100.4°F or above
When You Can Stop Isolating
You can return to normal activities when both of these have been true for at least 24 hours: your symptoms are getting better overall, and you haven’t had a fever without using fever-reducing medication. These two criteria replaced the older five-day or ten-day countdown approach.
If you venture back into normal life and then develop a new fever or feel noticeably worse, go back into isolation at home and restart the clock. You can resume activities again once you’ve met the same 24-hour threshold. For the five days after leaving isolation, continue wearing a well-fitting mask in shared indoor spaces, improving ventilation where you can, and washing your hands frequently.