Prescribing paid sick leave—An important tool for primary care during the pandemic

“14 days—no work, no outings. Please stay home.”

It is a conversation unfolding thousands of times daily across the US, as the coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19) pandemic spreads. On the telephone, via video consultation, or—increasingly rare these days—during an actual office visit, a primary care physician tells a patient, “Your symptoms sound like COVID-19.”

And many patients—the 25-year-old man working to stock grocery shelves, the 50-year-old woman driving a city bus, the restaurant line-order cook preparing takeout—ask anxiously, incredulously, or tearfully: “Stay home from work? I can’t.” Or “No puedo.”