What should I do if I was around my friend who now has covid?

Test every day or two.

@Caravanfan is a Doctor so take his advise.

I’d stay home another day if I didn’t have to go anywhere. Day 4 I’d test and if it’s negative I would feel basically feel safe that I didn’t catch it. I always wear a mask when I go shopping anyway, so even if there was a slim chance I was shedding virus I hopefully would be keeping it to myself. Day 5 I’d really feel in the clear.

I would not go near anyone extremely high risk for a few days. The tests are imperfect.

Most people get sick by day 3 now, but you can supposedly be asymptomatic, so testing is good. Almost everyone I know who says they didn’t have symptoms qualifies it with just some congestion, or just a sore throat, or just a mild headache. So, actually they did have symptoms, which I find confounding and frustrating.

Personally, if “hanging out” means indoors, I would act as if I caught it. In vaccinated people, I believe the window of testing positive is very small. The timing is tricky, too. My cousin tested negative on Friday morning, then visited my grandmother that night. In the morning, cousin tested positive – one day later, my grandma was ill, too. So even with a same-day negative test, you could still be infectious.

If I were you, I’d stay home for a few days, keep testing, and stay away from anyone especially at-risk for two weeks.

Isolate, and do rapid tests at home each day, and then get a PCR test on the 5th day. The PCR tests are more accurate, and the home rapid tests are likely to give false negatives, especially if you are not yet showing symptoms (but are contagious).

The differences between home rapid tests, and PCR tests (given at a medical clinic setting)
https://www.osfhealthcare.org/blog/pcr-vs-rapid-covid-19-test-whats-the-difference/

If you test positive, you need to quarantine:

https://www.cdc.gov/coronavirus/2019-ncov/your-health/quarantine-isolation.html