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On Feb. 10, the NC Department of Public Health announced changes to their Strong Schools Toolkit in regards to contact tracing and quarantines.
With COVID-19 cases slowing, the Macon County Board of Education approved to extend the mask optional protocol, and extended that protocol to school buses.
On Feb. 10, the NC Department of Public Health announced changes to their Strong Schools Toolkit in regards to contact tracing and quarantines.
The state is no longer recommending the contact tracing of individual cases. State leaders said it is less important to perform this now that omicron has produced widespread transmission. They also cite a large number of asymptomatic cases and access to at-home tests as additional reasons to discontinue contact tracing for individual cases.
Students or staff exposed to COVID-19 no longer need to stay home before returning to school as long as they don’t have symptoms. These asymptomatic cases previously had to quarantine at home for days after possible exposure.
“Another new procedure is that students that test negative with a rapid test can return early,” Superintendent Dr. Chris Baldwin said. “The use of the rapid test is something that we were hoping for and are grateful that that change is in the current toolkit.”
Currently, there are three positive students in the system, as well as 10 quarantined students.
“A number of those 10 are quarantined because they are symptomatic, not because they were exposed,” Baldwin said. “Those students who are quarantined because of symptoms may take a rapid test and return early. They don’t have to fulfill the full five day quarantine if they have a negative rapid test.”
There is only one staff member that has tested positive and one staff member that is quarantined.
There have been 3,112 quarantined students this year, as well as 237 quarantined staff.
“Out of the 3,340 students and staff quarantined this school year, 50 of those folks have tested positive,” Baldwin said. “That means 98 percent of the students and staff that have been quarantined this year have not tested positive for COVID-19. On the other hand, we have had 52 test positive while in quarantine and we have had another 1,000 that have tested positive outside of quarantine. So, the revisions to the toolkit regarding quarantine are overdue. I’m glad that they made those changes. Only two percent of the kids and staff have actually tested positive.”
From Aug. 23 to Oct. 25, 29 of the positive cases were traced back to exposures in the school system or 6.4 percent. From Oct. 25, after the board made the decision to make masks optional, that percentage dropped to 4.6 percent. From Dec. 17 until today, 20 of the 491 positive cases or 4 percent of the cases were a result of in school exposures.
“Also during that time, our quarantines went down,” Baldwin said. “It has been interesting to see that the quarantines and the in school transmissions have gone down since the board’s decision to go mask optional.”
One protocol that hasn’t been updated in the toolkit is the CDC’s guidance on wearing masks in a school bus. The CDC released this statement on Feb. 25, “Effective February 25, 2022, CDC is exercising its enforcement discretion to not require that people wear masks on buses or vans operated by public or private school systems, including early care and education/child care programs. CDC is making this change to align with updated guidance that no longer recommends universal indoor mask wearing in K-12 schools and early education settings in areas with a low or medium COVID-19 Community Level. School systems at their discretion may choose to require that people wear masks on buses or vans.”
The board unanimously approved to extend the mask optional protocol including making masks optional on school buses.
“This is really good news all the way around,” Board chairman Jim Breedlove said.
- By Christopher Lugo