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The first weeks of fully open Los Angeles County schools coincided with a drop in pediatric coronavirus cases, the first indication that campuses are generally operating safely without a disturbing number of outbreaks.
Citing the low number of coronavirus outbreaks in schools, public health officials announced Thursday that LA County schools would no longer be automatically required to send unvaccinated students home to quarantine for at least seven days afterwards. their last contact with someone who tested positive.
Over the past three weeks, coronavirus cases have declined by about 40% across all pediatric age groups, according to LA County Public Health Director Barbara Ferrer.
“This is promising because it is happening as the students return to school,” she said in a briefing. “We therefore hope that by continuing to pay particular attention to school-based strategies that reduce the risk of exposure, we will continue to see these lower case rates in all age groups.”
The county has also recently seen declines in hospitalization rates for children, and Ferrer said that “if our case rates don’t increase, we expect pediatric hospitalizations to stabilize or even decline slightly.”
California has ordered districts to require indoor masking at K-12 schools, a move at odds with states such as Florida and Texas, whose governors have banned school officials from enforcing mask warrants. The Texas attorney general is suing several districts that have tried to demand masks, while the governor of Florida has threatened to withhold state funding for school boards trying to do the same.
The different policies could explain the large differences in pediatric outcomes in children: Florida and Texas have reported records of new pediatric hospitalizations for COVID-19 following a summer increase caused by the Delta variant, while the California has remained below its winter swell levels.
Florida’s COVID-19 daily pediatric new hospitalization rate is now six times worse than California’s, while Texas’s is four times worse. The national rate is three times that of California, according to the United States Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.
The CDC recommended universal interior masking in K-12 schools this summer, regardless of vaccination status.
Los Angeles’ approach to universal coronavirus testing is also increasingly seen as a model of nationwide safety. The Los Angeles Unified School District has launched an ambitious coronavirus testing program, which requires testing every student, teacher and staff member – more than half a million people – once a week for the foreseeable future. The district also requires students and staff to wear masks outdoors.
Neighboring districts have also extended safety protocols: The Alhambra Unified School District began testing students this week, and Pasadena Unified, which had only ordered limited testing, now tests all students regularly.
Last week, the Biden administration called on “all schools to implement regular testing in their schools for students, teachers, and staff in accordance with CDC guidelines,” suggesting that students and teachers not vaccinated are regularly tested for the virus.
Coronavirus cases remained relatively low among K-12 students across the county, with students starting to return to campus in mid-August.
From Aug. 15 to Monday, 7,995 cases were reported among K-12 students across the county, and 1,193 more were reported among staff. Given that there are approximately 1.5 million students in this age group, as well as 175,000 K-12 staff, this means that approximately 0.5% of the student body and about 0.7% of the workforce have tested positive since the start of the school year, Ferrer said.
“It’s just slightly higher than the 0.4% infection rate we’ve seen across the county,” Ferrer said. “And, given the massive testing of asymptomatic individuals in schools, this very low infection rate confirms the safety offered to students and staff on their campuses.”
There were eight outbreaks of the coronavirus at K-12 facilities last week across the county, up from six the week before.
Outbreaks are defined as related cases involving three or more people in which transmission likely occurred at school or during school activities. Of last week’s outbreaks, six occurred in primary schools and two in high school sports facilities.
“The number of outbreaks that are happening in schools is really unusually low,” Ferrer said Thursday.
The revised quarantine policy allows the 80 school districts to adopt a more relaxed policy generally aligned with state guidelines designed to keep students in class. Until now, county policy has been stricter than state policy.
The revised policy allows a so-called modified quarantine, allowing an unvaccinated student exposed to an infected person to remain in the classroom under certain conditions while the student is tested twice over a period of one week to see if a infection has developed.
The student, however, will still be required to stay home at all other times, except for classroom instruction, having to sit down to participate in extracurricular activities, including sports.
An unvaccinated student who has had close contact with an infected person is only eligible for modified quarantine if both have been masked for the duration of the exhibition. The unvaccinated student should also remain asymptomatic and continue to wear a face shield properly – not only indoors, as is normally required, but also outdoors.
Close contact occurs when a person has been within six feet of an infected person for at least 15 minutes in a day.
The modified quarantine may end on the seventh day after exposure if the second test shows that the student has not been infected.
The relaxed quarantine policy can only be used in situations where authorities have not detected an outbreak at school. If an outbreak has been detected, unvaccinated students identified as close contacts will need to follow standard quarantine procedures and be discharged home for at least seven days from their last contact with the infected person.
Vaccinated students do not need to be quarantined as long as they remain healthy. Nonetheless, it is still recommended that vaccinated students exposed to someone infected with a confirmed coronavirus get tested five days after exposure.
Children 11 and under cannot be vaccinated.
“We are convinced that with relatively low transmission in schools, it is appropriate to offer schools a modified quarantine option for K-12 students exposed to COVID in schools,” Ferrer said during of a press conference.
Ferrer said school districts are not required to adopt the policy and that they should make sure they have the resources to investigate cases.
“You have to be very careful to know for sure and to be able to verify that close contacts with cases only had mask-to-mask exposure,” Ferrer said.
There may be situations in which it will be difficult for school officials to determine whether a student with a confirmed coronavirus infection, and that child’s classmates, were fully masked for the duration of their stay. contact.
“It gets complicated when students are doing other activities together, especially having lunch or enjoying recess, where they are often outside and maybe take off their masks,” Ferrer said. If the infected or unvaccinated exposed person were found during the time they were in close contact, the exposed person would be returned home to quarantine.
The relaxed and changed quarantine policy does not apply to teachers and staff, meaning that school employees who are still unvaccinated but come into close contact with an infected person would be sent home for 10 days after the last known contact with the infected person.
The LA Unified School District has demanded that all teachers and staff be immunized by October 15. But many other districts have not followed suit. California rules require that employees in public and private schools in Kindergarten to Grade 12 be vaccinated or tested for coronavirus weekly. LA Unified last week ordered all children 12 and older to be fully immunized by January to enter campus, the first such term among the nation’s largest school systems.
Los Angeles Unified officials did not respond to questions about the district’s adoption of the modified quarantine. They are in negotiations with the teachers’ union on security measures. Earlier this month, the teachers’ union sought to extend quarantine practices to everyone on campus, including fully vaccinated employees and students, if they are in close contact with an infected person.
“Quarantine has proven to be an effective mitigation strategy to keep our schools safe and open,” said Cecily Myart-Cruz, president of United Teachers Los Angeles. “Health and safety must come first to protect everyone who walks through the doors of our classrooms, including children too young to be vaccinated. “
Myart-Cruz has not commented directly on whether she supports or opposes the county’s new policy on quarantines.
Districts across the county were evaluating their new option.
The Alhambra Unified School District, for its part, has no plans to adopt easy quarantine rules.
Supt. Denise R. Jaramillo said the district’s current quarantine policy has worked well so far.
“We have a high community vaccination rate, a low case rate, a strong and motivated team of contact tracers, and a high-quality, transparent virtual program for students who need to self-quarantine,” Jaramillo said. The district this week launched weekly tests for all students, regardless of their immunization status, and out of 3,000 tests, it has identified three positive cases.
The changed quarantine policy will require more vigilance and resources than the district has, Jaramillo said.
“With teachers already tasked with multiple responsibilities for 25 or more students per class, this heightened vigilance requires more than we have staff to say,” she said.
Times writer Howard Blume contributed to this report.
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