[ad_1]
Raleigh, North Carolina – The Wake County public school system will continue a voluntary COVID-19 testing program for students and employees, following a lengthy discussion at a school board meeting on Tuesday.
Some members of the Wake County Board of Education have urged the district to create a testing program as soon as possible, calling for such a late decision to curb the spread of the new coronavirus.
“I think we should test yesterday,” said chairman of the board, Keith Sutton.
Some board members have expressed concern, however, that testing could result in an initial spike in required quarantines as the district strives to fully staff schools.
“We are going to see people who are vaccinated and quarantined,” Board member Roxie Cash also said.
The two main priorities of the school system are to keep schools open for daily in-person instruction and to keep students healthy by minimizing quarantines and exposure.
Most school districts in North Carolina participate in the federally funded DHHS testing program. But it’s unclear how many tests have been administered so far, with many districts opting for an expansion of the program in August.
Wake County officials said Tuesday that it could take four to eight weeks for the testing program to be in place.
COVID-19 cases remain much higher than a few months ago in Wake County, as the more contagious so-called Delta variant of the virus continues to spread. The county has registered thousands of new cases every week since the end of July, although the numbers have declined in the past two weeks.
The North Carolina Department of Health and Human Services reported several clusters in Wake County schools on Tuesday, including 21 cases in Sanderson High and 16 cases in Neuse River Middle.
The testing program is designed to detect cases of COVID-19 before those infected with the virus have a chance to spread it further within the school.
The Wake County School Board did not vote in the meeting, which was a working session before Tuesday night’s regular meeting.
Senior counsel for the board, Jonathan Blumberg, said he believes the board only needs to approve a testing program if employees or students are required to participate.
After about an hour and a half of discussion, Superintendent Cathy Q. Moore said the district would continue with the volunteer program.
The district had planned to come back with further thoughts on a testing program for the next council working session on Oct. 5, but the council ordered action sooner.
“I don’t think we can afford to waste it or wait another day,” Sutton said.
Moore said the district would also have an expected federal mandate to require vaccines or regular testing for those who refuse the vaccine.
As part of President Biden’s COVID-19 action plan, which includes schools, workplaces with more than 100 workers must test unvaccinated staff members every week.
COVID-19 screening
The test would require the consent of the employees and parents of the students.
Results would be available within 24 hours using rapid antigenic testing.
While officials outside the council and district have recommended mandatory COVID-19 testing for unvaccinated employees and students, the council has not challenged the voluntary nature of the state’s testing program.
Many people and parents, in written and oral public comments, urged the district to require employee vaccines and drug tests.
At the same time, many more have continued to write and speak to the council against most COVID-19 protocols, especially the requirement that students and employees wear masks to curb the spread of the virus.
Sutton said the district should ask the community to help it, portraying it as a community problem: “If we want to get it under control, if we are going to try to solve this problem.”
The district’s reported employee vaccination rate exceeds the Wake County adult vaccination rate.
As of Friday, 85.9% of the approximately 18,000 district staff reported being fully immunized in the district. Another 1.5% said they had been partially vaccinated.
But 1.4% said they did not plan to get the vaccine and 6.7% did not respond to the district survey.
Of those 18 and over in Wake County, 80% have received at least one dose and 77% are fully immunized.
Vaccines are currently only available to students 12 and older, and Wake executives say 66% of the 12 to 17 age group have received at least one dose. As of September 17, 61% of children aged 12 to 17 were fully immunized.
Testing programs would be contractor-led and would include regular screening of certain groups the district decided to focus on – who could be student-athletes and others participating in high-risk activities or unvaccinated teachers. who have consented to be tested. .
The district submitted an enrollment form to use the North Carolina Department of Health and Human Services testing program and its eastern provider, Mako Medical. He did not commit to using the program or the provider and did not sign a contract with anyone for the COVID-19 testing on site.
Tests via Mako are said to be rapid antigen tests, which are less accurate than polymerase chain reaction (PCR) tests. But anyone who tested positive as part of a screening group would then take a PCR test to confirm that the antigen test was not a false positive.
Rapid antigenic tests can also produce false negatives. District officials said the problem could be addressed with on-site diagnostic testing once someone shows symptoms.
Sutton recommended that the district consider new PCR tests using saliva. Children and their parents would be more likely to consent to these PCR tests than less pleasant nasal PCR tests. They are also cheaper than PCR tests, Sutton said.
Hundreds of school districts are starting to use them, according to a recent article in The 74 Million.
These include nearly half of the schools in Illinois, Baltimore and Washington, DC, among others, the outlet reported. The National Basketball Association also uses a saliva PCR test.
But some board members worried about the unintended consequences of drug testing, such as an increase in staff quarantines as the district grapples with vacancies and a shortage of substitute teachers accepting assignments.
This week, the district told schools it will send central office staff to schools that need additional help, starting October 11, removing them from their normal duties.
Tension on staff
The testing program would also include the ability for schools to test for COVID-19 on site for people with symptoms, without the help of the contractor, if they have the staff to administer these tests.
The district has previously said it cannot run a drug testing program without hiring a contractor, due to increased staff workload, and board members on Tuesday expressed concern over the fact that schools would have difficulty finding people to administer these tests.
Mako is expected to train school employees to perform diagnostic tests that could take place at any time of the day, deputy superintendent of student support services Paul Koh told the board. Mako would only be responsible for regular screening tests.
The district is already short of school nurses, Moore said.
The district is only funded for one nurse for two schools, but its struggle to hire for those positions means the district only has one nurse for three schools, Moore said.
National recommendations call for a nurse in each school.
Almost all of the district nurses are funded through a collaborative funded partnership with the county, which means these nurses also have county-related responsibilities and don’t just work in schools.
“Currently our school nurses are unable to implement any support in terms of contact tracing or testing” for the district, Moore said.
[ad_2]
Source link