Danvers Schools Will Opt In To New State Coronavirus Test System
DANVERS, MA — Danvers Public Schools will opt in to the new state coronavirus test system for students and staff that makes weekly at-home rapid tests available to families that want them and eliminates the school-based "test-and-stay" program as well as most contact tracing.
The Danvers School Committee endorsed the recommendation of interim co-superintendents Keith Taverna and Mary Wermers Monday night to take part in the new program that dramatically shifts testing capability and responsibility from the schools to individual families.
"Mitigation strategies that we have in place are preventing the spread of COVID-19," Taverna said of very low positive results in the "test-and-stay" program with only 37 positives out of 4,225 tests run (0.8 percent) since the program began earlier this school year. "So the idea is that by doing these rapid antigen tests (at home) we may be finding (positive) asymptomatic individuals or other individuals before they come to the school setting and hopefully identifying more cases prior to them coming to school."
While test-and-stay programs and extensive contact tracing have been widely praised for keeping in-school transmission relatively low they are also heavily taxing on school nurses' offices.
Taverna said the Danvers Board of Health, school unions and school nurses all endorsed the switch.
Under the state guidance schools participating in the new program must also keep pool surveillance and/or symptomatic testing. Taverna said Danvers will maintain symptomatic testing.
Schools maintain the ability to do targeted contact tracing if an outbreak is suspected amid a specific cluster of students. All other Danvers Public Schools virus mitigation measures remain in effect.
"All nine school nurses here in town are very excited about moving forward with this new testing program," Danvers High School Nurse Susan DeBenedictis said. "I want parents to be reassured that if we see a situation, or hear of a situation of close contact, we can follow up with that. Make sure the children feel well. If they don't feel well it is up to our discretion to do another test whether they are vaccinated or unvaccinated."
Students and staff who sign up for the new program will receive two tests every two weeks on alternating weeks. With Danvers opting in to the new program this week, students should receive their first tests on Jan. 31 with staff getting theirs on Feb. 7.
Taverna said the recommendation will be for families to administer them on Wednesdays. He added the plan was to send out a notice to parents about the program on Wednesday with Friday as the deadline to sign up to receive tests next week. He added that families who don't sign up this week can still opt in to the new program at any time.
The testing program is voluntary and parents are asked to notify the school of any positive results but whether families administer the tests or report them to the schools is on the honor system.
(Scott Souza is a Patch field editor covering Beverly, Danvers, Marblehead, Peabody, Salem and Swampscott. He can be reached at Scott.Souza@Patch.com. Twitter: @Scott_Souza.)
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This article originally appeared on the Danvers Patch
