Shasta County students exposed to COVID no longer need to quarantine
Clarification: This story was updated on Jan. 20 to clarify that per the Jan. 12 CDPH contact tracing guidelines, all students who are exposed to COVID are able to stay in school unless they show COVID symptoms.
Shasta County schools have quickly shifted to change student contact tracing practices after the California Department of Public Health updated its guidelines last week.
The new contact tracing guidelines, released on Jan. 12, allow all K-12 students to continue attending school in person if they are exposed to COVID-19 unless they become sick and show symptoms.
School districts are still following COVID guidelines and require masking indoors. Most school districts are also requiring teachers to vaccinate or test weekly, with the exception of Happy Valley Union School District, whose board of trustees last October voted against complying with the “non-voluntary COVID-19 vaccine mandates now or in the future.”
COVID-19 hospitalizations among California’s children are the highest they have been since the pandemic began nearly two years ago, according to the CDPH. The state tallied nearly 850,000 confirmed cases of COVID among kids under the age of 17. The state also reached a high of 90 pediatric admissions in one day on Jan. 4.
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In the first two weeks of school since the holiday break, Jan. 5-18, 157 students and 106 staff from 47 schools reported positive COVID cases, according to Shasta County Health and Human Services. A total of 268 cases were reported in the last two weeks, with 100 of them on school campuses while they were infectious. About 192 are active cases.
The Shasta Union School District is asking parents to work with schools and monitor teenagers who encounter positive cases, Superintendent Jim Cloney said.
When someone tests positive for the virus, administrators contact the families of kids who were exposed in the classroom to let them know, Cloney said. Students can continue to come to school masked if they show no symptoms and should test as well, he said.
“It’s a big step forward for us. It’ll allow us to keep more kids in school more consistently,” said Cloney. “We’re hoping parents will work with us on that and test their students in that three- to five-day window.”
The district can distribute take home tests as needed, he added. Parents should test for COVID between three and five days from the exposure.
At the Anderson Union School District, students can test on campus, said Brian Parker, human resource director. There has been no shortage of tests and the county office recently provided 2,880 additional COVID tests to the district, Parker said.
Calls to Happy Valley Union School District, Gateway Unified School District and the Redding School District were not returned in time for publication.
A total of 989 COVID cases were reported between Jan. 8-14. Two Shasta County men died of the virus, public health announced Tuesday, raising the death toll to 508 since the pandemic started in March 2020.
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Nada Atieh is a Report For America corps member and education reporter focusing on childhood trauma and the achievement gap for the Redding Record Searchlight. Follow her on Twitter at @nadatieh_RS. Help local journalism thrive by subscribing today! And if you are able, please consider a tax-deductible gift toward her work.
This article originally appeared on Redding Record Searchlight: Shasta County students exposed to COVID no longer need to quarantine
