Virginia Beach high school students no longer have to quarantine after COVID-19 exposure
Starting Monday, Virginia Beach City Public Schools will no longer require asymptomatic high schoolers to quarantine if they’ve been exposed to someone who has tested positive for COVID-19.
School officials say the change came after consultation with state and local health officials and is geared toward keeping students in the classroom.
“The only thing that’s being changed right now is the quarantine, and that’s because we have so much confidence in the benefits of masking and (social) distancing,” Dr. Nancy Welch, acting director of Virginia Beach Department of Public Health, said during a Zoom call with reporters.
High school students will still be required to stay home for 10 days if they had a close contact exposure and exhibit symptoms. Students identified as close contacts and do not exhibit COVID-19 symptoms do not need to quarantine. Middle school and elementary school students will still be required to quarantine for 10 days after an exposure.
The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention recommends that people who are unvaccinated and come into close contact with COVID-19 should quarantine up to 14 days. But quarantine duration can be shortened to 10 days or even seven days if a person exhibits no symptoms or has a negative COVID-19 test. The Virginia Department of Health says schools can allow for shorter quarantine times based on those scenarios.
The CDC also recommends fully vaccinated close contacts who are asymptomatic do not need to quarantine following exposure.
According to the state health department, 64% of 17- and 18-year-olds in the city are fully vaccinated, compared to 52.5% for ages 12 to 15 and 7.5% of kids between 5 and 11. But children and teenagers were eligible to receive a vaccine at different times since one became available last December.
Based on the CDC guidance, Virginia Beach public schools previously reduced the amount of time K-12 students were required to quarantine from 14 to 10 days. The school system also introduced regular testing for students involved in winter athletics and conditioning. After implementing the change, the school system monitored infection data over three weeks and did not see any additional COVID-19 cases, school officials said.
The school system supported its decision to do away with quarantine requirements at the high school level based on local data that shows fewer than 1% of high school students who’ve been exposed go on to test positive, Joshilyn Binkley, a Virginia Beach school division epidemiologist, told reporters. It takes four positive cases at the elementary level to result in one additional COVID-19 case, according to health officials. In middle schools it takes 10 and at the high school level, it takes 26 positive COVID-19 cases to result in one additional case.
“Quarantine is, at this point, proving to be a removable layer of mitigation in high schools, provided the other mitigation strategies are practiced,” the school system said in a statement on the new policy. Around 800 high-school students have had to quarantine this year.
Contact tracing will continue to take place to track the spread of the virus in schools. Anna Barringer, a district epidemiologist with the Virginia Beach health department, said contact tracers will monitor high-risk students — those who are not vaccinated or have not contracted this virus in the last 90 days — for two weeks from the day last day they were exposed.
Roughly 25 contact tracers are assigned to the Virginia Beach school division and the local health department is trying to hire more, Barringer said.
Virginia Beach public schools also implemented a new mask policy for students exercising indoors in gym or recess. Students and staff who participate in indoor gym or recess activities will not be required to wear a face covering.
Schools will require students to maintain social distancing during exercise and abide by face covering and mask policies elsewhere on school grounds.
The Virginia Beach health department will monitor infections within the school system over a minimum of three weeks. Health officials will reevaluate their strategy by Jan. 24.
More information on VBCPS’s policy changes can been viewed on its website.
Lyndon German, frederick.german@virginiamedia.com
Sierra Jenkins, 229-462-8896, sierra.jenkins@virginiamedia.com
