It has been a very busy, and at times confusing week for us here at Hudson as we have had to deal with our first bout of contact tracing. We all knew this was coming and are very thankful we made it into our sixth week of school! If you have been following our dashboard closely and on a regular basis, you probably have noticed the numbers from one day to another are prone to change. You probably also notice that the majority of the time, the data is back dated. The reason we do this is to track not only the number of cases we have, but to be mindful of the quarantine and isolation period for those impacted. The reason the back dated numbers may change from one day to the next is because we often learn new information, such as gaining better clarity regarding the onset of symptoms. While our dashboard is a useful tool to keep you informed of what is going on in the district, it is also an internal tool that we are using for tracking.
Technically and officially, our work begins when the health department notifies us of a positive COVID case. In practicality though, we often find out about the positive case well before the health department when the parents call us to let us know. For that we are thankful, so please keep it up! Once the health department becomes involved, they technically are supposed to do the contact tracing. This includes an interview with the patient to find out who they have been in contact with. From a practical standpoint, we have already begun the process of identifying close contacts that need to be quarantined. This saves valuable time and hopefully helps to quickly mitigate the potential spread.
The operative question for the patient, aside from a description of their symptoms is 'when did your symptoms begin and who were you in contact with the 48 hours prior to the onset of symptoms'? Close contact is defined as anyone who was within six feet of the patient for 15 consecutive minutes. Now for a student this is probably a difficult question to answer because they are around a lot of people: in class, at church, during practice, etc. For a guy like me, as old as I am that is a pretty short list because well, I'm not that popular! So that is where we have to come in and help.
Over the course of the last several days we have been reviewing seating charts, cross referencing those seating charts with daily attendance, and confirming the types of activities that are occurring in the classroom. We have even reviewed our surveillance system to get an accurate depiction of how much time has lapsed, and used a tape measure to confirm or refute a span of six feet. All of this is done in an effort to remove as much subjectivity from the process that we possibly can. Of course removing all subjectivity from the process is difficult when one of the variables we have to rely on is the human memory from two days prior. It has been a good reminder for all of us that we are not professional 'detectives' or 'contact tracers'. We are amateurs. Amateurs or not, this takes an incredible amount of time. The fact is, for us to complete these investigations is very time consuming and takes us away from other important work in the district. Today for example we have PD and the final planning [for that] still isn't complete, and from the sounds of it we have additional work to do with regard to contact tracing.
At the conclusion of this initial evolution, we had some twenty plus students identified as close contacts that were required to quarantine. Now, just to remind everyone. A quarantine is for fourteen days after the last close contact you had with the positive student. Further, if the quarantined individual goes and has a test completed and it comes back negative, it does not remove the need to quarantine. Let me say that once more: A negative test does not lift the quarantine. For the record, these are not our rules: these are the rules from the health department.
Now then, we had basically just finished with the contact tracing and informing all those students they had to quarantine when we learned the guidance was changing. While the six feet for fifteen minutes remains the operative variable(s), the change now states that if both parties are properly wearing face coverings, close contact has not been established and thus the requirement for quarantine does not apply. This change resulted in several of our students having their quarantine lifted.
And just to clarify, any type of face covering is acceptable except a face shield or a gaiter. While our requirement at Hudson allows for a face shield or gaiter in lieu of a face covering, this allowance will not supersede a quarantine requirement if identified as a close contact. Likewise, face coverings that are not properly worn (they have to cover both the nose and the mouth) will still result in a quarantine.
This updated guidance underscores the importance of universal face coverings as the most powerful mitigation strategy we currently have in our arsenal to slow the spread of COVID-19. The fact is, Dr. Robert Redfield, the director of the CDC recently testified before Congress that face masks may provide more protection than the coronavirus vaccine.
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