Schools given toolkit for handling COVID-19 cases

What happens if a public school student or staff member tests positive for COVID-19 this fall?

The North Carolina Department of Public Instruction provided school districts with the StrongSchoolsNC Public Health Toolkit, which includes lists of requirements and recommendations to help schools handle all aspects of the coronavirus pandemic — including sanitation, planning, monitoring of symptoms and handling cases of COVID-19.

The toolkit includes several requirements aimed at preventing anyone with potential or confirmed cases of COVID-19 from entering school buildings. Schools are required to conduct symptom screenings of anyone entering a school facility. That includes temperature checks for everyone seeking entry to the building. A measured temperature of 100.4 degrees or above is considered a fever, and no one with a fever will be granted access to the building.

In Richmond County, no-touch temperature check kiosks have been installed to aid with the flow of temperature checks at schools. Students will stand in front of the kiosk, which will be located near the front door of each school. The kiosk will inform front desk workers as to whether or not individuals have been cleared to enter the building.

If individuals begin to show symptoms of COVID-19 while inside the school building, the first step will be to isolate the individual from their peers and have them evaluated by school nurses.

“As far as when staff or students are sick,” Richmond County Schools Lead Nurse Leslie Hall said, “our first step is to isolate them anytime that we have learned that they have either been exposed to someone, or that they are not feeling well or they had positive tests.

“… And then we will try to get them out of the building as quickly as possible. Anyone that has COVID-like symptoms, we will track that. We have a spreadsheet from the state that tracks when they came to us and then what category they fall into — whether it was an exposure or a positive test.”

According to Director of Student Services Wendy Jordan, being within 6 feet of a COVID-19 carrier for more than 15 minutes counts as an exposure.

Whenever a name is added to the COVID-19 spreadsheet, the Richmond County Health Department will be notified. Health Director Tommy Jarrell and his staff at the Health Department will then provide guidance to the school board in all aspects of handling COVID-19 cases. The department will also help the district provide contact tracing, so families can be notified if students or staff members may have been exposed to COVID-19.

If an individual tests positive for COVID-19, per state requirements, they are required to stay home until all of the following statements are true: It has been at least 10 days since the individual first had symptoms; it has been at least 24 hours since the individual last had a fever, without the help of fever-reducing medications; and there has been what the state defines as “symptom improvement.”

Further guidance from the state reads: “A person can return to school, following normal school policies, if they receive confirmation of an alternate diagnosis from a health care provider that would explain the COVID-19-like symptom(s), once there is no fever without the use of fever-reducing medicines and they have felt well for 24 hours.”