The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention on Friday said that unvaccinated school children exposed to COVID-19 can safely continue attending school if they mask up and undergo at least twice-weekly testing.
The endorsement of “test-to-stay” policies comes after officials spent months working with school districts nationwide to evaluate the strategy, officials said. Typically, students who are determined to be close contacts of people who test positive for COVID-19 are sent home to quarantine whether or not they show symptoms of the viral infection, according to The Washington Post.
“In the test-to-stay protocol, there is increased testing of close contacts after a COVID-19 exposure, and that testing needs to be at least twice during the seven-day period after exposure,” CDC Director Dr. Rochelle Walensky said Friday at a White House COVID-19 Response Team news briefing. “If exposed children meet a certain criteria and continue to test negative, they can stay in school instead of quarantining at home.”
Test to Stay is an encouraging public health strategy allowing kids to stay in school, even if exposed to #COVID19, so they don’t miss school to quarantine. Test to Stay + multi-layered prevention strategies help keep children safe & in school for in-person learning. https://t.co/X6Z2ISnv83
— Rochelle Walensky, MD, MPH (@CDCDirector) December 17, 2021
The CDC released two reports published online Friday in the agency’s Morbidity and Mortality Weekly Report, which supported the policies based on studies from Lake County, Illinois, and Los Angeles County, California.
In both studies, people who were infected and those who were exposed to COVID-19 wore masks consistently while close contacts of people who tested positive were monitored for symptoms and stayed home if they became ill. Close contacts who did not develop symptoms underwent regular testing.
“These studies demonstrate that ‘test-to-stay’ works to keep unvaccinated children in school safely,” Walensky said, calling the policy a “promising and now proven practice.”
>> See the Los Angeles County study
The studies were conducted before officials detected the recently identified omicron variant in the U.S., which has shown signs of increased transmissibility. Health officials have cautioned that much remains unknown about the variant and have urged people to get vaccinated or get their booster shots to protect themselves against severe illness from COVID-19.
“Even with the recent increase in (the) omicron variant, we expect that these prevention strategies will continue to work,” CDC spokesperson Kristen Nordlund said Friday in a statement obtained by The New York Times. “However, as we learn more about the omicron variant, (the) CDC will continue to review and update guidance as needed.”
>> Related: Omicron variant: How do health care officials know which variant a person has?
A vast majority of COVID-19 cases reported nationwide have been identified as being caused by the highly transmissible delta variant. As of the week ending Dec. 11, omicron accounted for about 3% of known cases, according to the CDC. One week earlier, omicron had accounted for less than 0.5% of cases.
Since the start of the pandemic, officials have reported 50.6 million cases of COVID-19 nationwide, resulting in more than 805,000 deaths, according to a tally from Johns Hopkins University. Globally, 273.6 million cases have been reported, resulting in 5.3 million deaths, according to the university.
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