Should public schools change quarantine procedures? Medical experts weigh in
The medical expert task force advising Miami-Dade County Public Schools on its COVID-19 protocols and procedures reconvened Monday for the first time since schools reopened their classrooms in October.
No new actions or guidelines came out of the meeting. Though the school district had six questions for the experts, the two-and-ahalf-hour meeting held virtually seemed to be more of an open-ended discussion forum.
The main topic up for debate was whether the school district should adjust its quarantine protocols to looser guidelines floated last week by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. The CDC still recommends a quarantine period of 14 days, but said that quarantine could end after 10 days with no symptoms or seven days with a negative test.
Dr. Yesenia Villalta of the Florida Department of Health in Miami-Dade County said the health department is in the final review of the new guidelines, and some changes are forthcoming.
Villalta said the “gold standard” is 14 days of quarantine.The CDC says individuals must continue monitoring for symptoms and masking through day 14.
Dr. Aileen Marty, a public health expert and Florida International University professor who has been advising the county, agreed with Villalta. She said 95% of people who have COVID-19 show symptoms by day 14.
“You always have to think in terms of how much risk you are willing to tolerate versus the benefit of that risk,” Marty said, adding that there’s still debate over the CDC changing its guidelines.
Since schools reopened Oct. 5, 972 employees and 561 students have tested positive, according to the district’s COVID-19 dashboard. That’s as of Thursday — the district has said the dashboard lags.
PARENTS’ FRUSTRATION OVER QUARANTINES
School Board members said parents have complained of switching from in-person learning to online because of automatic quarantine, despite children not getting sick.
Board member Christi Fraga said she went through that with her son, who is in Pre-K. She said her son had to quarantine for two weeks twice, backto-back.
“It’s definitely challenging and affects these children,” Fraga said. “...each time no one else in the class has contracted COVID except for the student who came in with a positive result.”
Fraga floated the idea of allowing individuals to return to school based on proof of a negative test. Marty shot that down because not all tests are equally reliable.
“They don’t all have the same sensitivity,” Marty said. “I would urge that it be a sensitive or specific test. Forget about the stupid antigen test, no rapid test. It has to be a RT-PCR test.”
Marty said she would support decreasing the quarantine time if the district had the capability of a quick turnaround PCR test.
“It’s also emotionally better for the whole family to not be on pins and needles,” she said.
Other health experts emphasized how the PCR test, done by a mouth or nasal swab and with about a two-day turnaround for results, is considered the gold standard.
The school district distributes rapid antibody tests for employees and their dependents at three sites. Dr. Lisa Gwynn, a pediatrician with the University of Miami, said the false positive and false negative rate for those tests is as high as 20%.
The district’s chief of staff, Jaime Torrens, says of the 5,711 rapid tests conducted at those three sites, about 5% were positive. About half of those positives detected a current infection of COVID.
Board member Lubby Navarro said one parent told her that he called around the state and found that other schools only quarantined those who were in immediate contact with the infected individual, not a whole class.
Superintendent Alberto Carvalho said the school district has a decision tree that allows for some cases where an individual may come back to school after 10 days instead of 14.
“There is a strong case for opening schools,” he said, adding the district’s decision to reopen schools is “a decision that I think has brought a degree of normalcy and regularity and support at all levels.”
EDUCATORS SHOULD GET VACCINE PRIORITY, EXPERTS SAY
Looking to the future, health experts agreed that educators should get priority to get the vaccine if they choose.
Asked about COVID vaccines for students, Gwynn, the pediatrician with UM, warned about vaccine hesitancy.
“The anti-vaxxers are going to be coming out in full force,” she said, adding that those vaccinations will not be ready for children by the end of the school year, but maybe for the start of the 2021-22 school year. “There’s a long way to go with that.”