Pilot program targets mass quarantines
Unvaccinated students who weren’t wearing face masks wouldn’t have to quarantine if exposed to COVID-19 under a pilot program being developed with the Ohio Department of Education and several Southwest Ohio schools.
Ten Warren County school districts have agreed to participate in the pilot, Gov. Mike Dewine said at Wednesday afternoon press conference.
Current guidance from the state requires unvaccinated students and staff without symptoms to quarantine at home if they were not wearing masks and distanced when exposed to COVID-19.
Without a state mask mandate, many school districts have decided to make masking optional. That’s led to hundreds of students being quarantined and school closures across the state, including Lebanon City Schools in Warren County.
Students needing COVID-19 tests to get out from under quarantine are among those swamping the Cincinnati area’s emergency rooms. Health officials Wednesday urged people without COVID-19 symptoms to go elsewhere for testing.
Under the pilot project, Dewine said, a student exposed to the coronavirus could stay in school as long as they wore a mask and took two rapid tests a few days apart. Details are still being worked out, he said.
If successful, Dewine said, the protocol could be offered to other school districts.
Mason Superintendent Jonathan Cooper took the initiative in bringing the pilot to Warren County and convinced other local districts to sign on, district spokesperson Tracey Carson said. The district participated in a pilot project last school year to find out how COVID-19 spread among children. That led to the state relaxing its quarantine rules to allow students to stay in class if they were wearing masks at the time of exposure.
There is no statewide health order requiring masks in schools this year, but Dewine has urged districts to require them.
“The way we keep our kids in schools is for schools to make a decision to mask and require masking for everybody in the school,” Dewine said Wednesday. ‘We saw how well that worked last year. it worked phenomenally well last year. It can work that well again.”