Lamont: Most schools adopt Screen and Stay policy

More than 80 percent of Connecticut school districts have adopted a state policy allowing unvaccinated children who have come into close contact with someone with COVID to remain in class, as long as they remain symptom free, according to the results of a state survey.

The initiative, known as Screen and Stay, was rolled out last month, with districts given the option to participate. State officials have billed it as a way to prevent students needing to quarantine following a potential COVID-19 exposure.

The U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention on Friday endorsed a similar policy, which allows students exposed to the virus to “test to stay” in

the classroom. The policy outlined by the CDC involves testing children repeatedly after an exposure to ensure they have not been infected.

The agency said it based its new recommendations on studies in the U.K., Illinois and California that all showed schools that followed test-tostay protocols had low infection rates when layered with other strategies meant to curb transmission of the virus.

After schools reopened in fall 2020, quarantine rules sometimes meant classes or even entire schools had to go remote because of potential exposure — often because there were not enough staff to safely monitor students in person.

“Screen and Stay is one of the critical tools in our toolbox to keep schools open, and most importantly, keep our students in school,” Gov. Ned Lamont said in a statement Friday.

Under the policy, unvaccinated students may remain in person at school following a COVID-19 exposure under a narrow set of circumstances. The exposure has to have been during school and on a bus or outside during school supervision.

Exposures that occur during school sports, social interactions outside of school or at home do not qualify. The option also doesn’t apply if masks were not worn or students were not following social distancing rules when the exposure occurred.

School districts were surveyed about their participation in the program, with their responses collected between Nov. 18 and Dec. 6, Lamont’s office said.

The results of the survey, conducted across all 199 public school districts, showed 162 have implemented a Screen and Stay policy. In 154 of those districts, the policy has been implemented in each of its schools. The state Department of Education estimated around 7,000 students statewide have participated in Screen and Stay.

Twenty-eight districts have not opted in to Screen and Stay, while nine remain undecided, according to the survey.

Among the challenges that were reported by school officials in the survey were explaining why the policy is allowed while “all other mitigation strategies are still being followed, unlike the rest of society,” the department’s report on the survey results states. School officials in the state have been besieged at some meetings by parents calling for an end to mask mandates in schools.

Other schools cited the additional work of record keeping required by Screen and Stay, explaining to parents the rule only applies in narrow circumstances, and determining whether staff and students were properly wearing their masks when the exposure occurred.

The results of the survey come as school districts have seen a steady increase in COVID-19 cases among students and staff since the beginning of November.

A total of 2,483 new cases were identified in students in the seven-day period ending Wednesday, according to state data. Staff cases were down slightly at 400 in the same period compared with 444 the week prior, but still showed a fourfold increase over where weekly case numbers were in late October, the state data shows.

Those cases mirror the rest of the state, where infections have been surging. On Friday, the state recorded 1,443 new infections, with a daily positivity rate of 6.78 percent out of 21,269 tests. There were 26 more hospitalizations, increasing the statewide total to 736. Deaths, a lagging indicator, rose above 9,000 on Thursday.

Speaking to reporters on Friday, Lamont also acknowledged the risk of infections rising again this year after families gather for the holidays.

“Look, if you’re with people you know, you know that they’re vaccinated, relax and have fun with your family and friends,” Lamont said. “If you’re with a big group, you don’t know them quite as well, be careful, probably wear a mask if you’re indoors.”

But despite surging infections, the governor again stated he has no plans to reinstate an indoor mask mandate. New York announced a rule last week requiring masks to be worn indoors in all businesses and public venues that do not require proof of vaccination.

“I think if you saw the hospitals being overwhelmed, and we were in a crisis situation, I think you’d have to rethink, but right now with 95 percent of our eligible population having at least one shot, no plans for that,” Lamont said Friday.

“I’d like to think the infection rate is stabilizing, but I keep watching the hospitalizations,” he added. “Remember hospitalizations are half what they were a year ago, and a third of what they were a year and a half ago, so we think good progress and keeping people out of the hospital and safe, that’s the most important metric.”

Amid the surge, the state is also administering more vaccines each week now than it has at any point since early summer. In the most recent week of data, more than 157,000 doses of vaccines — the most since May — were administered in Connecticut.

Among those are children between the ages of 5 and 11 who have been eligible since the beginning of November. Some 82,000 children — about 30 percent of those in this age group — have received at least one dose of a vaccine, state data released this week shows. About 50,000, or just under 18 percent, are now fully vaccinated.

But the state’s data suggests vaccinations among younger children are mostly occurring in suburban communities. In the towns of Westport, New Canaan and Woodbridge more than half of children in this age bracket have received at least one dose of a vaccine, state data shows.

Meanwhile, the cities of Bridgeport, Waterbury and Hartford report less than 12 percent of children in that age group have started vaccination.

That trend is broadly similar to how vaccines rolled out to other age groups throughout the year. Statewide, a little under 86 percent of Connecticut residents have received at least one dose of vaccine, according to data from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.

But the state’s data by town shows rural communities in the east are lagging behind the rest of Connecticut in vaccination rates, along with some major cities.

Lamont said the state is making “a big effort” to convince parents of the importance of getting their children vaccinated, using trusted advocates — particularly in disadvantaged communities.

But he acknowledged some of the challenges posed by vaccinating the state’s younger children.

“These are 6-year-old kids, so a lot of them didn’t want to be the very first in the class to get the vaccination,” he said Friday. “But now it’s a couple of months later, you’ll find a lot of your classmates have gotten vaccinated and they feel a lot safer for it, so I think this will begin to solve itself over the next month or two.”