BUFFALO (WBEN) - While some parents are concerned that the state's close contact quarantine policy will result in healthy students missing time in the classroom, Niagara Falls Superintendent Mark Laurrie said his district has been largely unaffected to this point.
"While we've had cases, and we're averaging about three per day in the district, we are way down in our quarantining," said Laurrie. "On only one occasion have we had to quarantine nine students. Other than that, the quarantining has been way down."
Close contacts to someone who tested positive for COVID must quarantine unless they are fully vaccinated.
Per the state, a "close contact" is anyone who was within six feet of an infected person for a cumulative total of 15 minutes or more over a 24-hour period. Students who were within three to six feet of an infected student where both students correctly used well-fitting masks are NOT considered close contacts.
If an individual is considered close contact, they will be quarantined for 10 days from the last day of exposure to the positive COVID-19 case.
However, Erie County's quarantine policy is more restrictive than the state's.
In addition to the guidelines laid out above, Erie County's guidelines go further, saying if there are two or more cases in a classroom during a 10-day period, all unvaccinated individuals in the class are required to quarantine for 10 days from their last exposure, regardless if masks were worn.
Tarja Parssinen of the WNY Education Alliance believes this policy is too harsh and will result in healthy kids missing out on valuable school time. She says there should be a testing policy put in place to ensure that healthy students aren't being quarantined.
"Testing options are called 'Test to Stay' and 'Test to Play,' - sports teams are using them as well," she began. "This is a very big deal, and this is something that Erie County and New York State should be looking at and should be using.
"It's being adopted by California, Massachusetts, Utah, Illinois, so many states, and it's being done in the United Kingdom," Parssinen continued. "What happens is, if you are deemed a close contact, asymptomatic people will provide a negative rapid test for a couple days that allows them to stay in class."
WBEN reached out to the Erie County Department of Health regarding quarantine data in schools, and while spokesperson Kara Kane couldn't provide the exact number of Erie County students currently in quarantine, she did provide a response as to the reasoning for the policies the ECDOH has implemented:
"What I can confirm is that the number of cases managed by our office of epidemiology's school team is at a much higher level that it was this time last year, though not to the level we saw during previous surges in COVID-19 cases.
"Public health seeks to reduce the risks for infection, illness and negative health outcomes to the greatest extent possible. Close contacts are placed in quarantine for a very specific reason: because they have had a known exposure to an infectious disease and there is a significant risk that they will become infectious and/or symptomatic. Allowing close contacts of a confirmed COVID-19 case to remain in a classroom or school activities with non-exposed people increases the level of infection risk for those non-exposed people. Over the past 2 weeks since schools opened, we have already seen evidence of in-classroom transmission in PreK-grade 12 schools. Please also note that since fully vaccinated close contacts are not subject to quarantine as long as they remain asymptomatic, many close contacts identified through case investigations are contacted by contact tracers, but after our interview do not have to quarantine.
"Data for the week ending September 18 are concerning.
"COVID-19 cases under 18 years of age have increased over the past four weeks from 163 COVID-19 cases for the week ending August 28 to 356 cases for last week. This reflects a 42% increase.
"Significantly, the 5-10-year-old age group increased by 76% from the previous week, from 86 COVID-19 cases to 151 cases. This age group is not currently eligible for vaccination and remains a highly vulnerable population. Compare that increase of 76% to the overall increase in COVID-19 cases in Erie County last week, which was 8.5%.
"Similar increases among school-age children and adolescents are being seen in other parts of the country, especially in areas with lower vaccination rates and where non-pharmaceutical preventive measures like masks are not followed. Quarantine, vaccination, and those NPIs are tools that we are recommending for all settings to reduce the COVID-19 disease burden in Erie County."
Furthermore, there are those who agree with the ECDOH's stance on more rigorous policies when it comes to contact tracing and who's required to quarantine.
"Our position is really kind of straightforward," said Buffalo Teachers Federation President Phil Rumore. "We would rather have people err on the side of being considered over-cautious than to have the virus start to spread again and have our kids out of school like they were last time."
