Why do Routine COVID Safety Checks?
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A Look at Routine COVID Safety Checks in Action
Boston Public Schools
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Why do Routine COVID Safety Checks?
While the novel coronavirus is still circulating in our communities, we will never get our risk to zero. However, Routine COVID Safety Checks can help us identify potential outbreaks early and give us the confidence we need to safely, and with precautions, open some of our institutions.
Routine checks are of your entire population, or a portion of your population. Routine checks help detect positive cases before they become outbreaks and enable institutions to stay open with confidence. This approach can help school leaders understand if mitigation efforts are working or if other measures need to be taken, such as temporarily closing the school.
CDC's K12 School Operational Strategy endorses the use of Routine COVID Safety Checks for students as an additional layer of safety for schools in Moderate, Substantial and High Transmission areas. The CDC also suggests that schools may consider requiring screening testing for participation in sports up to twice per week depending on the transmission in the area and the risk level of the sport.
What is low, moderate, substantial or high transmission?
Do We Still Need to Wear Masks and Distance?
Routine checks do not replace other mitigation measures, such as face masks. Rather, it should be a component of layered mitigation strategies to minimize in-school transmission.
The swiss cheese model shows how COVID testing is another layer of support that helps limit transmission in schools even further.
Source: CIC Health
The fire analogy below helps explain how different mitigation measures accomplish different layers of protection.
Source: www.whentotest.org
How Routine COVID Safety Checks Help Schools Reopen
Vaccines will reduce the danger of COVID-19, but we are still months away from every teacher and student being vaccinated. Given the disease trajectory and the fact that we currently do not know when vaccines will be available for children under age 12, we may well need routine safety checks into the next school year. Routine COVID Safety Tests is a solution we can deploy right now, along with standard precautions like masking, distancing, and hand washing, to keep our students and staff safe.
The goal of routine COVID Safety Checks in schools is to quickly identify cases before they become outbreaks. When used alongside other mitigation strategies, like distancing and face masks, testing creates an additional level of reassurance that it is safe to keep schools open with students and educators in the classroom in person
“[Routine COVID Safety Checks] are one of the many mitigation strategies that the district has implemented to help prevent the spread of COVID within our school community. The pooled testing program is an added layer that has given our families and staff increased peace of mind and confidence in the safety of our buildings and school community. The program also allows us to identify asymptomatic students and to quickly identify positive cases, quarantine them and contact trace to prevent further spread of COVID-19 in the school community.”
In fact, survey data shows that testing dramatically increases confidence in returning to school.
Source: Wellesley Public Schools
Key Terms and Numbers
Prevalence Rate: This is the rate of disease in the community (usually counted over either the last 7 days or the last 14 days) divided by the total population of the community. We assume this is underestimated in many cases because of individuals who may be infected and either not know it or choose not to get tested.
Test Positivity Rate: This is the percent of COVID-19 tests that are taken that come back positive. Because most people get tested when they have symptoms or come in contact with a COVID-19 positive individual, community test positivity rate is generally much higher than community prevalence.
Screening Testing: Screening testing is what we’re doing in schools - testing an entire population whether or not they have symptoms with the goal of identifying and isolating COVID-19 positive individuals. Screening testing also gives us a great window into the true “in-school” prevalence rate in schools. Note. symptomatic individuals are generally not included in school testing programs, which helps keep reported rates low.
A sample of school districts that tested throughout Winter 2020-2021 allow us to see that in-school prevalence rates are generally lower than community prevalence rates and significantly lower than test positivity rates.
Source: Selected School Screening Vendors