Grafton schools cease contact tracing for Covid, opt-in to state testing program

Grafton schools are suspending COVID-19 contract tracing and the corresponding close contact “Test and Stay” program as the state rolls out a new at-home rapid test program.

“Our nursing staff has been working tirelessly throughout the pandemic to identify and notify those determined to be ‘close contacts,’” Superintendent of Schools Jay Cummings said. “The process of identifying close contacts is very labor intensive and was helpful when we were experiencing a few positive cases per day. 

“Given the magnitude of the current surge and rate of transmission, close contact tracing has become ineffective in that we cannot possibly conduct thorough contact tracing in a timeframe that is effective in limiting the spread of the Omicron variant.”

A memo sent to superintendents by Department of Elementary and Secondary Education Commissioner Jeffrey Riley noted that “Test and Stay” determined one thing: statewide, in-school transmission rates are very low.

“Students and staff individually identified as asymptomatic close contacts and repeatedly tested in school through the Test and Stay program test negative over 90 percent of the time,” the memo reads. “As of January 9, 503,312 Test and Stay tests had been conducted; 496,440 of them were negative (98.6 percent).”

The new DESE program will provide millions of at-home rapid tests to students across the state.  

“Nearly one out of four people in the state are experiencing Covid infection,” Cummings wrote. “We should all assume that we have been near an individual with Covid in or out of the school setting.”  

Universal precautions that are recommended for everyone in the school community include:

• Consistent mask-wearing while indoors and on buses
• Frequent hand washing or use of hand sanitizer when hand washing is not available
• Try to avoid touching your face or mask

“The most effective way in which to limit the spread of Covid at school is by monitoring the health of your child,” he wrote. “If any signs of illness are present, please keep your child home from school. Parents have largely been fantastic in such monitoring and keeping students home throughout this challenging year. If symptoms are present, we recommend consulting with your child’s primary physician and making the school nurse aware of symptoms and/or positive test results.”

Cummings also reiterated the schools’ Covid protocols:

• Any student who has a COVID-positive household member or is awaiting testing results, whether symptomatic or not, should notify their school nurse before returning to school.
• Any student displaying symptoms of COVID while at home must be kept home and tested for COVID before returning to school.
• Based on DESE’s protocols for symptomatic students, regardless of vaccine status, students displaying symptoms of COVID-19 will be dismissed from school. These students may return based on current DESE protocols for symptomatic students and after receiving clearance from their school nurses.
• In light of the difficulty scheduling or obtaining testing for COVID-19, school nurses may give parents the option to have their child tested for COVID-19 before they are dismissed from school using a rapid antigen test only if they become ill while at school.
• Testing will only be performed with parent consent.

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