Saline Area Schools Introduces New Quarantine Option

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Students who have been fully vaccinated against the Coronavirus and have been found to be in close contact with someone who tests positive now have a new option to shorten quarantine in Saline Area Schools. Superintendent Steve Laatsch explained at Tuesday’s Board of Education meeting that this policy is meant for vaccinated students who have been in close contact recently with someone who has tested positive for the Coronavirus.

“If there is a high school student who tests positive for Covid and there are seven close contacts – people who were with them for fifteen minutes or more and they’re all vaccinated, their quarantine is to go to school with a mask and it is recommended that they test every so often, but that’s not even a requirement,” Laatsch said. “That’s different than the unvaccinated population of students. With that population, if a student tests positive they are quarantining for ten days and then come back with a negative test. But all of their close contacts with them will have three options for how they quarantine.”

So far this school year the only options for students who have been in contact with someone who had been diagnosed with the Coronavirus was to quarantine for ten days at home, or to return to school with a mask on at all times, regardless of whether the rest of your school needed to wear a mask. And it is a much more flexible option than having to quarantine at home, or receive all instruction at home, as was the case last year.

The other two options will still be available for unvaccinated students. Parents whose children are either infected or are in close contact with someone who is can either keep their students in quarantine or 10 days or continue to attend school with a mandatory face mask.

“There [are] options for those kids this year that didn’t exist last year,” Laatsch added. “You have to be ready for changing guidance. We have tried to be agile, and I think our community has too.”

Saline Area Schools says that their masking strategy is working well. According to the District, six students were in quarantine as of September 27, as was one staff member from the middle school and only one student from the middle school had tested positive for Covid-19. The district is continuing to base its Covid-19 decisions on advice from the Michigan Department of Health and Human Services through the Washtenaw County Health Department.

Washtenaw County remains in the high category of transmission in the week before September 26. As of the publication of this article, two of the 78 confirmed current cases in Washtenaw County were hospitalized, according to the WCHD.

Image Credit: Scot Graden

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