Dear Superintendents and School Leaders,
I am writing with several updates since my last message.
Change to Employee Quarantine Requirements
The public health office and San Diego County Office of Education (SDCOE) have updated the COVID-19
Decision Trees in English and Spanish and the corresponding
frequently asked questions to reflect a revised understanding of California Department of Public Health requirements for quarantine of employee close contacts who are not up to date on their COVID-19 vaccinations and those who are unvaccinated. Specifically:
-
Not up-to-date: Employee close contacts who are at least 14 days past completion of their primary vaccination series, and who are booster-eligible and not boosted, may remain at work provided that they wear a mask, indoors and outside, when within 6 feet of others through Day 10, and provide evidence of a negative test result from a sample collected on Day 3, 4, or 5. Testing within 24 hours of close contact notification is also recommended, but not required.
- This option is now also to be made available to employees who are within 90 days of the onset of symptoms from a previous COVID-19 infection.
-
Unvaccinated: Employee close contacts who are not at least 14 days past completion of their primary vaccination series may return to work on or after Day 6 if they provide evidence of a negative test result from a sample collected on or after Day 5, and they wear a mask, indoors and outside, when within 6 feet of others through Day 10.
Updated and Improved e-Decision Tree
Thanks to Dr. Ilya Zaslavsky, director of the Spatial Information Systems Laboratory at the San Diego Super Computer Center, and UCSD student Alice Lu, the
e-Decision Tree is fully updated and aligned to the current decision trees. The updated version also gives the user an opportunity to send an outcome summary to one or more email addresses.
Priorities for Contact Tracing
With high numbers of students and staff members contracting COVID-19, many schools are finding it hard to keep up with contact tracing. The County of San Diego has recognized this challenge and asks that school leaders do the best they can while their capacity to trace contacts is diminished, with a focus on the following areas where the risk of transmission is greatest:
- Siblings and household members of positive cases who attend your school or district
- Classrooms and buses that have one or more students with mask exemptions
- Indoor sport teams (practicing, training, or playing) where keeping a mask on snugly has been difficult
- Situations where staff or students have had to eat indoors in the same room
Mask Upgrade Recommendation and Guidance Due to Omicron Variant
The state has said it plans to distribute N95 masks to schools soon for student and employee use. We don’t have any details yet on when or how we will get these masks but will provide more information as soon as we have it. In the meantime, you may get questions about masking, and the information in
this memo may be helpful. Specifically, county medical experts are recommending that students wear a three-ply surgical mask with a nose wire or a cloth face covering along with a surgical mask to protect against the highly transmissible omicron variant.
Thank you for all that you do. As always, please reach out if you have any questions.
Sincerely,
Paul
Dr. Paul Gothold
San Diego County Superintendent of Schools
phone: 858-295-6641
