New research suggests NC schools with mask mandates could loosen quarantine rules
North Carolina schools with mask mandates may be able to loosen up their quarantine requirements, according to data from a pilot study by the ABC Science Collaborative.
The collaborative, made up of physicians and community leaders, helps inform school districts about how best to safely educate students in the pandemic.
Current COVID rules for schools, known as the StrongSchools NC Toolkit, are set by the NC Dept. of Health and Human Services and the NC Dept. of Public Instruction. Under those current rules, if a student is infected and exposes another student by taking their mask off, even briefly, both the infected student and the exposed student have to go home.
The toolkit defines exposure as 15 cumulative minutes within a 24-hour period — which could be five minutes at arrival, five minutes at lunch and five minutes at dismissal.
Recent guidance from the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention also recommends anyone who has been within three feet of an infected person should be tested, even if both were wearing masks.
But recent data from the ABC Science Collaborative shows that this may not be necessary.
Dr. Danny Benjamin, co-chair of the collaborative, said rapid antigen testing in schools could help exposed kids stay in the classroom as long as they are masked up.
He said on the day a school is notified that a student has been infected, the school would administer rapid tests to all close contacts of the infected student. Five to seven days later, the school would administer a second rapid test. The exposed close contacts would need to keep their masks on.
"The positive child goes home," he said. "The exposed child gets to stay for as long as their tests at schools are negative, and they remain asymptomatic."
This approach could reduce quarantines by as much as 90%, Benjamin predicts, adding that they found no instances in which a child who was infected at school spread the infection to another child at school.
Because this suggested plan would require fewer tests, Benjamin thinks the state has enough rapid tests on hand to supply schools with them.
However, rapid antigen tests are not as accurate as PCR tests, and some early studies indicate the rapid tests may not be as good at detecting omicron as past variants. Benjamin said his group will continue studying the effectiveness of those tests.
The goal of the collaborative's new research is to help prevent schools from becoming overwhelmed, since less testing requires less time and resources.
North Carolina schools are required to follow the COVID toolkit, so they'll have to continue quarantining exposed students unless state health and education leaders sign off on changes to those rules.
Dr. Elizabeth Tilson, state health director and chief medical officer for the state Department of Health and Human Services, said she was encouraged by the collaborative's research.
Tilson said the state would use the ABC Collaborative's findings to help inform potential changes to the COVID rules, although she said they're waiting to see how the more infectious omicron variant affects in-school transmission.
"Keeping our students and staff in the classroom is one of the top priorities of the NCDHHS," she said in an email. "This report adds to the existing data that shows transmission of the virus that causes COVID-19 to be very low in school settings where masking is required."
The program enrolled 367 students over the course of six weeks from five North Carolina school districts and one charter school. Nearly all exposures were due to a student not wearing a mask, the study concluded.
The study found that athletic programs without masks — whether inside or outside — led to significantly more transmission of the virus than exposure at school lunches, suggesting schools may need to maintain stricter quarantine protocols for athletics. In the pilot program, athletics were the source of 50% of all COVID-19 school transmission found in the study.
The research has also not taken into account the latest coronavirus variant, omicron, which is known to spread more rapidly than previous strains. It was just beginning to spread in the state at the time the study was completed.
