Greenville ISD's COVID-19 response plan to keep quarantine at 14 days

Travis Hairgrove, The Herald Banner, Greenville, Texas
·2 min read

Feb. 25—At its meeting Tuesday, the Greenville ISD board of trustees chose to keep the district's quarantine period at 14 days as a precaution against the potential spread of COVID-19.

Back in December, the CDC announced new recommendations for local public health authorities and their jurisdictions about COVID-19. The changes came in the form of recommendations on how to implement shorter quarantine periods (less than 14 days) more safely.

The GISD board's decision Tuesday was the second time the trustees decided to stick to their existing COVID-19 safety response plan. In December, shortly after the CDC's announcement, the board decided to wait until at least February to consider loosening the district's health guidelines, to give more people in the community a chance to get vaccinated.

The quarantine options outlined by the CDC in December were for a 10-day quarantine and for a seven-day quarantine.

For the 10-day quarantine, the CDC advised that someone who had been quarantined could be re-admitted to school or work after 10 days, as long as they didn't experience any COVID-19 symptoms in that time.

As for the CDC's guidelines for a seven-day quarantine option, they recommended that people who had not experienced symptoms for at least seven days while in quarantine could be re-admitted if they took a full COVID-19 test and tested negative.

At Tuesday's meeting, GISD Director of Health Services Noel Bares said that the district has recently seen a reduction in the number of COVID-19 exposure cases, but that she believed that that had more to with the colder weather of recent weeks — and therefore, "not as many people out and about."

Bares did however recommend keeping the district's quarantine protocol at 14 days, because she anticipates "an uptick" in cases after Spring Break (March 6-14).

The school board also unanimously agreed to send letters to the offices of the governor, the commissioner of education, state representative and other state government officials, encouraging them to place teachers in the second tier of people eligible to receive the vaccine.

This tier of eligible COVID-19 vaccine recipients includes healthcare workers who interact with patients in outpatient settings such as doctors' offices, workers in freestanding emergency rooms and urgent care clinics, community pharmacy workers, public health workers who administer COVID-19 tests, school nurses and mortuary workers such as medical examiners and embalmers.