Rather, “Substantial Exposure” is just another step in the school’s protocol to mitigate the spread of the virus, according to district Communications Director Sam Rolens. When a school goes into a substantial exposure event, it triggers new protocol that allows it to better manage who has contracted the virus.
With Omicron’s increased presence in the community, contact tracing in schools becomes less possible, County Deputy Health Director Dr. Cal Gordon said. In fact, when exposure rates are high, contact tracing doesn’t provide any value, he added.
Therefore, schools elected to use the substantial exposure model and notify the entire community of a possible exposure rather than having to issue a new exposure notice to parents each time a new case emerges. This allows the school to focus more of its time and energy on testing rather than contact tracing, Gordon said.
“The reality is the likelihood of being exposed at school is much higher. If the case rate is much higher in the schools just reflecting what is happening in the community, then parents could be getting exposure notices left and right,” Gordon said. “If you’re barraged with notices that your child’s been exposed, it can be hard to understand what that really means.”
When a school enters a substantial exposure event, it continues operation on the assumption that all students have been exposed to the virus, according to a letter sent to SCHS parents. From there, the school enters a modified quarantine.
“We only know about the cases that we are able to test. When that number goes significantly high, we have to assume there is a large number of community spread cases coming to campus that we aren’t checking because they aren’t symptomatic and they don’t have a known exposure,” Rolens said. “We would be fools to assume the only cases are the ones we know about.”
The modified quarantine requires all unvaccinated students to undergo a COVID-19 test twice a week. Students who do not test must quarantine at home and are not allowed to attend extracurricular activities.
Vaccinated students and those who tested positive in the last 90 days, are exempt from the testing requirement but are still strongly encouraged to participate in testing.
All students who test positive for COVID-19 must quarantine at home for five days. At the end of those five days, they can take an antigen test through a lab and return to school if it comes back negative.
If a student is sick, they must quarantine at home for five days after the start of their symptoms. They can also take an antigen test after those five days, but also must see improvement of symptoms and have no fever for at least 24 hours before returning to school.
Testing through the school is done through Inspire. However, the district still has parents that have not registered with the company to get testing handled and urges them to do so.
Parents can register themselves and their student through the district’s website at sccs.net.
“We really encourage all families to register for testing,” Rolens said. “That will be the easiest and best way that kids get to stay in class and not be disrupted in the event this protocol goes active.”
Only a handful of campuses were on the substantial exposure protocol as of Thursday. However, eight of Santa Cruz City Schools’ 10 campuses are expected to transition into the new guidelines this week, according to Rolens.
There is no concrete threshold for schools to cross over into a substantial exposure event, Rolens noted. Rather, that designation is left up to the discretion of the district.
That determination is made based on the total number of exposures at a campus and the number of classrooms already under a modified quarantine, he added. The way the virus has spread through the community recently also plays a factor into the decisions, making it hard for the district to determine a specific threshold metric.
“Really all it is, we’ve reached the point where out of an abundance of caution we are treating everyone on the campus as exposed so that we can just have that across the spectrum visibility into the footprint of COVID across the school,” Rolens said. “We believe that is a hugely valuable way to protect our classes and students during Omicron.”
Each school’s substantial exposure status will be re-evaluated at the end of each week. Santa Cruz High School expects to remain in a substantial exposure event anywhere between two to four weeks, according to the letter.
Impacts on the community
While a substantial exposure event can sound scary, County Deputy Health Director Dr. David Ghilarducci urged parents and other community members not to panic, particularly those who have been vaccinated.
“It’s not surprising. We anticipated we were going to get to this point where schools were going to have to say, ‘Listen, there’s COVID here and there is a chance that you got exposed and COVID is everywhere at this point,’” Ghilarducci said. “I don’t think it represents a super cluster of events. I think it’s just a reflection of the general state of affairs in our community.”
Similar to the schools, Santa Cruz County has seen a sharp rise in COVID-19 cases shortly before the new year. However, local health experts expect this surge to be short and peak within the next few weeks before cases begin to rapidly decline again.
Omicron is three times as infectious as the Delta variant, Gordon noted. Therefore, the disease will spread faster through the community.
Dr. Ghilarducci likened the current surge in cases to a grass fire. The flames will burn the grass quickly, but once all the grass is burned, the flame will go out.
“Eventually the virus will run out of human fuel and won’t have any more vulnerable people to infect,” Ghilarducci said. “The fewer number of unvaccinated people, the less grass there is.”
Local health officials have been able to make this conjecture by watching Santa Clara County. Most of the COVID trends in Santa Cruz County have lagged behind Santa Clara County by about two weeks according to both Ghilarducci and Gordon.
Santa Clara County is already on its downward trend with its COVID-19 cases having peaked around Jan. 16.
While this COVID-19 surge is expected to be quick, it could still cause trouble for unvaccinated residents, Ghilarducci warned. While Omicron manages to infect vaccinated individuals, they are getting less severe illness unless they have underlying health conditions. Roughly 90% of the ICU is filled with unvaccinated COVID-19 patients, he noted.
“If you haven’t gotten vaccinated, do so,” Ghilarducci said. “If you’re due for a booster, get a booster. That increases your protection from 30% to 90%.”
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