Contact Tracing 

Local health department and school coordination is an integral part of mitigating Covid-19.  Both are committed to coordinating all activities necessary to ensure the health of students, staff, and the community. Jefferson County Public Health Service (JCPHS) will conduct case investigation of individuals with confirmed diagnosis of Covid-19.  Contact tracing follows case investigation and is a process to identify, monitor, and support individuals who may have been exposed to a person with COVID-19.  

Staff of the school will play an important role in supporting the health department efforts to obtain needed information. Similar collaboration occurs routinely for case and contact investigations of other communicable diseases and would be expected to continue seamlessly for COVID-19 investigations. When a COVID-19 case is identified, JCPHS will request assistance from the school to identify potential contacts.  

Case investigators and contact tracers will:

·        Identify potential contacts through interview of the person (or parent/guardian for children) with COVID-19 and school personnel.

o   The positive person (or parent/guardian for children) is interviewed by JCPHS staff, who elicit information about the person’s illness, determine when they may have become infectious and determine other people who might have been exposed. Those potentially exposed individuals (or parent/guardian) are then interviewed; persons who are determined to be close contacts are referred for testing and advised to quarantine for 14 days from the date of last exposure. For both cases and close contacts, public health staff will monitor their health status and compliance with disease control measures and connect them to local resources as necessary.

o   JCPHS staff will need information about different areas within the school and who was in the area at a given time or locating information for identified children or staff associated with the facility. JCPHS may need to interview teachers, school staff, bus drivers, students etc…

·        Alert contacts of their exposure, assess their symptoms and risk, and provide instructions for next steps. The named contacts will be told of their potential exposure to COVID-19, but the person to whom they were exposed will not be named.

·        Link those with symptoms to testing and care.

• Schools should continue to collaborate with state and local health departments, to the extent allowable by privacy laws and other applicable laws, to confidentially provide information about people diagnosed with or exposed to COVID-19. This allows identifying which students, teachers, and staff with positive COVID-19 test results should isolate, and which close contacts should quarantine.

  • • Fully vaccinated close contacts should be referred for COVID-19 testing. If asymptomatic, fully vaccinated close contacts do not need to quarantine at home following an exposure (they can continue to attend school in-person and participate in other activities). In addition to correctly wearing masks in school, they should wear a mask in other indoor public settings for 14 days or until they receive a negative test result.

    • Close contacts who are not fully vaccinated should be referred for COVID-19 testing. Regardless of test result, they should quarantine at home for 14 days after exposure. Options to shorten quarantine provide acceptable alternatives of a 10-day quarantine or a 7-day quarantine combined with testing and a negative test result.

See the added exception in the close contact definition for the exclusion of students in the K-12 indoor classroom who are within 3 to 6 feet of an infected student with masking. See the Department of Education’s Protecting Student Privacy FERPA and the Coronavirus Disease 2019

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Schools should report, to the extent allowable by applicable privacy laws, new diagnoses of COVID-19 to their state or local health department as soon as they are informed. School officials should notify, to the extent allowable by applicable privacy laws, teachers, staff, and families of students who were close contacts as soon as possible (within the same day if possible) after they are notified that someone in the school has tested positive.