LOUISVILLE, Ky. (WDRB) -- Southern Indiana school corporations are making masks optional indoors and eliminating other parts of their COVID-19 mitigation strategies after the Indiana Department of Health revised its coronavirus guidance for schools Thursday.
New Albany Floyd County Schools, Greater Clark County Schools and Silver Creek School Corporation are among those updating their COVID-19 policies to reflect changes made by the state, which said Indiana schools and child care programs no longer need to quarantine students and staff exposed to someone who tested positive for COVID-19, conduct contact tracing or report positive cases to IDOH starting Wednesday.
Those who test positive will need to isolate but can return to school after five days if they do not have fevers for 24 hours without medication and if they wear masks for another five days inside schools, according to the latest guidance from the IDOH and U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.
IDOH cited the decline in COVID-19 cases and the availability of vaccines as reason for the revised guidance, which school corporations like NAFCS, GCCS and Silver Creek were quick to embrace.
NAFCS and GCCS announced plans to make masks optional starting Monday, a step Silver Creek took Friday. The three school corporations adopted the relaxed COVID-19 recommendations released by IDOH.
Contact tracing after someone tests positive for COVID-19 inside Silver Creek schools has been “a tremendous load and burden,” said Casey Drane, Silver Creek’s health services director.
“When we had to quarantine healthy students, that was very difficult and not something that we wanted to do, so I'm very thankful to the health team,” Drane said in an interview Friday. “They spent countless hours contact tracing, reporting as well as making phone calls, so that is definitely a burden that has been lifted.”
Dr. Eric Yazel, health officer for the Clark County Health Department, said he supported the state’s decision to revise its COVID-19 guidance for schools as caseloads drop throughout Indiana.
Thursday’s announcement by IDOH represented an important step in transitioning from a pandemic, he said.
“We need to be respectful. There are still folks who have lost some loved ones to omicron or are fighting that fight right now,” Yazel said Friday. “But the reality is for a vast majority of people it's a mild infection, and so that leads you to need to have these discussions of OK, what does this look like in the future? What does it look like six months from now, five years from now?”
Yazel says he understands concerns from those worried about easing steps meant to limit the spread of COVID-19 inside schools. He emphasized his support for vaccinations.
“This is a big change for everybody,” he said. “... Everybody's got a different individual risk profile, so if you're higher risk, then you may need to take some some bigger precautions, still wear your mask, things like that.”
He noted that COVID-19 guidance for schools could continue to change in response to the pandemic.
“We are much more advanced in how we're able to handle this than we were a year, two years ago,” Yazel said.
Drane is among those at Silver Creek and other Indiana school corporations who are ready to ease COVID-19 measures.
“I'm really excited,” she said. “I know a lot of the students have been really excited, and I think it's time. This is a transition period hopefully to get us in an endemic rather than a pandemic, and I think we're all ready.”
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