NC schools ordered to cooperate with health officials over contact tracing, quarantines
North Carolina schools are being warned they must promptly turn over records to local health officials and quarantine students and school employees who have been exposed to COVID-19.
Some school districts have complained that the state’s COVID rules are forcing them to divert limited resources to deal with contact tracing and that quarantines are causing students to miss valuable schoolwork.
But updated state guidance released this week says public and private schools are legally required to cooperate with local health departments when it comes to dealing with the coronavirus or any other communicable disease.
“There’s been a lot of confusion in the schools about what the legal requirements are,” Allison Schafer, general counsel for the State Board of Education, said at Thursday’s board meeting.
“First of all, under the law schools are required to work with local health departments to identify, contact trace and exclude children who may have contracted the disease or are suspected of contracting the disease, and also to identify those who have been exposed.”
The state Department of Health and Human Services stepped in last month when the Union County school board voted to effectively suspend widespread quarantining of students, The Charlotte Observer previously reported.
Following threats of legal action, the Union County school board reached agreements with state and local health officials to ensure contact tracing and quarantine requirements are followed, the Charlotte Observer reported.
Dr. Betsey Tilson, the state health director, said DHHS wanted to provide clarity for schools, so it updated a document this week listing the legal requirements for schools when it comes to COVID.
Schools required to work with health officials
Among the points in the new document:
▪ Principals must report to the local health department anyone diagnosed with COVID or people they believe may have been exposed to the virus.
▪ Schools must turn over records requested by the local health director as part of their case investigation. This can include seating charts, attendance records and normally confidential medical records.
▪ Contact tracing also requires schools to participate in interviews and other information exchanges with local public health officials as part of the case investigation to track exposures and identify close contacts.
“Schools are the only ones that are in possession of a lot of that information so the cooperation and the working relationship is important and there needs to be a constant dialogue about these issues between the local schools, whether they’re charter schools or public schools,” Schafer said. “Records must be promptly released so if there’s an outbreak it can be stemmed to the extent possible.”
▪ Schools are required to exclude anyone who has received a formal quarantine order from the local health department. Orders may be given when a person who has been exposed to COVID refuses to self quarantine.
The memo also notes, however, that a formal quarantine order isn’t needed to exclude a student or school employee.
“For COVID-19, the school must exclude students, teachers and staff who meet the criteria to isolate or quarantine,” the memo says. “The requirement for schools to exclude individuals who have tested positive or been exposed to COVID-19 is a separate and distinct control measure from isolation and quarantine.
“Schools are required to exclude individuals regardless of whether the individual has been notified by the local health department of isolation and quarantine requirements.”
This story was originally published October 7, 2021 at 11:36 AM with the headline "NC schools ordered to cooperate with health officials over contact tracing, quarantines."
