Scott Powers
Orange County school students who are exposed to COVID-19 or test positive for the virus will have to stay home at least a few days in most cases, county officials said Monday.
Speaking at Orange County Mayor Jerry Demings‘ COVID-19 update news conference Monday, Dr. Raul Pino laid out protocols he said are based on guidelines provided by the Florida Surgeon General.
In addition to Orange County Public Schools’ mask mandate announced Friday — all students will be required to mask-up unless parents sign a note to opt them out — students at all Orange County schools will be expected to stay home for periods of time if exposed to or infected by COVID-19.
Any student who is sick should stay home regardless, Orange County Superintendent Barbara Jenkins added.
“Certainly the number one request that we have is if a child is not feeling well, please keep him home. Do not send a child to school if they’re not feeling well,” Jenkins said.
She and Pino, Orange County health officer with the Florida Department of Health, outlined their concerns for students Monday as Orange County Public Schools prepare to welcome back 209,000 students on Tuesday for the new school year.
Their comments came as Orange County and Florida continue to suffer through the worst COVID-19 outbreak since the pandemic first emerged in the spring of 2020.
Orange County continues to confirm more than 1,000 new cases of COVID-19 each day. Hospitals are filling. The positive test rate for COVID-19 is running just under 20%, more than four times as high as in June. Pino said nine more people have been confirmed to have died of the disease since Demings’ last news briefing on Thursday.
They were joined Monday by several other area leaders, including Orlando Mayor Buddy Dyer, who urged people to get vaccinated against the disease. Dyer and Demings also announced they have arranged for Camping World Stadium to become the new, major, drive-up vaccination site in Orange County, starting Tuesday, moving that service from the often-congested Barnett Park.
“This is a big week for us, with 209,000 students returning to school,” Demings said. “That is going to create potential new exposure for our community.”
The student guidance outlined by Pino, with Jenkins, includes:
— Any student in kindergarten through grade 12 who tests positive for COVID-19 can return to school after a subsequent negative test, if the student is asymptomatic with no fever for 24 hours without medication.
— Otherwise, a student who tests positive can return to school after 10 days of isolation, with a note from a doctor saying the child is well enough to go back to school.
— A student who is exposed to someone with COVID-19, if asymptomatic, can have a COVID-19 test on the fourth day of quarantine. If that test comes back negative, the student can return to school.
— A student exposed to someone with COVID-19 can come back from quarantine in lieu of a negative test after seven days, if the student is asymptomatic.
— If a student has perviously had COVID-19 within the past 90 days and is exposed again to someone with COVID-19, the student will not have to quarantine if the student is asymptomatic.
“We will all do it the right way. We have done this before. We can do it again,” Pino said.
