Missouri students and teachers are no longer required to quarantine for 14 days if they were exposed to someone who has tested positive for COVID-19, as long as everyone was wearing a mask during the possible exposure, Missouri officials said today (Nov. 12).
Gov. Mike Parson, along with members of the Department of Health and Senior Services (DHSS) and the Department of Elementary and Secondary Education (DESE), announced the change during a press conference at the State Capitol in Jefferson City.
In a Facebook post, the Jefferson County Health Department said it is aware of the policy shift, adding that “any updates or changes to current guidance will be provided to the public through social media and the JCHD website as soon as possible.”
Josh Isaacson, superintendent of the De Soto School District Superintendent and president of the Jefferson County Superintendents Association, said he believed most Jefferson County school district officials were meeting with Health Department officials today to gain a better understanding of the state’s new quarantine guidelines.
“The message is clear that masks are considered an essential mitigation strategy,” Northwest R-1 School District Superintendent Desi Kirchhofer said. “This new guidance could help reduce the number of quarantines as staff and students are required to wear masks in school when social distancing is not possible. Yet, it won’t help with close contacts that occur outside of school that might lead to quarantines.”
The Fox C-6, De Soto, Crystal City and Grandview school districts, along with St. Pius X High School, announced a temporary switch from in-person instruction to at-home, online learning this week for some or all of its schools because of positive COVID-19 cases and/or quarantines.
“Right now, we are reviewing the policy, and our current environment will determine what is best for our parents, students and staff,” St. Pius X President Jim Lehn said.
The Jefferson R-7 School District announced on Monday (Nov. 9) that its students would not attend class in person from Monday (Nov. 16) through Friday (Nov. 27) because of high quarantine numbers.
The district said it intends to resume in-person instruction on Dec. 1 after a scheduled break for Thanksgiving.
As of today, 90 students and 15 staff members at Jefferson R-7 were in quarantine. The district has 1,060 students and 159 staff members, according to the district’s website.
The Sunrise R-9 School District, which enrolls 350 elementary students, will discuss putting a mask-wearing policy in place at its Board of Education meeting on Tuesday (Nov. 17), Superintendent Armand Spurgin said today.
Spurgin said staff and students have not been required to wear facemasks since classes began on Aug. 25 with the majority of students attending class in person four days a week.
The superintendent said the district did suspend in-person instruction from Oct. 26 through Nov. 6 because two staff members tested positive for the virus and 18 other staff members were in quarantine because of possible contact with the coronavirus.
Spurgin said in-person learning resumed Monday.
“As long as everybody is wearing (masks) correctly, it could be a real game-changer,” Spurgin said. “It could be a good tool. We will try to figure out a way to make it work for us.”
State officials said in a written statement that with the change, schools that have implemented a mask mandate won’t have to identify people who may have been exposed to someone with the virus as close contacts, if there was proper mask wearing. That means if all the people involved at a particular school – the person diagnosed with COVID-19 and the people exposed to the positive case – have masks on and are wearing them correctly, the individual exposed does not need to quarantine.
Instead, people exposed to a positive case should self-monitor for symptoms and stay home at the first sign of illness. They also should continue to wear a mask at all times to further reduce the likelihood of transmitting the virus, state officials reported.
The person who tests positive for COVID-19 is still required to isolate at home, according to state officials.
“Given the high rates of COVID-19 in our communities, it is inevitable that some children and adolescents will test positive,” said Dr. Rachel Orscheln of St. Louis Children's Hospital, who has worked closely with DHSS and DESE throughout the pandemic. “We also know that some of these children will likely, at some point in their illness, be at school. However, we have learned that in schools where students and staff are always wearing masks and practicing physical distancing, this virus does not spread as easily as it does in other places where these strategies are not always used.”
State officials also said adequate social distancing and proper hand hygiene continue to be important in combatting the spread of COVID-19.
“As COVID cases increase across the state, we understand that the virus is not going away quickly. Rigorous mitigation strategies and reasonable quarantine protocols will help provide our students onsite learning opportunities more consistently,” DESE commissioner Margie Vandeven said. “Our teachers and school leaders have worked tirelessly to meet the needs of our students throughout the first quarter, but the current structure is not sustainable long-term. Students and their families struggle to keep up with coursework in a distanced model of instruction when students are temporarily quarantined, and many districts have been forced to suspend in-person learning opportunities after large numbers of school staff members were directed to quarantine.”
