repeated tests after 4-5 days and no quarantine for the vaccinated – breaking latest news

The clear premise: Given the need to favor the face-to-face teaching but also to make the prevention measures implemented in schools as homogeneous as possible at national level.

This is where the revision of the contact management system at school starts, as stated in the draft of the document of the Higher Institute of Health, created in collaboration with the Ministry of Health, Education and the Regions, which should be officially launched this week.

Even if the contact evaluation of a positive case at Covid the management procedure should be simplified, according to the entities, through a system that provides for a series of automatisms that can be managed from the earliest stages directly by the school manager and the Covid school referent 19 in close collaboration with the Prevention Department.

The principal, therefore, having learned of a case, is authorized to temporarily suspend teaching activities and communicate the initiation of the planned measures. Since at school, but the rules also apply to education and vocational training courses, the use of masks is mandatory, a part of the contacts can be considered low-risk with the introduction of surveillance with specific testing, avoiding quarantine if not necessary for those vaccinated. Currently the quarantine lasts ten days for the unvaccinated and seven for the vaccinated, at least for students aged 12 and over.

In kindergartens and preschools

The tables explain how to use the tests, in a systematic way to better clarify how to behave in the different levels of education. For services for children from 0 to 6 years, in the case of a positive pupil, the children will all have to be quarantined for 10 days, and take a test at the end. Educators and other school workers will respect a quarantine that goes from 7 to 10 days if you are vaccinated (in the first case) or not. Other sections of the school will not have to do anything. No.in the event that it is an educator or operator who test positive, pupils must always be in quarantine for 10 days, educators, if vaccinated or negativized within the previous six months, they will not have to comply with quarantine, but only undergo a test, to be repeated after 4-5 days. If they are not vaccinated n have ever contracted Covid, they will have to respect the quarantine and, before returning after 10 days, undergo a tampon. The other school workers who have carried out activities related to the positive group, or other sections or groups of the same school, will not have to do anything.

Primary and secondary schools: if the positive is a pupil

Change management for primary and secondary schools. In case of positivity of a student,
the students who attended the same class as the positive case, are subjected to a swab: if negative, they can stay in class, repeating the swab after 4-5 days. It should be emphasized that the ISS specifies that the swab should be done as soon as possible and in any case in the 48 hours following the identification of the index case. In case of further positivity, pupils vaccinated or negativized in the last six months will be monitored with tests, the others will have to go to quarantine. If there are two other positive cases in addition to the first, trigger the quarantine for the whole class. What should teachers do instead? Teachers who have carried out activities in the same class as the positive, and they are vaccinated, they are swabed, they can go back to school immediately if negative; if not vaccinated or negativized in the last six months, they will go into quarantine. For the former the swab is repeated after 4-5 days, for the others after ten. If the tests show another positive, the vaccinated will be monitored with swabs, the others will be quarantined. Here, too, the quarantine for the whole class is triggered if there is a third case. The other school workers who have carried out activities in the positive class are simply kept under control with a swab, to be repeated after 4-5 days. While the other classes are not affected by the procedure.

Primary and secondary schools: if the positive is a teacher

On the other hand, what does the procedure foresee if it is positive a teacher or a school operator, in elementary, middle or high school? In this case, the students of his class will have to be subjected to a swab, and will be able to remain in class if negative, repeating it after 4-5 days. If another positive should emerge, the differentiation between vaccinated and unvaccinated is implemented (the vaccinated can remain, monitored; the unvaccinated will have to go to quarantine). In case of three positives, here too the quarantine for the whole class is triggered. The teachers who have carried out activities in co-presence with the positive teacher or school operator, will have to be subjected to tests and will be able to return if negative; if not vaccinated or negativized in the last six months, they will instead have to respect the quarantine and repeat the test after 10 days, instead of after 4-5 like the vaccinated. Here too, in the event of two positives, the vaccinated will have to undergo screening, the unvaccinated will immediately go to quarantine. The stop of the lessons is foreseen only if there are three cases. What happens to school workers who have only carried out intersection activities with the class concerned by the case? Nothing, like the other classes in the school.

Doubts about the six-month vaccine
There remains a doubt about the validity of the vaccine, which cancels or halves quarantines. The document in fact provides for a validity within six months, while currently the green pass, obtained thanks to the vaccine, is valid for one year. A difference that could greatly influence case management at school. And who has been vaccinated for more than six months, will still have to respect the quarantine rules valid for the unvaccinated?

Reduced quarantines in Lazio and Piedmont

Meanwhile, the cases of class quarantine are decreasing throughout Italy. With respect to the spread of Covid-19, as we have always said, the school is safe because there are rules and there are those who enforce them, and the data prove it, he says. Alberto Villani, past president of the Italian Society of Pediatrics (Sip). For a pilot study conducted by SIP together with the Bambino Ges Hospital in Rome, in two Roman schools, salivary swabs were monitored over the course of a year on a total of over 1,200 students, teachers and school staff. Well, underlines Villani, head of the UOC of General Pediatrics and Infectious Diseases of the hospital, there were only 21 positive cases and no spread of the infection inside the classrooms. In the schools of Piedmont the cases of infections from Covid are in considerable decline compared to the same period last year, explains the president of the Region, Alberto Cirio. The quarantined classes have gone from 141 to 30, and the curve of the trend of infections in school age classes, which last year soared at the opening of classes, remains low or even falls. All of this is the result of vaccinations. 94% of the school staff joined, among the students 219 thousand out of 315 thousand.