COLUMBUS, Ohio — Schools can let students exposed to COVID-19 stay in class if they wear a mask, even if the student is unvaccinated and wasn’t masked during the exposure, Ohio Department of Health Director Dr. Bruce Vanderhoff announced Monday.
What You Need To Know
- The Ohio Department of Health announced a major change to school quarantines after exposure
- The state’s new guidance states that exposed students can wear a mask and stay in school
- Students who wish to participate in extracurricular activities should test twice in addition to masking
Effective immediately, schools can adopt “Mask to Stay” / “Test to Play” policies, meaning that testing negative will be a requirement to play sports and extracurricular activities following school exposures, but not a requirement to continue attending in-person classes. The policy also applies to staff, Vanderhoff said.
The guidance is only for exposures that occur in school settings or during school-related activities. Students exposed outside of school should still quarantine, Vanderhoff said.
The announcement comes after a pilot program, which studied modified-quarantine protocols in Warren County school districts in the last four weeks. Vanderhoff said the study showed that schools could safely switch to the new protocols.
Prior to the state’s announcement, schools in a number of other parts of Ohio, including Medina, Knox, Madison and Tuscarawas counties, had already stopped requiring quarantines for unvaccinated, unmasked students who were exposed in the classroom and agreed to follow the districts’ protocols, which varied by school.
Ohio’s new guidance states that exposed students who wish to participate in extracurricular activities should get tested after the initial exposure and then again five to seven days after the exposure.
