Document Type
Article
Publication Date
2-23-2022
Abstract
BACKGROUND: A school district in Northern Ohio implemented a COVID-19 surveillance program from January 4 to May 21, 2021, as in-person school and extracurricular activities resumed. METHODS: Among 560 staff members and >6300 students, random weekly testing was performed on 563 students and weekly for 204 students participating in extracurricular activities, and 553 staff. RESULTS: Cases of COVID-19 were identified among 26 staff members and 23 students. Most of those infected were participating in extracurricular activities (14/23) and in the age range of 14-18. Percent positivity was low (range 0.2-2.4%) throughout the school surveillance program despite significant changes in positivity rate (2.8-19.8%). CONCLUSION: This demonstrates that in a setting employing basic yet consistent mitigation strategies, there is low transmission among young children and adolescents as they return to in-person classes and activities. Maintaining layered prevention strategies implemented and sustained with fidelity can substantially limit transmission within schools.
Keywords
COVID-19, mitigation, schools, surveillance, transmission
Language
English
Publication Title
Journal of School Health
Rights
© 2022 The Authors. This is an Open Access work distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/) which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work is properly cited.
Creative Commons License
This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License.
Recommended Citation
Ganesh, P.R., May, R., Dandurand, M., Graham, J., Rose, J., Gullett, H., Covell, D. and Stange, K.C. (2022), Back to the Basics: A COVID-19 Surveillance Program Within a Local School District. J School Health, 92: 469-473. https://doi.org/10.1111/josh.13149
Manuscript Version
Final Publisher Version