Correction: OHA Updates Quarantine Length Guidelines to Return to LPHA Decision Making

Oregon Department of Education sent this bulletin at 06/04/2021 02:42 PM PDT

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Oregon Department of Education - Oregon achieves - together

OHA Updates Quarantine Length Guidelines to
Return to LPHA Decision Making

 

A correction has been made to the sentence under the "What this means" header below. Thank you!

As of June 3, 2021, the Oregon Health Authority released an update to their COVID-19 Investigative Guidelines to reinstate local public health authority (LPHA) flexibility to determine the optimal quarantine length to protect the health and safety of their community. 

What this means: 

This means that people who are exposed to someone with COVID-19 will be expected to follow the direction of their LPHA regarding length of quarantine. 

 

For schools, this means that: 

Any person who has been in close contact with a person who has COVID-19 should quarantine at home for up to 14 days after the date of last exposure to the COVID-19-positive contact. Although a 14-day quarantine is the safest option to prevent the spread of COVID-19 to others, the local public health authority (LPHA) may allow close contacts who have not developed any symptoms to end quarantine after 10 days without any testing, or after 7 days with a negative result on a COVID-19 viral test collected within 48 hours before ending quarantine, with the exceptions below. Contacts should still monitor themselves for symptoms of COVID-19 for the full 14 days after exposure, and if symptoms develop they should isolate and seek testing.

  • Close contacts who have been fully immunized with a COVID-19 vaccine, meaning they have received both doses of a two-dose vaccine or one dose of a single-dose vaccine and are at least 14 days beyond completion of the vaccine series at the time of their exposure are not required to quarantine. Fully immunized close contacts should still monitor themselves for symptoms of COVID-19 during the 14 days after exposure, and if symptoms develop they should isolate and seek testing.
  • Close contacts who themselves had a previous confirmed or presumptive COVID-19 case (verified by a positive viral COVID-19 test and/or LPHA) and have completed their isolation are not required to quarantine if the new exposure happened within 90 days of symptom onset or first positive test, whichever is earlier, for their original case.

Any person who has been in close contact with someone else who was exposed to COVID-19 does not need to quarantine. That is, quarantine is only recommended for people who have close contact with a person who is confirmed or presumptive as determined by the LPHA, not close contact with a contact (an exposed person without COVID-19 symptoms and no positive test result).

This also means that schools or districts that span multiple LPHA areas will need to attend to clear communication with those LPHAs, students, staff and families to follow LPHA direction on quarantine length. 

Continue to work with LPHAs on contact tracing and quarantine decisions. It is our hope that only close contacts are quarantined and not entire cohorts; however, these decisions come at the direction of the LPHA. It is also imperative that quarantine procedures are equitably applied across public and private schools regardless of the communities they serve. 

Again, thank you for all you are doing to support students, families and staff this school year. It is becoming clear to all of us that slowly rolling out of the COVID-19 restrictions and mitigation efforts is nearly as challenging as implementing them. Please do not hesitate to contact the ODECOVID19@ode.state.or.us inbox with any questions.