Quarantine No Longer Required for Students Exposed to COVID-19
- New York 08/22/2022 (Gov. Kathy Hochul)

Covid Hotline Numbers which respond when you call are here: NYC residents: 212-COVID19 Rest of State: 888-TREAT-NY

Today NY Governor Kathy Hochul announced a change in covid protocol for students as they return to school. She says, "We're aligning ourselves with the CDC.... As of last Thursday, August 11th, the CDC is no longer recommending quarantining due to exposure. So, let's lay this out. If a student or teacher is exposed, has a close contact to someone who is exposed and they don't have symptoms, they no longer have to go home. They will stay in school. And the CDC does recommend the wearing of a mask for about 10 days if someone's been exposed. So, no more test to stay. What that means is if a classmate tests positive for COVID and your child doesn't have symptoms, your child can stay in school as long as they would wear a mask under those circumstances. That's what we're recommending.

So, that's good news. If a child does get sick, we still want to make sure that there's a smart approach, and if there's symptoms you always want to be tested and students should stay home - recommend that they stay home for about five days and wear a mask as well. And if they have no symptoms after five days and test negative, they should go back to school. Let's get them back in school as soon as possible.

So, that's what they're recommending. That's what we're recommending. And we're no longer recommending - and the CDC and Department of Health are aligned with this - no longer recommending the screening testing, which is randomly testing people who have no symptoms. That was important a year ago, before that, but in certain circumstances, schools may want to opt for doing screening testing in high-risk activities. For example, let's think about choir where children are close together, wrestling team. So, we'll leave that up to individual schools to make that determination, but it is no longer recommended from the CDC or the Department of Health that there'd be this random screening."

more info