DHEC Changes Rules for Quarantine of Students
Thursday, October 14, 2021 at 6:17AM Observer Reports
As South Carolina health leaders change COVID-19 guidelines for K-12 students, South Carolina’s Public Health Director, Dr. Brannon Traxler, said Wednesday the goal is to keep more students in the classroom, and out of quarantine.
The change in South Carolina Health and Environmental Control (DHEC) guidelines means that a student only have to quarantine if they were not wearing a mask when they were exposed to someone at school who has COVID-19 and if the student was wearing a mask and the student are symptom-free.
Previously, the person with COVID-19 and the exposed student both had to be wearing a mask to avoid quarantine.
“The overall goal is to keep kids and teachers safely in-person, in school,” Dr. Traxler said while noting that the agency’s updated classroom guidance is different from what the CDC advises.
“We recognize that the federal guidance set up an unintended, unfair situation for a student who’s a contact, if they were properly masked, but the affected student wasn’t,” she said. “So this update remedies this fairness issue and provides an incentive for students to wear masks to decrease the possibility of needing to quarantine.”