Health officials release new COVID-19 guidelines for Marion County schools
Video shows the full Indianapolis coronavirus briefing.
INDIANAPOLIS (WISH) — Dr. Virginia Caine, director of the Marion County Public Health Department, on Thursday provided new COVID-19 guidelines for Indianapolis and Marion County schools.
Caine said the new system would allow individual measures of schools to determine whether risk mitigation efforts needed to be made.
“The children are not getting the number of new cases nor transmission rates compared to the rest of the community,” Caine said during a virtual press conference Thursday.
Caine also pointed to data that showed COVID-19 cases in children younger than 5 and schoolchildren ages 6-19 have remained much lower than the average of cases for community spread.
The new system was created to allow schools to remain open to in-person learning despite the COVID-19 metrics of the overall community.
“This a new metric where we are looking at comparing individual school positivity case rates compared to what’s happening with the community rate,” Caine said.
Schools can calculate their positivity rates compared to the community case positivity rate to establish individual risk zones.
Depending on the individual school’s risk zone, Marion County Public Health Department officials will either continue to monitor the school’s positivity rate or work with the school to prevent further increase or decrease incidence.
Caine provided a detailed formula for schools to follow to determine their risk zones.
Caine also said that all schools must report COVID-19 cases, for both staff and students, to the Marion County Health Department within 24 hours of learning of a positive case. The report also must indicate whether the student or staff was attending school in person or virtually.
Indiana State Department of Health reported Wednesday that 81 more Hoosiers have died from COVID-19, for a total of 8,452 deaths.