While Governor Roy Cooper is encouraging counties and school districts to lift their mask mandates, Orange County leaders are keeping their mandate in place for the time being. The Orange County Board of Education voted Monday to move to optional masking for all students 72 hours after the local mask mandate expires in Orange County.
Patrick Abele, Orange County Schools’ deputy superintendent, said just like there will be future COVID-19 cases within the community, there will be cases within the schools.
“The key is our mitigation strategies and are we being effective in what we’re doing to stop additional spread within the schools, and we monitor those secondary cases,” Abele said.
A secondary case is defined as a person infected with COVID-19 on the school premise. A tertiary case is the scenario in which someone else is infected with COVID-19 due to exposure from an infected student at school.
The board of education voted unanimously to move to optional masking for students 72 hours after the local mask mandate expires. Masking indoors would become optional for staff as well if Orange County is not designated in high community transmission and staff vaccination rates are above 90 percent.
The board said masking may still be required for any students and staff who test positive for COVID in the five days following their return to campus.
Sylvia Compton, a district lead nurse, said turnout at the testing sites and vaccination clinics has been low.
“Two weeks ago, we held a vaccination clinic at New Hope and we had 12 come out and get vaccination,” Compton said. “That was for 5-to-11-year old’s. Last week we had a vaccination clinic at Efland Cheeks and we had six [people].”
In addition to the mask mandate discussion, the board heard comments on COVID-19 testing for athletes and participants in extracurriculars.
Abele said the recommendation would end COVID-19 testing for unvaccinated athletes and participants in extracurricular activities, but would continue to provide optional testing opportunities as needed.
“We would want to help facilitate that,” Abele said. “We would make it optional. We would have our testing program, allow them our weekly COVID testing, our diagnostic testing that we have on the campus. We want to continue offering optional testing on the school campus whether it’s staff or students.”
While the initial date to stop required COVID-19 testing was March 1, the OCS board voted to make it optional immediately.
Compton said the district has 496 students of an eligible 7,000 signed up for optional testing.
Other changes passed by the board include the removal of the test to stay program which no longer requires quarantine following a potential exposure in the school environment. Additionally, individual contact tracing and exclusion from school because of an exposure is also no longer recommended.
While Orange County Schools voted to lift its mask mandate once the county does, Chatham County schools previously announced their plans to gradually lift the mask mandate on or around March 7.
Featured Photo via Peyton Sickles
Chapelboro.com does not charge subscription fees, and you can directly support our efforts in local journalism here. Want more of what you see on Chapelboro? Let us bring free local news and community information to you by signing up for our biweekly newsletter.
