INDIANAPOLIS – A child who returns to school this fall may go through the next morning routine: his parents check him for COVID-19 symptoms, take a socially remote bus and a college member, such as a school nurse, play a final exam at the front of the school before letting them through the door.
As students return to classes, many school districts have incorporated regimen symptom screenings into their reopening plans. But its effectiveness and feasibility in preventing the spread of COVID-19 in schools remains uncertain.
Adam Karcz, director of infection prevention at Riley Children’s Hospital at Indiana University, said detection is limited for a variety of reasons, adding the fact that the new coronavirus has many symptoms with non-unusual diseases like influenza and that not everyone else with COVID-19 will have one.
“COVID-19 is unique to the challenge,” Karcz said, “that it can spread without having or without symptoms of you being sick.”
While screening could possibly prevent the spread of coronavirus, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention does not propose universal aptitude tests or COVID-19 tests in schools because of these limitations.
That’s why Karcz says school districts combine symptom detection with other mitigation tactics.
“Projections are a component of the puzzle,” Karcz said. “The other parts of this puzzle that can see that are being configured are universal masking, social estrangement, hand hygiene and additional disinfection.”
But symptom detection isn’t just done in schools. Karcz said parents marry districts to save them from spreading the community.
“We all have a public and social duty in relieving COVID-19 and the community,” Karcz said. “If a child is in poor health or shows symptoms or symptoms, parents will know better.”
According to Linda Mendonca, elected president of the National Association of School Nurses, different cases for schools can make this symbol unrealistic.
“With projections to enter construction on a daily basis,” Mendonca said, “logistically, that’s a lot.”
Parents who care about screening their children for symptoms also ease the burden of locating contacts in school nurses, which Mendonca says will disperse as schools reopen.
About 3 out of 10 schools in the Midwest have a nurse and about one in 3 have a full-time nurse in 2017, according to the knowledge of the Journal of Nursing School.
Although the Indiana Department of Education reported that about 70% of school nurses worked full-time on a construction site in 2018, it accounted for about part of the state’s schools in its survey.
“How do you open a school nurse? Mendonca said. “It’s a challenge.”
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Lack of investment for nursing systems in schools will only make nurses more vulnerable to COVID-19 infections, Mendonca said. It will also make academics vulnerable.
“Protecting academics and staff is the priority here,” Mendonca said. “This is what you will have to consider when making decisions.”
That’s why Mendonca believes schools are doing everything they can to mitigate community expansion, in any case.
“Things are replaced every day,” Mendoca said. “Scientists need to be more informed about COVID-19 every day, so it’s very difficult to know how it will develop in schools.”