COVID booster not required for most vaccinated Wake students to avoid quarantines
The Wake County school system is encouraging students to get vaccinated for COVID-19 but won’t require most pupils to get the booster to avoid being quarantined from school.
The Wake County school system updated its health guidance over the weekend to say that students ages 5 to 17 who’ve received both doses of the COVID-19 vaccine don’t need a booster to stay in school if they’ve been exposed to the virus. To be eligible, vaccinated students in that age group must show they’re not having any COVID symptoms.
Wake’s revisions come after the state Department of Health and Human Services on Friday updated its Strong Schools Toolkit, which lists COVID requirements and guidelines for North Carolina’s public schools. State health officials say the update is based on guidance from the federal Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.
“Our health guidance follows requirements from the NC Department of Health and Human Services and recommendations from Wake County Public Health,” according to the district’s website.
CDC recommends booster for students
Pfizer has the only COVID-19 vaccine that children in the U.S. can receive. Last week, the CDC authorized boosters for children ages 12 to 15 after having approved it for 16- and 17-year-olds in December.
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The CDC is recommending that children ages 12 to 17 get a booster as soon as possible, which would be at least five months after receiving their initial two doses of the Pfizer vaccine.
The COVID-19 vaccine isn’t required for K-12 students in North Carolina. But the Wake County school system, which is the state’s largest district, has repeatedly urged students and school employees to get vaccinated.
The U.S. Supreme Court is reviewing a federal mandate that requires employers with more than 100 workers to vaccinate their staff or give their staff weekly COVID tests.
The debate over vaccines comes as new COVID-19 cases reach record levels due to the omicron variant. So many Wake school bus drivers are absent due to COVID-19 that bus service is being disrupted, forcing some families to arrange their own transportation.
Reducing school COVID-19 quarantines
There’s growing pressure to reduce the number of school days students miss due to COVID-19. Some students have missed weeks of classes — even when they don’t test positive for COVID-19 — because they were exposed to someone who has the virus.
On Dec. 30, DHHS updated the toolkit to reduce school quarantine times. The quarantine time was shortened to five days both for any person who tests positive for COVID-19 and for unvaccinated people who are exposed to the virus but who do not have symptoms.
DHHS also began saying that vaccinated people who’ve been exposed to COVID-19 who are not showing symptoms can stay in school. DHHS clarified the language Friday, saying the vaccination requirement didn’t include boosters for people ages 5 to 17 who “have completed a primary series of COVID-19 vaccines.”
Under both DHHS and Wake County school guidelines, vaccinated people ages 18 and over who’ve been exposed to COVID-19 have to quarantine unless they’ve received the booster or not yet eligible to be boosted.
Wake rushed to communicate the reduced quarantine rules before schools reopened last week from winter break. Wake County Superintendent Cathy Moore called the reduced quarantine lengths a “positive sign in terms of what we’re seeing in our schools and making sure that we’re maintaining that priority on daily in-person instruction.”
This story was originally published January 10, 2022 at 1:17 PM.
