Omicron Variant Now in 39 U.S. States, White House Says

U.S. health officials are endorsing "test-to-stay" policies that allow close contacts of students infected with the coronavirus to remain in classrooms if they test negative.

The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention decided to more firmly embrace the approach, already used by many school districts, after research of such policies in the Chicago and Los Angeles areas found COVID-19 infections did not increase when using the approach.

At the White House COVID briefing, Walensky called 'Test to Stay' a "promising and now proven strategy."

She said the CDC studies released today of experiments in Lake County, Il. and Los Angeles County "demonstrate that Test to Stay works to keep unvaccinated children in school safely."

For the strategy to work, children must wear their masks correctly, close contacts of a positive case were monitored and stayed home if they got sick, and those who did not get sick were regularly tested.

"Test to stay is an encouraging public health practice to keep our children in school," Walensky said.

CDC's official guidance for schools has been that when someone in a school tests positive for COVID-19 infection, those who were deemed to be in close contact should stay out of school, in home quarantine, for 10 days.

With the announcement Friday, the CDC is saying both test-to-stay programs and quarantining approaches are both equally good options for schools.

Hundreds of schools have adopted test-to-stay policies, and several states have funded statewide test-to-stay policies to prevent students from spending long stretches away from school.

One was in suburban Lake County, Illinois, just north of Chicago, which adopted a program in August. Close contacts were allowed to stay in school provided both the infected person and close contact were masked when an exposure might have happened, the close contact had no symptoms, and the close contact was tested one, three, five and seven days after exposure to the infected person.

Infections developed in only 16 of the more than 1,000 close contacts who were tracked, a transmission rate of about 1.5%. Health officials deemed it a successful approach that allowed many students to stay in school.

Similar results were reported in a similar study that looked at what happened this fall in schools in Los Angeles County, California.

Researchers counted 7,511 student close contacts in schools that tried the strategy, and the secondary infection rate was 0.7%.

Also, during Fridays briefing White House officials affirmed that Omicron is expected to be the dominant coronavirus strain in the United States this winter but said "this is not a moment to panic because we know how to protect people. And we have the tools to do it."

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