Gabe Rushing Disease Control, Early Childhood, Environmental Health

School-based Testing is Important & Free: Get Your School With the Program!

Ideally we’d have a governor and health department director that support evidence-based interventions to prevent COVID-19 infections in K-12 schools while maximizing the chance for in-person instruction by supporting CDC’s Guidance for COVID-19 Prevention in K-12 Schools.

Sadly, that’s not the deck that Arizona voters dealt us. We’ve been dealt a hand that includes a governor who is actively hostile toward universal indoor K-12 masking and a health director unwilling to push back.

That doesn’t mean schools are helpless. Identifying COVID cases early and removing infected kids and their unvaccinated close contacts can prevent cascades of classroom cases and improve the chances for in-person school.

A key to making that happen is school-based testing. Fortunately, classroom COVID testing will be much easier this fall because of the American Rescue Plan Act.  Arizona received $219M CDC to pay for voluntary COVID-19 testing in schools at no cost to schools.

These federal funds allow schools to do both diagnostic testing of symptomatic kids and staff and surveillance screening testing to help schools identify infected individuals without symptoms so they can take action to prevent further transmission.

Pooled Testing

Thanks to the Rescue Plan Act schools can implement routine ‘pooled testing’ of asymptomatic kids for free, including administrative and technical support.

Here’s how it works. The free technical support team comes to the school and coordinates the sampling. Samples from multiple students in the same classroom are combined and taken to a Sonora Quest Lab’s main facility in Phoenix. The pooled specimen is analyzed the same day as collection (using PCR).  Results are available in less than 24 hours. If the test is negative, all students in the pool are presumed negative and no further action is necessary.

If the pooled test is positive, students in the positive pool are tested the next morning using the BinaxNOW 15-minute antigen test to determine which student is positive.

The biggest “game-changer” for schools that use pooled testing is that the program provides free technical and administrative on-site support to minimize the burden on staff. Healthcare providers manage all collection and logistical activities on all testing days taking the burden off school staff.

It’s all 100% federally funded making it reasonable for any district or school to implement. Of course, the program is voluntary both for schools and for parents and kids participate only if their parent provides consent.

Schools interested in exploring this opportunity can visit this K-12 Pooled Testing Website and email healthyschools@azdhs.gov to get started.

Rapid Testing

Last semester, schools generally needed to partner with a community lab that is CLIA certified to do on-site rapid testing. The availability of the new Over-the-Counter BinaxNOW Rapid COVID-19 Test means that schools will no longer need to partner with a lab. On top of that, the Rescue Plan Act provides more than enough CDC money for the state and counties to buy the test kits and for schools to use them routinely for screening.

Arizona’s county health departments have been buying the BinaxNOW at-home testing kits and making them available to schools. Schools can ask their county health department for free test kits. Most counties (including Maricopa) have the BinaxNOW kits. In Maricopa County, schools can order these test kits through their School Resource Request Tool.

Schools can use the kits in ways they prefer. They could have tests available in the nurses or administrative offices and could do on-site testing (with parental consent of course). Alternatively, they can just send a kid home with the rapid test kit in their backpack and ask the parent to do the test at home. Results come in about 15 minutes.

Here is a comprehensive PowerPoint explaining the importance of school based testing: TFS Assets for APHA – Dropbox

Summary

Even though our governor is actively hostile toward universal indoor K-12 masking, schools still have tools to prevent classroom infections. Routine testing to identify COVID cases and removing infected kids and their unvaccinated close contacts can prevent cascades of classroom cases and improve the chances for in-person school.

Thanks to the Rescue Plan Act, schools can implement free routine testing in classrooms this fall.  They can use a pooled testing approach (which comes with free administrative and technical support) or use rapid tests.  Both approaches are free, and provide critical information that schools can use to keep kids safer this fall and minimize cascading cases that result in unnecessary distance learning.

Make sure to ask your school principal what their testing plan is. If they don’t have a testing plan, send them to this blog post to get them started!

SCHOOL TESTING INFOGRAPHIC

Gabe Rushing Disease Control, Early Childhood, Wills Blog

Ducey, Christ & Harrier Cave on School Threats

There is some good news when it comes to COVID & schools this fall. Testing kids for COVID will be much easier this fall partly because of the American Rescue Plan Act.

During the previous fall and spring semesters, there was some testing capacity at schools, but it wasn’t adequate to really do good testing and surveillance. That will change for two reasons this fall.

Number one is that the American Rescue Plan Act provides significant dollars to the state and county health departments so they can purchase tests to give to schools. Number two is that there’s a new rapid (antigen) test which has been given FDA Authorization that makes it much easier for schools to use.

Last semester, schools generally needed to partner with a community lab that is CLIA certified to do on-site testing. The availability of the new Over-the-Counter BinaxNOW Rapid COVID-19 Test means that schools will no longer need to partner with a lab. On top of that, the Rescue Plan Act provides more than enough money for the state and counties to buy the test kits.

And that’s exactly what the state and many county health departments are doing…  buying these at-home testing kits and making them available to schools.

Schools will have the ability to use the kits in ways they prefer. They could, for example, have tests available in the nurses or administrative offices and could do on-site testing (with parental consent of course). Alternatively, they may choose to send a kid home with the rapid test kit and ask the parent to do the testing.

In any event, it’s not all bad news at schools despite the poor decisions that have been made by the governor and state health director. Testing will be much more widely available this fall, and schools will have more tools to identify kids with COVID.

Gabe Rushing Disease Control, Public Health, State Legislature

Budget Bills Lock Into Law Ducey and Christ’s Micromanagement of K-12, Universities, Community Colleges, Cities, Counties and Businesses

HARMFUL RESTRICTIONS ON THE ACTIONS THAT CAN BE TAKEN BY SCHOOLS, BUSINESSES, CITIES AND COUNTIES FROM EXECUTIVE ORDERS WILL BECOME ACTUAL LAW

As I wrote about last week, Ducey & Christ have been consistently misusing the Public Health Emergency authority in ways that harm the COVID-19 response.

The purpose of declaring a public health emergency is to give governors and health directors authority to do things that they normally can’t… allowing them to conduct interventions to help mitigate the public health crisis using authority that they don’t normally have.

Sadly, rather than use their emergency authority for good things, they have been using it to prevent cities, counties, K-12, businesses, universities, and community colleges from doing things that they want to do to manage COVID in their organizations (see this blog post on their misuse of emergency authority).

Ducey & Christ have no interest in lifting the emergency declaration anytime soon because they are enjoying the authority that the public health emergency declaration gives them to micromanage cities, counties, businesses, the K-12 system, universities and community colleges.

However, during the budget negotiations, some legislators conditioned their support of the budget on rescinding the state of emergency.

Ducey and Christ responded by locking in their restrictions on K-12, universities, businesses, community colleges, cities, and counties by including their harmful restrictions on those entities into a budget reconciliation bill (SB 1819).

SB 1819 Prohibits a county, city or town from making or issuing any order, rule, ordinance or regulation related to mitigating the COVID-19 pandemic that impacts private businesses, schools, churches or other private entities, including an order, rule, ordinance or regulation that mandates the use of face coverings, requires closing a business or imposes a curfew.

In addition, Ducey & Christ ensured that school districts can’t  require masks this fall (even elementary school students – who will not qualify for the vaccine by fall). They were able to insert this language into the K-12 budget bill – HB 2898:

15-342.05. Face coverings; requirement prohibition

A school district governing board may not require the use of face coverings by students or staff…

Likewise, they locked in their executive order restrictions on university and community college COVID intervention strategies by inserting the following language into the higher education BRB (HB 2897):

15-1650.05. COVID-19 vaccine; face covering; testing

A public university or a community college may not require that a student obtain a COVID-19 vaccine or place any conditions on attendance or participation in classes including mandatory testing or face covering usage.

In other news, SB 1819 puts substantial limitations on the ability of  a future  governor and a health director to declare a public health emergency. SB 1819:

  • Caps the next governor’s initial public health state of emergency at 30 days (beginning 2/2/23).

  • Allows the next governor to extend a public health emergency for up to 120 days and prohibits subsequent extensions to 30 days.

  • Terminates a public health emergency after 120 days unless extended by the Legislature.

  • Allows the Legislature to extend the state of emergency, limiting extensions to 30 days.

Editorial Note: I’m not sure whether SB 1819 is good or not. If we were to have a public health emergency in the future with a thoughtful governor and compassionate & competent health director, limits on their emergency authority would be bad.

However, if we face a future public health emergency with persons like Ducey and Christ again, the limitations would be good, as they are now, on balance, using their emergency authority for bad rather than good things.

The entire package is expected to be sent to the governor and rubber-stamped before midnight Wednesday.