We are fielding a lot of calls at our health department regarding COVID-19 testing and the process for awaiting test results with regard to students or staff who are members of your school system. Therefore, following are our current recommendations (as of 3/12/20) for that:
1. If a student or staff member is being tested for COVID-19: the student/staff member (only the person being tested) is to stay home to await test results. Depending upon the particular lab that is utilized by their health provider, those tests will take approximately 2-5 days to come back with a result. Thus, that student or staff member being tested is to stay home (self-quarantine) until results are known. In terms of cleaning of the classroom in this instance – it is always good to give those surfaces a good cleaning/disinfecting, but no special measures for cleaning (beyond normal/customary disinfecting) are required.
2. For household family members/persons of someone being tested for COVID-19: it is not our recommendation that those people be excluded from school or work (this is assuming that those household family members are NOT ill themselves– sick people should not be going to school or work anyway). At this time, it is not our recommendation that family members or children/students which reside in the same household of someone being tested be excluded. Your school may have a stricter policy on how you are dealing with these household individuals; however, we wanted to provide you ELVPHD’s office guidance on that. I do want to state that there are always exceptions to the rule or extenuating circumstances. If there was a particularly HIGH RISK individual situation that we believe would warrant household members staying home during a pending test situation, we will work through those individually; however, these extenuating scenarios have been very rare.
As this situation evolves, we are now starting to see (just in the past day or two) where some clinics are beginning to process COVID-19 labs through commercial laboratories (this means the clinic specimens are being sent to a lab other than the Nebraska Public Health Lab). With this process, the order for testing is not something that we (Elkhorn Logan Valley Public Health Department) will know on the front end because we are not affiliated with the commercial labs. In this case, we are informed of the pending test at the discretion of the medical provider ordering the test being sent to commercial lab. Unfortunately, we have no control over whether we are notified or not.
I wanted to explain this process directly to you as we have gotten calls from some schools stating that “x” person reported to them that they were staying home (from work/school) because there is a pending COVID-19 test for them (which is what the person should be doing). In some instances, this notification to us from the school is the first time that we are apprised of a particular test due to the abovementioned ability for commercial labs to process tests outside of the Nebraska Public Health Lab. We do appreciate this communication, as it helps us to keep an eye on pending tests in our health district. Please continue to reach out to us as you have questions/concerns, and we will address those questions back as quickly as we can.
In closing…please keep in mind that there will be MANY, MANY more negative tests than positive. The symptoms of COVID-19 resemble many other common illnesses. As we begin to see more accelerated testing throughout the country (and in our own area), please continue to exercise prudent judgement and patience as we work through this process together. I will keep you informed as guidance updates are made.
Thank you,
Melissa Nemec, MBA
Assistant Health Director
Elkhorn Logan Valley Public Health Department
