Students at RES

On Tuesday January 25, the Virginia Department of Health announced that it is no longer conducting contact tracing in most circumstances, stating that “Omicron is now the most common COVID-19 variant and is spreading so quickly, it is not possible or fruitful to track every case.” The Virginia Department of Health is now focusing its efforts on responding to COVID-19 clusters and outbreaks in high-risk settings, as well as promoting disease prevention and mitigation strategies.   

Throughout the COVID-19 pandemic, our school division has monitored school level and community data.  Over the past two weeks, we have observed a decrease in our number of reported positive COVID-19 student and staff cases in school.  Effective Monday February 14, we will make the following adjustments to our COVID-19 procedures:

  • School health teams will no longer be performing contact tracing to identify school-based close contacts.  

  • While positive COVID-19 case counts will continue to be updated weekly on our COVID-19 dashboard, principals will no longer send daily notifications of positive cases in their schools.  Principals will continue to provide notifications of any school-based outbreaks, if outbreaks occur.

  • Students and staff who are identified as close contacts from a positive case in their homes or in the community will still need to quarantine.