The Community of Madrid will not establish quarantines for cases of Covid-19 for students who have administered the complete vaccination schedule, as established by the General Directorate of Public Health, in accordance with the reduction of the viral load associated with people vaccinated with complete guideline and technical criteria that are about to be closed at the national level.
Before the start of the new school year on Tuesday, the Deputy Minister of Health Assistance and Public Health, Antonio Zapatero, and the general director of Public Health, Elena Andradas, have detailed these new guidelines for action in schools at the press conference of update of the epidemiological and healthcare situation of the Community of Madrid this Friday.
Thus, the indication of quarantine to close contacts will be made according to the vaccination status and conditioned by the age of the student, since currently vaccination is established after 12 years. As a general rule, those vaccinated with a complete schedule or who have had the disease in the previous 6 months will not need to do the forty if they are in close contact with an infected student.
However, if among close contacts the proportion of vaccinated is low, quarantine will be indicated and the rest of the class will continue with normal educational activity. They will also quarantine a student or teacher vaccinated with a complete schedule with immunosuppression.
The General Directorate of Public Health will mark with the Covid coordinators the specific actions classroom by classroom and depending on the specificity of each case or outbreak, as explained later by the Madrid Executive.
General actions
The Ministries of Health and Education will adopt all the necessary measures to reduce the probability of transmission of coronavirus. In this sense, the General Directorate of Public Health has recalled a person (teacher, or student or other staff) who develops symptoms compatible with Covid-19 should not go to the educational center.
Neither should those who are in a period of isolation due to a Covid diagnosis or quarantine due to being in close contact with a diagnosed person.
In the face of a person who develops symptoms at school, they will be taken to a well-ventilated individual room and the Covid-19 coordinator of the educational center will be contacted. The affected person must remain in isolation at home until the result of a diagnostic test is known . The siblings of the suspected case who are schooled in the same center will also stay at home, as they are close cohabiting contacts.
Quarantine maintenance
If the test is positive, the affected person will have to do isolation for 10 days and up to three days after the disappearance of the symptoms. No additional testing is required to lift isolation or to rejoin school activity.
The Covid-19 coordinator of the center will inform the General Directorate of Public Health through a digital platform enabled to carry out epidemiological research. When defining who are close contacts, it will be assessed whether prevention and hygiene measures have been effectively followed (mask, distance, classroom ventilation and hand washing).
If the case belongs to a group with stable coexistence, close contacts will be considered to the whole group. Otherwise, the distance of less than 1.5 meters around the case will be assessed for more than 15 minutes, unless proper use of the mask is guaranteed.
As happened in the previous school year, each educational center will designate a Covid coordinator for which online seminars are already organized in order to present the update of all the measures
