January 15, 2021 9:20 a.m.

The Oregon Health Authority will release new COVID-19 contact tracing and notification recommendations for K-12 settings to lessen the overall burden of contact tracing on K-12 schools, while ensuring school staff and health officials continue tracing, and reporting high-risk exposures.

An OHA release said under the updated guidelines, Oregon will no longer consider masked contact in K-12 settings, including school buses, to be an exposure, regardless of distancing. The updated guidance will strongly advise students and staff to maintain physical distancing to the greatest extent possible.

OHA said the new recommendations are based on accumulated evidence that layered mitigation efforts in K-12 schools have worked well to minimize transmission and that the vast majority has occurred following indoor unmasked contact.

Schools that employed universal masking in K-12 settings will continue to perform contact tracing for exposures that occur during unmasked lunchroom encounters, as well as unmasked extracurricular encounters. The Oregon Department of Education strongly recommends all schools immediately develop stable lunch cohorts – table groups, lunch bunches and other group situations – where this is not already the practice. If a case occurs within a lunch cohort, the entire lunch cohort group should be considered exposed. Stable cohorts significantly reduce the burden of contact tracing.

Support for members of school communities who test positive for COVID-19 can be accessed through the COVID-19 Case Support Hotline at 866-917-8881 or from the Positive COVID Test website: https://govstatus.egov.com/or-oha-covid-19-positive-test?utm_medium=email&utm_source=govdelivery