Change in contact tracing nightmare for NG School District

By Editor | January 26, 2022 |

By Carmen Ensinger

When the State of Illinois took over contact tracing from county health departments at the end of December, no one knew what impact it was going to have on communities. It has taken less than a month to find out that maybe it wasn’t such a good idea after all.
Prior to the implementation of the new system, anyone who tested positive, their name was given to the Health Department and the Health Department asked them who they were in close contact with and contacted those people and told them what precautions to take.
Now, that information is given to the State. The State simply sends out an email with a link to information on what an individual needs to do if they were close to someone who tested positive.
According to North Greene Superintendent Mark Scott, the new system is not working. Scott told his board at their Jan. 19 school board meeting that the new system is basically a “nightmare.”
“The Greene County Health Department was doing a good job, but since the State has taken over, it is a nightmare,” he said. “Not only has it messed up my report on numbers of those out with COVID and those out on quarantine.”
Scott said that when the Health Department was in charge, he could have accurate numbers within a day or two at the most. But now that he has to enter the information into ICares, there is at least a three-day lag.
“I can only report the numbers I get and there is a significant lag on that and when we get 30 to 40 cases a day I’m going to be two to three days behind and its going to be an ever-changing number,” he said. “I can fill out we have 12 cases, but by noon we might have 30. I try to update it at least once a day.”
Scott explained that this revolved around the five-day quarantine period after testing positive.
“Normally, a kid can come back after five days if they have no symptoms and they are not exposed to any more positives,” he said. “We had a family with two children who tested positive – on day five, the mom came up positive. It is not our nurses’ job to do all that contact tracing.”
Another question came up concerning a student in sports doing a five-day quarantine being allowed to participate in sports.
“No where could we find where it said they couldn’t participate in sports but the Health Department said he had to stay out for five days,” Scott said. “I told them to show me in the guidance. So I started digging. I found three different pieces of guidance from the ISBE, IDPH and CDC and they all say the same thing – students may resume all activities as long as they are asymptomatic and remain masked.”
Scott said the Health Department’s response was that the reason they can’t participate in sports is because they don’t wear the masks correctly. Scott said that is not his problem.
“If the coaches, athletic directors, principals, other teams, IHSA, ISBE or whatever – if they want to send someone to enforce them – then so be it,” he said. “I don’t have time for that and it is a battle I’m not fighting. I’m not adding five more days of not participating because guidance says they have to wear a mask till day 10 because they are supposed to wear one anyway. Until I get some different guidance, we are going to keep doing what we are doing and move forward. I’m not fighting a losing battle.”
While the State is supposed to be doing the contact tracing, the district is find that much of it is falling onto them and they simply do not have the resources to do it.
High School Principal Amanda Macias said the Health Department told them that they were not going to do contact tracing – it was up to the school nurse and secretary to do it.
Scott said they don’t have the staff to do that.
“If they keep putting pressure on us, we are not even going to test,” he said. “We are not doing the contact tracing – we don’t’ have the staff, time or resources to do it. When they make it more difficult than it needs to be it just gets old.”
Scott gave an example of how confusing the ICares system is using his own son, who tested positive and was entered into the system.
“I got a text message of what we should do,” he said. “They never gave me any dates of when he could go back to school or anything. All I knew was he tested positive. The Health Department did follow up with me, though.”
Scott said he has reached a point where he has said enough is enough.
“This reporting thing has gotten out of hand,” he said. “If we get a positive, enter it into the computer that goes to the State. After that, I told our nurses not to worry about it. If the State can’t follow up with it – its not our problem.”