How do they decide who to isolate?

[Suzyeve]

Does anyone know exactly how they decide who needs to isolate when cvid cases are within a school? I know it's to do with time spent with the person and how close to the person, but does anyone know the exact details of this? For example, if you've been less than 1m from someone with it , but for only a couple of minutes, would you be asked to isolate?
Thanks for any info x

At my school, when we had a positive case, I was asked had i spent 15 minutes or more 1-2 metres away, or 5 minutes 1 metre or less away unmasked, or any time less than a metre away in face-to-face conversation.

Thank you.. Did this include outside? x

In primary it is the whole bubble who isolates.
In secondary it’s close contacts unless your staff and then your expected to be 2m away from anyone else at all times. Close contacts would depend how close and the length of time. I don’t think being outside makes any difference to this.
So less than 1m away would generally make you a close contact.

In our school it's via the seating plan, then friendship group.

starrynight19
My DS has just done a 2 week isolation but only about 5 or 6 of them in the class were asked to isolate (year 6)

Do you have children at school? You need to ask the school rather than assume that all schools are the same

Depends on the school! my DD school and Dsis school, same type of infection transmitted (A Dinner Lady) my DSis school sent 1yr group home My DD school has sent home 4yr groups (inc DD!!)

Thank you everyone. I work in a school and just wanted to understand more. I do think I might have been overlooked so will ask tomorrow. Just wanted to see if I could understand in advance. Hadn't realised it would be different depending on the school. Thanks for the replies x

@MillieVanilla

In our school it's via the seating plan, then friendship group.

Snap

And teacher exposure

@starrynight19

In primary it is the whole bubble who isolates. In secondary it’s close contacts unless your staff and then your expected to be 2m away from anyone else at all times. Close contacts would depend how close and the length of time. I don’t think being outside makes any difference to this. So less than 1m away would generally make you a close contact.

That's not true for primary. They are not closing bubbles down in all primaries - lots of schools here in London are sending home close contacts only and not the whole of the bubble. Even when teachers are testing positive, lots of schools are not closing the bubble and only the teacher is isolating. My mum works in a school and a teacher had tested positive - teacher doesn't stay 2m away from children - but as the DfE (track and trace for schools department) believe that teacher's are, they are not advising the school to not send children home. There is much inconsistency across the country as to what schools are doing and what they are advised to do.

I work in a school and we follow the public health guidelines which are (in summary) within 1m for a minute, within 2m for 15 minutes or any physical contact.
For the little ones we are isolating the whole class because you can’t expect them to keep these distances or grill them on whether they have. For year 7 up we look at seating plans and then ask who they have been spending time with at lunch etc so can narrow it down much more.

The key timeframe is the 48 hours before symptoms started or before the test was taken if there were no symptoms.

Schools shouldn’t be doing anything radically different to this they might just have slightly different interpretations or levels of risk aversion.

Hope that helps

I don’t think schools make the decision themselves. As far as I know, if there is a confirmed case then the school has to take direct advice from public health and act on their specific guidance. Otherwise there would be too much disparity.

We do take advice but the advice is to identify contacts meeting them criteria I’ve mentioned above... they don’t specifically tell us who to isolate. They only get involved if you have lots of cases - we had two in one year group and they said if we had a third that they would have a virtual meeting with us to review (thankfully we didn’t). Local public health officials may deal with things slightly differently in different areas though.

*the criteria not them

@Suzyeve

Thank you.. Did this include outside? x

No indoors only