Update from the School Nurses

Welcome back ANCS families! We hope you had a restful and healthy break. We wanted to share a few health updates as we all return to school.

On January 2, Atlanta Public Schools announced their updated COVID-19 guidance. Students who are not vaccinated and are identified as close contacts of a positive case (in the school setting) will no longer be required to quarantine, as long as they remain without symptoms. However, they should continue to take precautions for 10 days following exposure, including wearing a well-fitting mask, monitoring for symptoms and getting tested at least once within the 10 day exposure period. Contact tracing is no longer required, but we will continue to notify you via email if your child’s class has an identified positive case.

The Test to Stay (additional Tuesday testing) program has been discontinued and we will now only be offering surveillance testing on Fridays. Testing is mandatory for all faculty/staff and open to any student with parental consent. You can continue to check the Health and Wellness page for updates here. Bivalent COVID boosters are available for all school age children – please consider having your child vaccinated/boosted if possible.

We have been seeing surges in viral illnesses such as influenza in the past few weeks. If your child is not feeling well please keep them at home and let them rest. If your child has a fever, they need to remain home from school until they have been fever free for at least 24 hours without fever reducing medications.

Don’t hesitate to reach out if you have any questions or concerns.

We hope that 2023 is off to a great start and we are wishing you all a wonderful first week back from break!

Nurse Hicks and Nurse Leslye