Reply to Reopening schools and excluding sick kids (questions)

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[quote=Anonymous]My son hasn't been feeling well for the past few days. It started with a headache and cough on Tuesday, no fever. If we were in person school, would he need to stay home that day? It seemed like allergies.

The next two days the cough continued. He had a day with stomach issues and slept more than usual. He is not incapacitated, but somewhat off his game. Should he have stayed home during that time?

The cough is still there today. He feels tired still and has a headache. He also now has a sore throat. At this point, he might have been out of school for 4 days (or not).

I called the pediatrician to see if I can get him tested. I mean if he has the virus, then we should not go out, right? Or do we assume that he has it?  If we make that assumption, does that mean that he misses two weeks of school potentially for allergies and we miss 2 weeks of work based on symptoms that could be allergies?

There are no walk-in testing places close by. Most require an appointment. I call the pediatrician to ask for an appointment at one of the emissions testing sites nearby. They inform me that they are scheduling him for a telemedicine appointment later today, which must be conducted before they set up the appointment at the emissions center. So we have to wait until later in the day for that appointment before they tell whether we are being referred for a testing appointment. Will the testing appointment be today? Next week? And if it is next week and the test results take 3 days  to come back, he would have missed more than a week of school by that time for the sniffles and a headache. What about the rest of us? Do we stay home until we know? I could take him to urgent care, but that may require sitting in a waiting room which I don't want to do.
 
I was under the impression from the Governor Hogan's press conferences that anyone who wants a test can get one. That may be true, you can't necessarily get one when you want one (at a time that works with your schedule). There are few "no appointment" sites. In a case like my son's, parents will have to incur copays for telehealth visits for every minor sniffle just to be safe and respectful of others or go to school with a mild symptoms and hope for the best (which may get the kid sent home).

In my scenario, when do you call the doctor or go to urgent care? The first day he coughs? When there is a mild sore throat? There has been no fever at any time. He is just mildly ill. What would you do under these circumstances during the school year?  When do you stay home? Is fever the determining factor? Are all kids with coughs excluded from school? Is the burden on the family to get a test for a mildly ill child before he can return to school? The  more people you have making these decisions the more people are going to send sick kids to school.

Under normal circumstances, this wouldn't warrant a call to a doctor, let alone a visit. If you have to isolate for even mild illness, how can a kid get an education?  If there is are parallel online academic offerings (in person and online), will the online offerings be with a student's actual teachers? How might this work?

In a perfect world we would have onsite rapid tests so that anyone feeling unwell could ask for one. Maybe there is a way to isolate kids who have mild symptoms in the school, such allowing extra space in classrooms for them to keep even more distance from classmates? Or maybe a few desks have plexiglass partitions? 10 days plus days of isolation if you have any cough or fever, etc. will result in quite a bit of missed school. Please don't say it is always this way with cold and flu. The medical and public health guidance differs during influenza and other outbreaks.  This won't be just any like other year.

I am not saying this is a reason to close schools or arguing the merits of whether school needs to be full-time F2F. I'm just asking what you think should happen. 
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