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[quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous]Can we try and figure something out here? It’s been bothering me.

The notices about positive cases often come many days after the notice says the person was “last in the building.” I’ve had several people complain to me that this represents a la if transparency from DCPS. And at first I agreed with them. But then my partner pointed something out and now I don’t know what to think.

Basically, my partner’s argument is that this is what happens:
Day 1- person present in school building
Day 2- person gets Covid test
Day 3-5- person receives positive result (varies based on lab backlog), alerts school
Day 4-7- Contact tracing and close contacts alerted and quarantined
Day 5-8- Notice to school community if positive

Their argument is this is why it takes 5+ days to alert the community. They can’t alert before there is a positive test because otherwise lots of the notices would be withdrawn when it turned out it wasn’t Covid. And preference is given to informing close contacts, which makes sense. It’s not a conspiracy to inform communities late, it’s just the process takes a while.

Your partner sounds very reasonable and like they have some experience with managing complex communication cycles. What you may also want to note is that the Antigen tests are not nearly as reliable and often produce a false negative. You can look up more about how CDC recommends they are used in community settings at: https://www.cdc.gov/coronavirus/2019-ncov/lab/resources/antigen-tests-guidelines.html#anchor_1631295290762.  (My read (as a total lay person) is that antigen tests are good if a person is symptomatic and test positive. If you are symptomatic and test negative, it really shouldn't be used to demonstrate you are free of COVID. For those folks going to concerts and events using rapid antigen tests for admission...watch out, that is not up to CDC standard guidance.)

Back to the communications lags- I would also say that weekends/holidays tend to extend the notice windows because people are not all working at 100% capacity to crank out the notices.

This makes sense to me even though DCPS has a terrible track record with communication. Seems they could shorten the process if they used rapid antigen tests to ascertain positives, instead of relying on PCR tests that must be processed in a lab. Don’t know if that’s feasible though.[/quote][/quote]

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