Healthy in Hopkins

 Hopkins Public Schools is not able to monitor the travel activities of families or staff. However, we can share the guidance provided by CDC and MDH guidelines. The highlights of these guidelines are as follows. 

• Although out of state travel is discouraged, MDH recommends a quarantine period of 14 days after returning to Minnesota. 

• After returning to Minnesota, it is recommended that families and scholars test 3-5 days later. Find free COVID-19 saliva testing sites here.

• International travel requires a negative COVID test to return to the United States. 

• Those who received their second vaccination more than two weeks before their travel date can travel without a recommended quarantine.  

• Those who decide to travel should consider the community spread in the area they are visiting, their ability to socially distance, their close contacts and whether they have had the opportunity to get vaccinated. 

Please consider these guidelines with your travel plans in mind. As always, our ability to continue to provide in-person learning depends on all of us. We can see the end of the pandemic nearing, but we need to get through this last final stretch. Thank you for your partnership. 

Symptoms of COVID-19:
If anyone in your household has these symptoms no one should attend school.

In most cases, a negative COVID-19 test will be needed for the persons with symptoms before anyone can return to school.  A positive test with a doctor’s note identifying another form of illness or condition such as an allergy will allow return to school. Otherwise the sick person will need to self isolate for 10 days or until symptoms go away (whichever occurs last) or scholars in close contact to the sick person will need to quarantine for 10 - 14 days. Please see Decision Tree below for more details.

The Daily Screening Tool can help you walk through this health check. Those who become ill during the day must report to the school health office, be isolated, and evaluated. They will either go home or return to class after assessment.

Exclusion Criteria
Hopkins Public Schools will follow the Minnesota Department of Health’s Decision Tree for People with COVID-19 Symptoms to determine when a scholar, staff member, or household member must stay home and when they may return to school.

Hopkins Public Schools will follow the Minnesota Department of Health’s Decision Tree for People with COVID-19 Symptoms to determine when a scholar, staff member, or household member must stay home and when they may return to school.

Update: Because student cases in our district continue to drop, we will move to a 10-day quarantine for close contacts of a positive case in school, activities and in the community starting Monday, May 17, 2021.

The 14 - 24-day quarantine is still in effect for close contacts of a positive household member and cannot be shortened per MDH.

When a confirmed case of COVID-19 is identified in our school community, Hopkins Public Schools will follow guidance from MN Department of Health (MDH).

• Within the district, school health staff and administrators will identify and notify scholars (through parents/guardians) or staff who are close contacts in the school building or school program.
  • Close contacts are identified as being within 6ft or less for 15 minutes or more in 24 hours
  • At the Early Childhood and Elementary levels, the full class is often identified as close contacts due to the longer duration of time spent together
  • At secondary schools, seating charts, interviews, teacher records, and other tracking data (such as attendance) may be used to help identify close contacts
  • This analysis applies regardless of the use of PPE or barriers

• Identities of any positive cases will only be shared with those who NEED TO KNOW in order to provide specific information for contact tracing that the state health department requires.

• People who have had COVID-19 (with a positive lab-confirmed test) in the past 90 days do not need to quarantine.

• People fully vaccinated and symptom free do not need to quarantine.

• If you live with someone who has COVID-19, you should quarantine during the time they might be contagious (their Isolation period), as well as the 14 days after when you could develop COVID-19. This may mean you need to quarantine for 24 days or more.

The Pfizer vaccine has been authorized to vaccinate youth ages 16 and up. The Moderna and Johnson & Johnson vaccines are only available for 18 and older at this time.

Go to the CDC’s Vaccine Finder to schedule an appointment for a vaccine at a pharmacy near you or sign up on Minnesota’s COVID Vaccine Connector to receive more information about vaccine opportunities.

Getting eligible family members and scholars vaccinated will help give the members of our community the best chance to learn in-person, participate in sports and activities, and attend school sponsored events.  It also avoids the need to quarantine after travel within the US and lowers the likelihood of transmitting COVID-19 without symptoms.  Now that the UK Variant is dominant in the state, this is a bigger problem. Vaccination of 80% of the state and nation also drastically lowers the ability of COVID-19 to mutate or change in a way that makes it vaccine resistant.