The Minnesota Department of Health is expected to release clarifying guidance this week surrounding COVID-19 illness and schools. This will include helping you understand when to keep your child home if they are sick and the necessary screening questions to review with your child every morning. Providence will make this information available as soon as possible.
Should there be a delay in the release, Providence will use the criteria that is currently in place.
When to Keep Your Child Home
If your child has one of the following:
- New onset cough
- Shortness of breath
OR
If your child has at least two of the following:
- Fever
- Chills
- Muscle pain
- Sore throat
- Fatigue
- Congestion
- Los of sense of smell or taste
- Gastrointestinal symptoms of diarrhea, vomiting, or nausea
Your child needs to stay home for 10 days from onset of symptoms, AND no fever for 24 hours without medication, AND improvement of other symptoms.
Household members, including siblings, stay home for 14 days.
If your child has been seen by their physician and their physician determines the symptoms are due to an alternative diagnosis such as strep or norovirus, or from an underlying health condition such as allergies or asthma, please provide documentation of this upon your child’s return to school. In this case, siblings do not need to stay home from school.
If anyone in the family is symptomatic and awaiting test results, students must stay home, even if they do not have symptoms.
Please notify Providence if your student or family member has a positive lab test.