On Wednesday, Del Norte County Public Health released guidelines about Quarantining for Covid-19 in Del Norte. The new guidelines say that if you’ve been exposed and are unvaccinated or eligible for the booster shot and don’t have it, you must quarantine for 10 days after last contact with someone who has tested positive for Covid-19 and take a test within 5 to 7 days of last contact. If you have your booster shot or are not eligible for the booster, you only have to quarantine if you experience symptoms of Covid-19. These guidelines are more strict than the recent guidelines released by the Centers for Disease Control
KFUG contacted Del Norte County Public Health for clarification on the guidelines, we spoke with program manager, Melody Cannon-Cutts. According to Cannon-Cutts, Public Health is continuing the 10 day quarantine period previously directed by the CDC instead of the recently implemented 5 day quarantine period. According to Del Norte Public Health, this is because of concerns over rising Covid cases in Del Norte and Surrounding areas and because of concern that the 5 day quarantine isn’t long enough to protect Public Health in Del Norte County. According to Public Health, this is a County wide mandate. However it may conflict with the Del Norte Unified School District, which currently has a less restrictive policy. (We have to be clear that Public Health didn’t say it would conflict with DNUSD. I think this minor rewrite takes care of that).
As a DNUSD High School student, I have been told that the high school’s policy is that they would only require students to quarantine if they had been exposed and hadn’t been vaccinated or were experiencing symptoms, and while the Public Health Guidelines are similar, they are more restrictive than the school district’s. Public Health’s requirement of those exposed and eligible for the booster shot who have not received one is to quarantine for 10 days which could require most juniors and seniors to quarantine when they didn’t need to before. KFUG contacted the DNUSD office to check if they were changing their requirements to match those issued by Public Health on Wednesday afternoon, but we received no response by the time of recording.
In a related story, the Humboldt-Del Norte League (HDNL) has imposed a temporary mandate not allowing spectators at all HDNL athletic events beginning on January 7th until January 23rd. HDNL Commissioner, Jack Lakin, stated that this is because they are seeing rising Covid case numbers and this is likely the beginning of another surge. By taking this action, they want to help prevent more cases of Covid-19 in our area.
Since the original publication, we have found the Del Norte Unified School District’s updated Covid quarantine guidelines. The guidelines now require students to quarantine if they’ve been exposed to someone and had their vaccine more than 6 months ago without receiving a booster.
