Beaufort County schools will not administer rapid COVID-19 tests provided by SC
Beaufort County School District will not take S.C. Gov. Henry McMaster up on his offer to provide rapid COVID-19 tests at schools, with superintendent Frank Rodriguez saying the state’s testing plan “goes against all the messaging we’ve provided for students and parents.”
With Wednesday night’s announcement, Beaufort County joins at least 11 other South Carolina school districts that have rejected the governor’s rapid testing plan, according to reporting by The State. At least 46 districts have opted into the plan.
McMaster announced Nov. 19 that rapid COVID-19 testing at schools would begin after Thanksgiving without any notice to school districts or the state’s Department of Education, which spokesman Ryan Brown said was “blindsided” by the news.
The state received 1.5 million Abbott BinaxNOW rapid antigen tests from U.S. Department of Health and Human Service, about 220,200 of which were allocated to schools.
The tests take about 15 minutes to complete and are considered “probable” COVID-19 diagnoses by the Department of Health and Environmental Control.
According to DOE guidance sent to Beaufort County School District, in-person staff and students are eligible for testing if they would “otherwise be excluded” from attending school for showing one or more of the following COVID-19 symptoms: coughing, shortness of breath, difficulty breathing, a fever above 100.4 degrees, and loss of taste or smell.
“The last thing we want is for sick students to come to school just to be tested,” deputy superintendent Duke Bradley told school board members Wednesday. “Because if they do, they’ll be putting other students and staff unnecessarily at risk.”
Bradley also cited resource strain — specifically, how to quarantine students during the rapid test and while waiting for a parent to pick them up — and the number of free COVID-19 testing sites available in Beaufort County as reasons to reject the governor’s plan.
“If students have symptoms, they shouldn’t be in school anyway,” Bradley said. “This is the message that we have relentlessly communicated to families: Stay at home if you are sick.”
The district is moving forward with its plan to return students to five-day in-person instruction on Jan. 4 despite a COVID-19 surge in Beaufort County that rivals summertime levels of disease spread.
When the spring semester begins in February, 69% of the district’s 21,000-plus students will attend face-to-face classes, district spokeswoman Candace Bruder said. Currently, 64% of students attend in-person for the fall semester,
Beaufort County School District will continue to require masks on campus and conduct daily temperature checks in January, though Bradley said last month that those checks haven’t resulted in “any COVID detection” since they began Oct. 19.
On Wednesday, the county’s seven-day average of new infections was about 60.4, compared to October averages in the low teens.
As of Wednesday night, the district has reported 164 COVID-19 cases among students and staff since Sept. 28, with 20 new cases reported last week following Thanksgiving break.
“When you look at the infection within the schools — and that’s where I think the focus needs to be — we’re seeing less than 1% within our schools,” Rodriguez said Wednesday. “The spread of the virus within the school does not mirror what the community-wide spread seems to be.”