Most School-Related COVID Outbreaks From Outside Classroom: TPCHD

PUYALLUP, WA — One of Washington's priorities for the second year of the pandemic was making sure K-12 students could safely remain in the classroom. Now, new data from the Tacoma-Pierce County Health Department suggests it's working— with some caveats.

When the pandemic first arrived, it proved a major disruption for the 2019-2020 school year, forcing classrooms to close and students and teachers to adapt to remote learning. By summer 2020, the state had had enough: fearing that remote learning was insufficient and overly disruptive, Washington State Superintendent Chris Reykdal announced that the 2020-2021 school year would return in-person full-time.

While guidelines have changed and schools have opened and closed in the months since, the Tacoma-Pierce County Health Department says most outbreaks in school-aged children are now happening outside the classroom. According to an update late last week from TPCHD's Michelle Fredrickson, the omicron variant has led to more school-related outbreaks. However, most of those outbreaks are related to sports. That's not overly surprising: the first major omicron outbreak was linked to wrestling tournaments in Lacey, Sumner, Puyallup and Yelm in mid-December.

TPCHD says it logged 90 school outbreak cases last week, linking:

• 80 to sports
• 7 to classroom transmission
• 3 to other activities
• 0 to school transportation

"You’ll see most outbreaks take place outside of classrooms," Fredrickson writes. "The wrestling tournament outbreaks hinted at this, and data backs it up."

An outbreak, as defined by the health department, must involve 3 or more cases, or 10 percent of a group who have been in a shared location for that past 28 days.

Health leaders say the lack of classroom-linked outbreaks can be attributed to COVID-19 safety guidelines in local schools. Under state regulation, students and staff are required to wear masks indoors at all time, wash their hands more frequently, and offer COVID-19 testing options. Teachers and school staff have also been mandated to receive the COVID-19 vaccine, or seek a medical or religious exemption.

>> Read more from the Tacoma-Pierce County Health Department.