One Essex County, NJ school district asks unvaccinated students to quarantine after Thanksgiving travel

The South Orange-Maplewood school district is asking all COVID-19 unvaccinated children who travel outside certain areas over the Thanksgiving holiday weekend to quarantine for about ten days upon return before resuming in-person class instruction.

According to a post on the school's Twitter page, only families who plan to travel domestically outside of New Jersey, Pennsylvania, New York Connecticut and Delaware or internationally with unvaccinated children should fill out a form on the school's website.

Quarantine may be seven full days if students test negative on days three, four or five after returning from travel. If the student chooses not to test, quarantine is ten full days.

If a student is fully vaccinated, he or she does not need to quarantine after traveling for the holiday weekend, unless they are having symptoms, according to the school's posted announcement on its website.

The website announcement also says if parents recently opted to have their child vaccinated with the Pfizer pediatric vaccine, that child is not considered fully vaccinated until two weeks after they receive the second dose, which would be after the return from Thanksgiving break.

During a student's quarantine period, they will receive virtual instruction.

According to the latest data on the state COVID-19 database, there have been 179 cumulative school outbreaks as of Nov. 17. The number of positive COVID-19 cases linked to school outbreaks is 1,026 cumulative cases.

For the week of Nov. 9 through Nov. 16, there have been 19 additional new outbreaks. To date, in Essex County, there are eight outbreaks with 34 linked cases of COVID-19.