{"id":47054,"date":"2021-04-26T16:54:45","date_gmt":"2021-04-26T22:54:45","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/new-mexico-schools-to-implement-student-covid-19-testing\/"},"modified":"2021-04-26T22:54:45","modified_gmt":"2021-04-26T22:54:45","slug":"new-mexico-schools-to-implement-student-covid-19-testing","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/new-mexico-schools-to-implement-student-covid-19-testing\/","title":{"rendered":"New Mexico schools to implement student COVID-19 testing"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

\"A
A COVID-19 test kit. New Mexico Public Education Department announced schools will begin a testing program.<\/span>Jerry McBride\/Durango Herald file<\/span><\/figcaption><\/figure>\n<\/p>

FARMINGTON \u2013 New Mexico school districts and charter schools implemented COVID-19 testing programs this week to further \u201cenhance safety\u201d during the pandemic.<\/p>\n

New Mexico Public Education Department spokeswoman Judy Robinson said in an email Monday that the department gave districts and charter schools until Tuesday to implement testing programs for students.<\/p>\n

Student testing is voluntary, and the results of the program are not required to be shared with the Public Education Department; rather, the school health advocates at the New Mexico Department of Health will collect the data about the programs.<\/p>\n

The goal, Robinson said, is to test 1% of the general student population each week and 10% of all student athletes each week.<\/p>\n

Testing is completely voluntary and will not cost students anything.<\/p>\n

\u201cThis is a voluntary student surveillance testing program \u2013 it\u2019s a service we\u2019re putting out to the community. This will help build public confidence that schools are safe,\u201d Public Education Secretary Ryan Stewart said. \u201cBy testing student volunteers, we can get better information about what\u2019s happening in schools with the virus and get communication out into the community about how our precautionary measures are working.\u201d<\/p>\n

Testing within the school can help identify cases that might otherwise go undetected, which would allow the virus to spread further within the school, Robinson said.<\/p>\n

\u201cHigh rates of negative test results inspire confidence that protective measures are working, especially in high-risk activities like sports,\u201d Robinson said.<\/p>\n

Schools are required to conduct surveillance testing of unvaccinated staff members at rates determined by each county\u2019s color on the Department of Health county map. Turquoise counties must test 5% of eligible staff members per week, green and yellow counties must test 12.5, and red counties must test 25%. As of this week, San Juan County would test at 12.5% because the county is in the Yellow Level.<\/p>\n

\u201cWe still have significant transmission in many of our communities, and we are not past the risk of another surge in disease that results in significant risk to life and health. Testing is one of the tools we have to minimize the risk of this happening,\u201d said Dr. Daniel Sosin, an epidemiologist at the state Department of Health.<\/p>\n

Student testing options include BinaxNOW, an antigen test to determine if a student currently has COVID-19; VAULT testing, which is a mail-in testing program; or Curative Testing, which is on-site at the school.<\/p>\n

mmitchell@durangoherald.com<\/a> <\/em><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Participation is optional, but state hopes to test at least 1% of student population weekly<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":47055,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[],"tags":[685,799,28,138,29,443],"naviga_topic":[],"class_list":["post-47054","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","tag-coronavirus-covid-19","tag-farmington","tag-headlines","tag-new-mexico","tag-newsletter","tag-san-juan-county-new-mexico"],"acf":[],"author_name":"dh_admin","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/47054","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=47054"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/47054\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/47055"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=47054"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=47054"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=47054"},{"taxonomy":"naviga_topic","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/naviga_topic?post=47054"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}