Las Cruces Public Schools adopts latest state COVID-19 guidelines
LAS CRUCES – Las Cruces Public Schools will follow the latest state guidelines for COVID-19 protocols, shortening quarantine requirements and defining what it means to be vaccinated.
Following New Mexico Public Education Department's updated guidance released to the public on Wednesday and aligning with the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention's protocol, the quarantine time for students and staff who have been exposed to COVID-19 has been reduced from 10 days to 5 days.
LCPS will adopt these guidelines on Tuesday, Jan. 18 after the Martin Luther King Jr. holiday on Monday. Students who were previously isolating or under quarantine and have met the new five-day timeframe may return on Tuesday, provided their symptoms have improved and have not had a fever in the last 24 hours without the use of fever-reducing medications.
The NMPED toolkit also updated the definition of an up-to-date vaccination status. A person is considered up to date if they have received a booster before Jan. 17. People are eligible to receive a booster if they are five months past their second dose of either Pfizer or Moderna, or two months after their initial dose of Johnson & Johnson vaccine.
School staff will have four weeks to become up to date if they are eligible. New Mexico requires public school staff to either be up to date on COVID-19 vaccination or participate in weekly surveillance testing. Close contacts of those who test positive, but are up to date, are not required to quarantine.
The Test to Stay program will stay in place under the new guidance. This program allows school close contacts to continue coming to school and participating in school activities if they test negative on the three prescribed testing days following exposure.
As of Friday afternoon, LCPS has reported 679 new positive COVID-19 cases districtwide since school came back on Monday. Of those 679, 593 are student cases and 86 are staff cases.
Find the latest LCPS COVID-19 news at returnplan.lcps.net/.