California

Note: Recipient-submitted material; content authored by recipient, not ELC
Information current as of August 18, 2022

Management structure for school screening

The California Department of Public Health (CDPH) plays a critical role in managing activities related to this award. First, the CDPH maintains up to date guidance on detection and prevention of COVID-19 in K-12 schools and Early Childhood Education Centers (ECEs). This includes maintaining an updated website with relevant guidance and playbooks to communicate and disseminate testing guidance and resources. The CDPH supports school districts and ECEs with implementation of the latest public health guidance by providing a statewide Clinical Laboratory Improvement Amendments (CLIA) lab director, CLIA waiver, and ordering physician for a state-run antigen testing schools program. The antigen testing program includes registration, onboarding, and training of school staff for testing. The CDPH also offers technical assistance in the form of office hours and responding to inquiries sent via email. The CDPH provides central support for testing by contracting with and managing vendors to provide test kits for schools, personnel to support school testing programs, software for registration, consenting, and reporting to participants, schools, and public health, and testing strike teams to address outbreaks.

Support provided to school districts

CDPH and the Testing Task Force are supporting school districts’ implementation plans to detect, prevent, and control COVID-19 through provision of operational support for robust screening testing across all California schools. This support enables the adoption and maintenance of consistent testing programs for COVID-19 with support for expansion as required based on positivity rates and the presence of an outbreak.

This plan provides operational support to school’s implementation of testing for COVID-19, including options to support weekly screening test cadence if needed in response to conditions in specific communities experiencing high transmission.

Financial support is provided across testing types as described below:

• Providing free state sponsored antigen testing and confirmatory molecular testing
• Providing free At-home (OTC) antigen tests for K-12 Schools and ECEs
• Providing free end to end vendors for testing support to select public schools and school districts on an equity basis

Support provided to ECEs

There are more than 40,000 distinct ECE and childcare facilities across California. CDPH and the Testing Task Force are supporting Early Childhood Education facilities with free at-home (OTC) antigen tests for testing symptomatic and exposed people, and for outbreak response and to facilitate safe return after COVID-19 infection. Efforts thus far have focused on increasing access to testing for uninsured people in the ECE setting, but we would like to expand options to decrease barriers to testing for all children and providers.

CDPH offers ECE and childcare specific guidance and maintains a partnership with the Department of Social Services to reach ECE providers through webinars and Q&A forums.

At-home (OTC) antigen tests have been identified as our primary testing modality because they can be used by families for ages 2 and up, but some large ECE organizations have additionally partnered with CDPH for professional antigen testing (supported by swabbing with medical professionals) at their sites.