KNOXVILLE, Tenn. — When East Tennessee schools released their plans for returning to the classroom, most included daily temperature checks for every student.
That included all 5,500 students at Maryville City Schools.
"Our promise to our stakeholders was that we're going to start off being very conservative and taking a lot of safety precautions and measures," said Amy Vagnier, assistant director of schools for Maryville City Schools. "Then, we're going to watch our data."
After a month of screening 5,500 students for temperatures daily, Maryville City Schools had only sent five students home, per Vagnier.
"That was a great piece of data to share with their families and to say, this is not helpful in identifying symptomatic cases," she said. "But our other strategies are very helpful and they're yielding us the information that we need to take best care of our students."
Maryville City Schools is now checking for temperatures once or twice a week, depending on the school. They're choosing to focus their efforts on strategies that have proven more effective.
"We've identified far more symptomatic cases that may or may not be COVID-19 related just with teachers monitoring students all day long," Vagnier said. "Our teachers are very mindful."
Dr. William Schaffner, an infectious disease professor at Vanderbilt University Medical Center, said there are some limitations to temperature screenings.
"You have to do the test correctly. And then of course, if you take the temperature in the morning, you can still have a fever in the afternoon," Dr. Schaffner said. "That's normal, what we call diurnal temperature variation."
But he said continuing the daily screenings can help send a powerful message home.
"It shows that we are really doing something seriously," Dr. Schaffner said. "It will help parents think twice before sending a sick child to school."
Monroe County Schools also stopped daily temperature checks after having little success with identifying symptomatic students. The director of schools told 10News will still screen late arrivals and visitors.
