UPDATED: Recap from 12/7 Emergency Medfield BoH Meeting

The following posted by Melissa Coughlin, Medfield Board of Health.

A brief recap from the BOH meeting held on Monday 12/7

~ New quarantine guidelines were discussed. Medfield BOH chose to align with the state rules which changed in the evening of the meeting to support the revised CDC proposal. The shortened explanation—quarantine is reduced to 7 days with a negative test taken on day 5 or thereafter
and attestation of wellness from days 8-14. (more formal memo to follow which fully explains the changes).

~ The BOH will not enforce, at this moment, more restrictions beyond the state guidelines on youth sports regulations. Each sport will follow MIAA mask requirements. More to come on which winter sports will require full vs partial team quarantine if team member is a positive case. At the time of the meeting, we had assumed all winter sports would require all teammates to quarantine.

~ Carol Read presented a list of local confidential resources available to town residents in case of need for mental health support. Those will be listed on the BOH website.

~ The board reinforced the moral responsibility the town citizens enact to quarantine if exposed to a COVID + contact when they chose to engage in social situations and/or have their children play sports. In other words, these risks are taken with informed consent and we must count on
folks to follow proper quarantine rules.

~ The library will continue to provide service to masked patrons who follow the half hour browsing guidelines.

~ Stop the spread in Framingham is the closest local free testing site. https://www.mass.gov/info-details/stop-the-spread...

~ A question was asked about the vaccine and if kids will be mandated to get for school. The answer was no, as of right now the vaccine has not even been tested on this population.

~We authorized the chair to sign the pending permits.

~ Best time to get a COVID test is around day 5-7 because that is when the virus will most likely be detectable if infected

~ We did also talk about the residual post-quarantine transmission risk being higher the earlier you leave isolation with the highest limit being around 12% risk level on day 8 and goes down from there.