In new guidance issued Friday, Colorado officials recommend that schools stop individual investigations into COVID-19 cases and that they cut back on quarantines, the latest move by a state preparing to treat the novel coronavirus on a less intense degree than it has since the pandemic began nearly two years ago.

The new guidance should be implemented by Feb. 28, the state Department of Public Health and Environment wrote in a Friday afternoon press release. It broadly directs schools to begin treating COVID-19 like other infectious diseases and to focus more on outbreaks and clusters, as opposed to individual cases. The updated recommendations come as the disease’s spread has slowed significantly in recent weeks and as state officials predict the beginning of a calm period of the virus.

Though the recommended implementation date is Feb. 28, districts with ongoing outbreaks should continue to respond to them as they are, and the new guidance shouldn’t be rolled out if community transmission is high. 

“As COVID-19 case rates, percent positivity, and hospitalization rates continue to decrease and stabilize, it is appropriate for schools to choose a more typical routine disease control model,” state epidemiologist Rachel Herlihy said in a statement. ” … This approach will help schools, parents, and teachers continue in-person learning with fewer disruptions, but schools should consider transitioning to this option cautiously, as moving too soon could result in an increase in transmission.”

The omicron wave has steadily subsided since mid-January, and it infected so many Coloradans that officials say as much as 80% of the state should be immune to it this month. That has allowed the state, counties and school districts to begin unwinding COVID-19 mitigation measures and to begin to look toward the end of the pandemic: School mask requirements have been or will soon be ended in Denver, Adams, Arapahoe and Jefferson counties.

The shift in guidance helped spur Denver to announce this week that it will end its school and child-care setting mask requirements. It marks the most significant change to Colorado schools’ approach to COVID-19 yet. Schools have become a battleground for parents opposing masks and public health officials who say they’re trying to keep schools open by masking, distancing and quarantining.

The new guidance directs districts to stop contact tracing and investigating individual cases and to no longer quarantine staff and students who were exposed to the virus in schools. They should continue to do so for exposures outside of the school, the guidance says, though it simultaneously tells schools they can work with local public health authorities to stop doing that, too.

The focus now, Herlihy wrote, will be more focused on “case clusters, outbreaks, and evidence of ongoing transmission in schools,” as opposed to individual cases. In its guidance, the state acknowledged that tracking those clusters will be difficult, given that they’re recommending schools discontinue contact tracing and investigations. The recommendations direct schools to monitor absenteeism and any reports of COVID-19 cases to attempt to monitor potential outbreaks.

State law still requires districts to report known infections and outbreaks to local public health authorities.

Should outbreaks be discovered, the guidance recommends temporary universal masking and testing, as well as a limitation on mixing grades and classrooms elsewhere in the school building.

Schools should continue encouraging masking to students and staff, the state wrote, as the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention recommend. Colorado has not required masking in schools at all this academic year, nor have most school districts. With the ending of orders in the metro, the vast majority of Colorado students will no longer be required to wear face-coverings.