As COVID-19 continues to spread, schools around the world face the daunting challenge of keeping their students and staff safe. While most U.S. schools are closed, there are some schools that are still open, and even those that are closed to students can still be open to staff, visitors, or contractors. Schools must still take precautionary steps. In this blog post, we share how the Raptor Visitor Management system can help these schools keep students, staff, their families, and various visitors minimize exposure to COVID-19.
Determine Risk Represented by Visitors
Customizing your check-in process to ask about the visitors health, their own possible exposure to COVID-19, and their recent travel patterns prior to granting access to your school helps you determine the risk represented by that visitor to your school. You can customize the Raptor Visitor Management system to ask as many custom questions during the sign-in process as you like. Many Raptor districts are asking questions similar to the ones below:
- Have you been exposed to anyone who has been positively diagnosed with COVID-19?
- Are you displaying symptoms, such as a fever or dry cough?
- Have you yourself been diagnosed with COVID-19?
- Have you traveled within the last 30 days to any country or urban center considered high-risk by the CDC?
Raptor encourages you to work with your district and follow CDC guidelines when developing your custom sign-in questions and your schools policies for handling visitors based on their answers.
The Raptor system has five modules: visitor, contractor, staff, student, and volunteer. These custom questions which can be yes/no or open-ended can be asked in each module, enabling you to pre-screen and record answers for anyone who signs into the system. A demonstration of this capability can be found on our COVID-19 webinar here.
Reduce Fear
Visitor badges are printed once a visitor is screened and approved to gain access to the building. Badges typically include the visitors personal details, photograph, and destination. You can quickly create a custom destination name, such as Pre-Screened for COVID-19, to let everyone who sees the visitor know that they have been screened. Though this is not a medical screening, and we encourage you to follow CDC recommendations, this does add a layer of protection and comfort for those in your school.
Alert Others of Infection
The Raptor Visitor Management system tracks and records every visitor and their details, which can include their contact information and when exactly they were in your school. These details are available in a downloadable report, giving you instant access to the information you need if a previous visitor alerts you that they have tested positive for COVID-19. Based on your school or district policy, you can use these reports to alert any other visitors or employees who were in the building when the infected person was on campus.
At Raptor, our mission is to protect every child, every school, every day. We continue to deliver on this mission and our goal of being your partner in school safety by empowering you to better screen and minimize COVID-19s spread.
