Health leaders detail out the signs to look for in teens surrounding delta variant

EL PASO, Texas (CBS4) — With students returning to in-person learning health leaders in El Paso said getting children tested for COVID-19 will be crucial to slow the spread of the virus and any other variants that appear.

Additional COVID-19 testing sites are being put up around El Paso as health leaders are urging people to get tested following the news of the delta variant being present in the Borderland.

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With school back in session, El Paso Health Authority Doctor Hector Ocaranza worries the virus will spread more easily.

“Today our children are going back for 100 percent in-person instruction which is going to bring a lot of benefits but also is another factor that will be mixed into already a complex pandemic situation. We will have children in a congregate setting and for teenagers, it is more likely they can transmit the virus the same as adults,” Ocaranza said.

Though masks are not required in schools in El Paso, Doctor Ocaranza recommends parents have their kids wear one. He said with new cases rising and the delta variant now present, with just a cough or a sneeze in the classroom, the variant can spread.

Doctor Ocaranza is warning parents to pay attention to how their kids are feeling before sending them to school because symptoms from the delta variant are proving to appear much quicker.

“Before we saw median days they started having symptoms about five to seven days. Now we see the patients with delta variant are have symptoms within three to five days,” Ocaranza said.

Doctor Ocaranza also recommends getting tested faster. Instead of five days, he said to get tested three days after exposure.

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