LARGO, Fla. (WFLA) – Schools in Pinellas County are taking a new more targeted “surgical” approach to figuring out who needs to quarantine when a case of COVID-19 pops up. That means not everyone in a class will get quarantined anymore.

“Our contact tracing is becoming more refined and more scientific,” Tom Iovino with the Pinellas County Florida Department of Health.

Instead of quarantining full classrooms, the DOH and School District leaders came up with a more targeted “surgical” policy.

According to diagrams on the school district’s website, seating charts will be a factor. If you look at the image below, the teal circle is the student with COVID-19, the orange circle, the students exposed, meaning they have to be within six feet of the infected person for 15 or more minutes. But if you’re in the light blue circle, and weren’t within 6 feet of the infected person for more than 15 minutes, you’re considered safe.

If your child is in a class all day 6 feet from another student who tests positive for COVID-19, you as a parent will be notified. But any further away than that, your child is considered safe and you won’t be notified.

“Waring masks, that’s crucial because this is a droplet spread virus so we need to make sure we can contain that,” Iovino said.

“He was saying it’s not aerosol-based, droplet only. Even though the who has recognized for weeks now that this is an aerosol-based disease,” said Travis Lueth, a Pinellas County teacher.

The World Health Organization website, says that “The physics of exhaled air and flow physics have generated hypotheses about possible mechanisms of sars-cov-2 [COVID] transmission through aerosols” and that more research is being done.

Lueth and his wife Samantha are both teachers and have kids of their own. Their whole family is in the school system and they’re concerned about their health with the new policy.

“It’s disappointing, it’s always disappointing to watch leadership put economic values and job values over the value of human life, and at the end of the day, that’s what this is,” Lueth said.

Lueth said he’s disappointed in the school district’s leadership.

“They’ve made it pretty clear that they’re going to keep schools open at all costs, doesn’t matter who gets hurt or who gets in the way, it’s still difficult to process because at the beginning of August the district had a clear plan that included quarantining entire classrooms based on a single case, now we’re here where it’s down to a time limit and distance limit,” Lueth said.

The new more refined quarantine process went into effect within the last week and is being used at all Pinellas County Schools.

“[The spread of COVID] may appear slow right now but eventually, we’ll start to see these numbers pick up and when someone dies that that will be different story,” Lueth said.