COVID-1984 strikes again.
A 15-year-old girl was allegedly forced to wear an ankle tracking monitor for volleyball practice at Eatonville High School in Washington state as a condition of participating in team sports. This was required of both vaccinated and unvaccinated students.
According to her mother who spoke anonymously to The Post Millennial, her daughter was at a practice for the public school's volleyball team and texted her that she was being asked to put on an ankle monitor.
The teen did not answer the mother's follow up texts or calls. The mother assumed she was playing during practice and attempted to contact the school via phone. No one at the school was able to answer her questions about the monitor, so she drove to the building.
The mother spoke to an employee in the school office, as well as a coach and was informed there was a meeting last week discussing the ankle monitoring program for unvaccinated teens. The program was allegedly designed for contact tracing in the event of a positive COVID test of a student.
The TraceTag device used by the school was made by a company called Triax. According to their website, the device was created for the purpose of "maintaining social distancing guidelines" and to provide "real-time insight into whether these guidelines are being observed" for construction and other manufacturing businesses, but makes no mention of school use on the website.
The devices provide "…a visual and audible alarm, so individuals know when to adjust their current distance to a proper social distance."
Additionally, the monitors provide "Passive collection of worker interactions for contact tracing should an individual test positive."
According to Triax, the device "…is affixed to any hardhat or worn on the body for proximity detection and contact tracing."
The mother identified the coach as Gavin Kralik, who told her that the device would inform the players when they were too close together and was only used for indoor sports. She was also informed that the device would be used for contract tracing so that in the event of a positive test, non-vaccinated students would have to quarantine for up to 14 days. Vaccinated students would not have to quarantine.
The devices were not mentioned in the district's back-to-school policies for fall 2021.
Photo: Getty Images North America
Photo by Getty Images