ST. JOHN'S, N.L. — The return-to-school plan in Newfoundland and Labrador is facing its first test after a student in Deer Lake tested positive for COVID-19 on Monday.
The positive test came back just after 8 a.m. for a student at Elwood Elementary. The school has been closed for two days to allow contact tracing to be completed at the school to determine the risk of exposure to other students.
“This is the first time that we’ve had a situation in a school. We want to ensure that the return-to-school plan we’ve put in place works properly and effectively,” said Education Minister Tom Osborne.
“Once contact tracing is complete, we will provide an update on next steps as it relates to this school.”
The student in question is part of a six-person cluster of cases in the Western Health region — Deer Lake, specifically. The coming days will determine whether the cluster grows as a result of the positive case in the school. No community spread of the coronavirus has been detected in the province to date.
Part of the return-to-school plan has students across the province in cohorts in an effort to limit the number of close contacts for students on a daily basis. Any students or staff members at the school will be contacted by Public Health and tested for the coronavirus.
Osborne says the two-day suspension of classes at Elwood is an extra precaution and will not be the universal option taken to combat any COVID-19 outbreaks in a school.
“Every situation is different, based on where we are in terms of community spread, the number of cases in the province, the community that it's in, whether the community is more isolated or not,” said Osborne.
“In this particular case, this decision really was made by government in consultation with the (Newfoundland and Labrador English School District) because we want to take an abundance of caution, simply because it is the first time we’ve seen a case in our schools. We want to assure that the protocols and the plans we put in place, and the contact tracing, that everything will run as it should.”
Newfoundland and Labrador English School District (NLESD) CEO Tony Stack says no immediate changes will come to the district's plan to have students in school during the pandemic, but the unfolding situation in Deer Lake will inform any changes needed.
“This is the first time through for us. I don’t think it templates how we react in the future. It also gives us a bit of an opportunity to run through some protocols around connectivity for students,” said Stack.
“We will use the lessons learned here and extrapolate them, should we have to do this in another area. It may not look exactly the same. The suspension of classes for an entire school may not be required.”
Teachers at Elwood remained at work on Monday and will return on Tuesday to prepare for the potential of online learning for the school. Scenario 3 of the return-to-school policy would see an entirely virtual delivery of classes, which has not yet been triggered by the situation in Deer Lake.
Newfoundland and Labrador Teachers' Association (NLTA) president Dean Ingram says while the Department of Education and the NLESD made the right decision in closing the school, the situation is another reminder of calls the union has been making since the beginning of the pandemic.
“Now, more than ever, it’s the time to reassess. This echoes what we’ve been saying since March: the measures we see in schools are less than what we see in other public venues in other parts of the province,” said Ingram.
“It’s inconsistent. I have parents asking the same thing. Parents can’t understand why there’s the discrepancy. Why when they take their kids to the local hockey rink, there’s a set of standards that are there for safety reasons for those in the hockey league, when you enter a grocery store, there’s a set of standards there. These are not standards in the school system. This province is in a good place, but it's also very fragile.”
Chief Medical Officer of Health Dr. Janice Fitzgerald says there is no single metric the public-health system is looking for when it comes to a larger shutdown of the school system. In New York City, for example, a three per cent positivity rate triggered the shutdown of the public school system.
“Our positivity rate is even lower than that. That’s one thing that we look at when we’re looking at the spread of COVID-19 in the province. We would also be looking at non-epidemiologically linked cases, we’ll also look at the rapidity of rising cases, the number of contacts that cases have,” said Fitzgerald.
“If we start to see the number of contacts is higher and higher and it's becoming more difficult to contact trace efficiently, all those things will impact the decision if we make any kind of restrictions, whether with schools or anything else. At this point, we’re not there. Those are things we will always consider.”
