Health unit advising boards on school COVID guidelines
Ontario school boards are scrambling to implement the province's back-to-school guidelines and consider whether to add more restrictions to protect elementary and secondary students from COVID -19 this fall.
The Ottawa-Carleton District School Board has planned a special meeting Tuesday to discuss issues ranging from vaccination policies for staff to whether kindergarten students should be required to wear masks.
Ottawa Medical Officer of Health Dr. Vera Etches says she favours a cautious approach this fall and will recommend measures not required by the province, including ensuring students wear masks during physical activity indoors.
Ontario's school reopening guidelines allow public health units to add health and safety measures based on “local experience and data.”
Health units across the province will discuss additional measures with school boards this week, according to a statement from Ottawa Public Health.
Ottawa Public Health “plans to recommend additional preventive measures and is currently engaging with other health units to seek consistency.”
Ontario's minister of education has said he wants students to return to as normal a school life as possible.
The province's guidelines allow more mingling between students than last year and a return of in-person clubs, sports and extracurricular activities. Cafeterias and libraries can open and assemblies are allowed — all with distancing restrictions.
Trustees at the Toronto District School Board, the province's largest, voted last week to add more precautions to their back-toschool plan: Elementary children must eat lunch in their classrooms and stay with their cohorts at recess; indoor assemblies aren't allowed; singing indoors is only allowed with masks; and masks are required for students in all grades, whereas the province only requires them starting in Grade 1.
More information about what OPH will recommend for schools here may come Tuesday at the Ottawa-Carleton District School Board meeting, when Deputy Medical Officer of Health Dr. Brett Moloughney is scheduled to give a presentation.
Trustee Lyra Evans has proposed several motions, including requiring masks for students in kindergarten and mandatory vaccinations for staff who don't have medical exemptions.
This will be the third school year disrupted by the pandemic.
There is widespread consensus on the importance for children's mental, physical and social development of being back in school full-time and staying there.
But students also head back to school in the shadow of the highly contagious Delta variant. COVID-19 case counts are rising, predominately among people who are not vaccinated. The province's chief medical officer of health, Dr. Kieran Moore, has warned the province may face a difficult fall and winter.
The best way to keep schools open is to control the spread of the virus in the community, says Etches,
a message repeated by public health officials since the pandemic began in March 2020.
That means vaccinating as many people as possible while continuing public health measures, including limiting personal contacts, Etches said at a recent media briefing.
The COVID-19 vaccine hasn't been approved for children under age 12.
“The more we do ourselves in the community, making sure as adults we are vaccinated, that will protect the children,” Etches said at the briefing. “I think that's the most important thing right now.”
Here's a rundown of changes this year to COVID-19 protocols at schools and what still hasn't been decided.
SCREENING BEFORE SCHOOL
Students are again expected to pass a COVID-19 self-screening quiz before going to school every day.
Single-symptom screening, which was adopted off and on last year, will be in place this fall. Students who have any symptom associated with COVID -19 must stay home from school and are urged to get tested as soon as possible.
The symptom list includes a runny nose or headache.
“If you think you have a cold or the flu, you should still talk with a doctor or get tested,” says the provincial screening quiz. “Symptoms are similar to COVID-19.”
(Symptoms associated with a “known cause or condition,” such as a runny nose due to allergies, are an exception.)
Etches suggested the situation should be easier than in September 2020, when parents spent hours in lineups with their children at COVID-19 testing centres and waited multiple days for test results. Lab capacity has increased, Etches said.
In Ottawa, schools will also be given take-home test kits for students who develop symptoms at school. That will ease pressure on testing centres. The kits use a less uncomfortable swab in the front of the nose and cheek, and are easy enough for even children to administer. The take-home kits will be available initially in areas of the city where there are barriers to getting tested, but will eventually be available at all schools, Etches said.
Another change this year will make it easier for vaccinated parents and siblings of children who develop symptoms. Asymptomatic household members who are fully immunized or who have tested positive for COVID-19 within the past 90 days, but have since been cleared, do not need to isolate. (As of Monday, the OPH screening tool did not reflect this, but officials say it will be updated.)
WEARING MASKS
The province says children from Grades 1 to 12 must wear a cloth mask indoors, but not outdoors.
Masks can be removed indoors for lunch or physical activities, including high-contact sports like basketball and hockey, with some distancing requirements. The province recently added a line encouraging mask use during physical activity, however.
“Where they can be worn safely based on the activity, masking is encouraged for engaging in physical activity.”
Etches has recommended that masks be worn during physical activity indoors.
VACCINATIONS FOR STUDENTS AND STAFF
The province has not made vaccinations mandatory. School board employees who aren't fully vaccinated or have a medical exemption must take an education session and have regular rapid COVID tests.
For students, Moore had said the province may add the COVID-19 shot to the list of immunizations required to attend school under the Immunization of School Pupils Act. That legislation allows vaccine exemptions for religious or ideological reasons.
There is increasing pressure for mandatory vaccinations, especially for Ontario education staff, with groups representing doctors, educators, nurses and English public school boards all calling for them.
The issue will be debated Tuesday at the Ottawa-Carleton District School Board meeting.
COHORTING AND REDUCING MIXING AMONG STUDENTS
Elementary students are again asked to stay with their “cohort” or class and one teacher “as much as possible.”
In practice, elementary kids have several teachers every day, for language and other specialized instruction, and when their homeroom teacher has prep time and lunch. That was the case last year, too.
The new provincial guidelines ease some of the restrictions that kept cohorts apart last year. “Members of different cohorts can interact outside with distancing encouraged or inside with distancing and masking,” the guidelines say.
In-person clubs and extracurricular activities, field trips and sports, which are now allowed, often include children from different classes.
At secondary schools in Ottawa and other urban areas, students will spend more time at school and have larger classes as they return full-time, five days a week.
Last year, students in urban areas attended classes in person halftime, in classes of about 15.
However, secondary students will still only be allowed to take two courses at a time this fall, a measure that will reduce mixing. Some boards, including the Ottawa Catholic School Board, are adopting the quadmester schedule used last year, with the possibility of switching back to regular semesters in February.
Others, including the Ottawa-Carleton District School Board, plan a modified traditional semester of four courses. The twocourses-at-a-time rule is still met by having students take two courses one week, and the other two the next week.
HIGHER-RISK INDOOR ACTIVITIES
The province has allowed indoor phys-ed, sports, singing, music classes involving wind instruments and eating in cafeterias, with various distancing restrictions in place. Those activities, which involve a higher risk of COVID-19 transmission, could be the subject of debate at local public health units and school boards, which could impose more restrictions.
The more we do ourselves in the community, making sure as adults we are vaccinated, that will protect the children.
CONTROLLING OUTBREAKS
A change this fall will result in far fewer students over age 12 required to go home to isolate after coming into close contact at school with someone who has COVID -19.
Close contacts with no symptoms who are fully vaccinated, or who have had COVID within the last 90 days and have been cleared, generally won't be dismissed from school and required to isolate, the provincial rules on outbreaks say.
Close contacts are encouraged to get tested for COVID-19.
Last year, if one student contracted COVID-19, typically the whole class was sent home to isolate for two weeks, which caused disruptions to in-person schooling for thousands of students. During the third pandemic wave last spring, most school closures were due to organizational challenges posed by large numbers of students and educators isolating.
However, the change in close-contact rules won't affect elementary schools much, since children under 12 can't be vaccinated yet.