Runny noses won't keep kids home this year
Local health officials drop sniffles from school COVID-symptoms list
As elementary and secondary students head back to class in Ottawa for a third year of pandemic-disrupted schooling, the runny nose conundrum returns.
Ottawa Public Health has shifted its advice on what symptoms will trigger the dreaded “you cannot attend school today and should get tested for COVID-19 as soon as possible” result on the screening quiz students are required to complete every day.
Last month, Ottawa's Medical Officer of Health Dr. Vera Etches said kids with sniffles and headaches should be tested to rule out COVID-19. But the quiz unveiled by OPH for back-to-school instead aligns with provincial screening guidelines that whittle the list down to five symptoms: fever, cough, shortness of breath, decrease or loss of taste or smell, and nausea, vomiting or diarrhea.
Ontario Chief Medical Officer of Health Dr. Kieran Moore says those are the most common symptoms in children and youth with COVID-19.
The symptom list could be expanded again, however, if the community risk posed by the virus increases, Moore said during a Tuesday briefing. Moore has warned that Ontario can expect a surge of COVID-19 cases this fall as schools reopen and more people head back indoors.
It's the latest twist in the ever-changing rules since school screening was introduced in the fall of 2020.
Symptoms have come and gone from the quiz based on evolving evidence about COVID-19, the ability of labs to handle the volume of testing, and shifting assessments of the correct balance between the goal of keeping the virus out of schools and the disruption, both to learning and to parents, when children with minor symptoms must stay home and be tested.
Ottawa's Deputy Medical Officer of Health, Brent Moloughney, said at a briefing Wednesday that more respiratory viruses would probably be in play this fall than last year. Children with minor symptoms like a runny nose or sore throat should stay home, but don't need to be tested for COVID -19, he said.
Moore called the five-symptom list a reasonable one “that will minimize the burden of testing for parents and children and keep children in the classroom and keep parents from having to worry and wait for the 24- to 48-hours turnaround time (for COVID-19 tests).”
Local public health units can devise their own quiz based on COVID -19 conditions in their area.
In Ottawa, the screening quiz for this fall follows the province's five-symptom list, but does not ignore sniffles altogether.
The Ottawa Public Health quiz includes seven additional symptoms that trigger warnings for students to isolate at home “until symptoms have improved for 24 hours without the use of feverreducing medication.”
Students with those seven symptoms do not need to get COVID -19 tests unless they have been in close contact with someone who tested positive for the virus. Those symptoms are: sore throat, runny nose, pink eye, decreased appetite, headache, extreme tiredness, and muscle aches and pains.
Moore said many Ontario health units contributed to an evaluation of which symptoms were most common among children with COVID -19.
Only one out of every 100 children with a runny nose who were tested had COVID-19, he said.
The Ontario Ministry of Health, when contacted Wednesday, was unable to immediately provide details of that evaluation, such as how many children it included, the prevalence of each symptom among those who tested positive, when the information was collected and whether symptoms in children could be expected to be different when they were infected by the Delta variant that became predominant in Ontario after schools closed last spring.
Daily symptom screening is a first line of defence in keeping students safe, along with vaccinations, because both prevent the virus from entering schools, public health officials say.
Etches, in a video message sent to parents Wednesday, said self-screening must be done daily, even if the student is vaccinated.
For the first two weeks of school, Ottawa school boards have been told to confirm daily that elementary and secondary students, staff and visitors have done the screening, according to a letter sent to
parents at the Ottawa-Carleton District School Board.
Teachers or staff can confirm the quiz has been completed while they are taking attendance, or in some cases parents may be asked to fill out forms.
A similar policy was adopted last winter, when COVID -19 rates rose in Ontario. Self-screening has limitations, though, since many children and youth with COVID-19 display no symptoms.
A recent analysis of 350 studies on the topic published by the National Academy of Sciences in the United States estimated that 46.7 per cent of children with laboratory-confirmed cases of COVID-19 were asymptomatic, compared to 35.1 per cent of adults.