Questions surround school reopening plan
Medical officers of health support school reopening, but were only able to provide limited input on plan less than 24 hours before it was unveiled
ST. CATHARINES — Ontario’s medical officers of health were not shown the province’s plan to reopen schools before it was announced to the public Wednesday, the St. Catharines Standard has learned, and what input they did provide was limited to a short consultation the day before.
While the provincial government said in a news release its reopening plan had “the unanimous recommendation of the Council of Medical Officers of Health and with the support of local medical officers of health,” public health officials across the province were not given a specific plan to review or endorse.
“I think it is fair to say that medical officers supported the reopening of schools to in-person learning, and that this was communicated to the province,” said Dr. Mustafa Hirji, Niagara’s acting medical officer of health.
“I don’t think it is accurate to say that we ‘endorsed a plan’ to reopen schools — we were not privy to such a plan until after (Wednesday’s) announcement.”
Hirji’s comments raise questions about how much input public health officials had in the formation of the reopening plan.
Medical experts in Ontario, including the council and Toronto SickKids, have urged the province to reopen schools that have been closed through January as COVID-19 in many regions spiked in the second pandemic wave.
In a Jan. 29 letter, the council said “upon careful review and consideration of local indicators, we believe it is possible, and in fact, imperative, that schools begin to open before the reopening of other sectors, as the stay-at-home orders are lifted provincially. Safe reopening of all schools in Ontario is essential.”
Hirji said one of the reasons schools should reopen before other sectors of society is precisely to determine if schools will be a vector for the spread of the novel coronavirus.
“If we reopen schools first, we should be able to see if the virus is spreading, if it is spreading at a school and then being brought home by students or staff. If that is the case then you can close schools and determine what to do. If you open schools at the same time as everything else, and there is wide community spread, it would be impossible to know if schools are playing a role in that.”
As the provincial government formulated its plans to reopen schools, the province’s top public health officials were not directly consulted until late Tuesday night when Dr. David Williams, Ontario’s chief medical officer of health, held an emergency phone conference.
Hirji said the call was being made to gather input in advance of a cabinet meeting to be held the next day when the school reopening plan would be decided. He said the input provided by the medical officers of health was limited.
“We were not presented with a plan for reopening and so we did not endorse any plan. However, (Williams) did survey all of our perspectives,” Hirji said. “As it was a 60-minute meeting, and there are 34 medical officers of health, this was not an in-depth discussion. In my brief comments, I did favour reopening schools to in-person learning, with some conditions and additional measures.”
Most schools in Ontario will reopen on Monday, save for those in designated COVID-19 hot zones of Toronto, Peel and York, which will reopen Feb. 16.
It is not clear why Niagara — with an infection and death rate similar to, or worse, than hot-zone regions — is not regarded by the province as a COVID-19 problem area.
Niagara West MPP Sam Oosterhoff couldn’t explain why Niagara classroom were being permitted to reopen.
“It isn’t a political decision, it’s really driven by that evidence and scientific expertise,” said Oosterhoff, who serves as parliamentary assistant to Education Minister Stephen Lecce.
The decision, he added, was based on the advice of the chief medical officer of health, as a result of Tuesday’s consultation with local public health officers.
“Dr. Williams and the COVID-19 command table made the recommendations about which areas could open on Monday and some areas are opening on Feb. 16 as well. We’re making these decisions based on their recommendations having reviewed things like case incident rates as well as available supports in a particular region,” Oosterhoff said in a Thursday interview.
“They felt confident that Niagara was good to return (to classroom lessons) … This is a plan that has been fully endorsed by the chief medical officer of health, and also follows the advice and recommendations of groups such as SickKids and CHEO (Children’s Hospital of Eastern Ontario), which has spoken about the huge mental health costs and educational loss that comes of keeping kids out of school. We’re following that health advice when it comes to keeping our is safe and we’re going to keep investing to ensure our schools are safe.”
The province did not respond to questions regarding plans for reopening Niagara schools.
An analysis of recent COVID-19 data by the Standard found the region has the thirdhighest cases per 100,000 in Ontario — behind only Toronto and Peel. It also found that Niagara has the third-highest death rate per 100,000 behind Toronto and Windsor-Essex and, as of Wednesday, the fifthhighest total number of people with COVID-19 who have died in Ontario.
As of Thursday, at least 336 Niagara residents with COVID-19 have died — a number higher than hard-hit WindsorEssex and only eclipsed by the much larger regions of Ottawa, York, Peel and Toronto. More than 60 per cent of those who died were elderly people living in long-term-care homes.
The American Centers for Disease Control — it does not advise Canadian governments — has a scale of risk to guide school reopenings set against the number of cases per 100,000. A rate of 50 to 200 cases is labelled as “higher risk for transmission in schools.”
Niagara’s cases per 100,000, while falling over the past week, remains at 119.
The provincial government has yet to rank Niagara as one Ontario’s hot spots, and refused to do so in early December when local health-care leaders asked for help.
In the first week of that month, as Niagara’s COVID-19 situation began to rapidly deteriorate, Niagara Health and the public health department urged the provincial government to move Niagara into the more restrictive red zone to try to head off an impending crisis. The zone would have placed further limits on social and economic activity and put the region in line for earlier vaccine shipments to protect Niagara’s large long-term-care home population.
The provincial government ignored those pleas, and did not move Niagara into the red zone until Dec. 21, but by then community spread of the novel coronavirus, outbreaks and deaths were moving rapidly in the wrong direction. The local infection rate exploded in January — a month that saw 72 per cent of Niagara’s total pandemic cases and 72 per cent of its deaths.
The first shipment of Pfizer vaccines arrived on Jan. 12, and by then 200 residents with the virus had died — 113 of them since local health leaders asked the province for help.
The same week, a shipment of 5,500 Moderna COVID-19 vaccine doses bound for Niagara were diverted elsewhere. To date, the provincial government has not answered questions about the shipment, where it went, or why. The government has also not acknowledged an open letter issued by Niagara Health’s top doctors asking for the shipment to be restored.
Dr. Mustafa Hirji, Niagara’s acting medical officer of health, said one of the reasons schools should reopen before other sectors of society is precisely to determine if schools will be a vector for the spread of the novel coronavirus.