No ‘mass testing’ plan for schools
Boards are still waiting to hear proposal for asymptomatic testing
Education Minister Stephen Lecce confirmed Niagara students would return to in-class learning next week, but school boards are still waiting to hear the plan for targeted asymptomatic testing.
Niagara’s acting medical officer of health, Dr. Mustafa Hirji, said Friday that following provincial guidelines, the public health department will engage in “targeted asymptomatic testing” of students.
“We are not going to just randomly mass test students and teachers because we know there isn’t much value to that,” said Hirji.
In most cases, Hirji said, before the current lockdown, COVID-19 was not spreading widely in schools, with only a handful of outbreaks declared. There were a few cases in which it was not clear where the source of an outbreak was, or there was concern the virus has spread beyond what had been detected. In those cases, he said, public health used asymptomatic testing to get a better picture of the situation.
“That is the sort of situation in which we would send teams into a school to do testing,” Hirji said.
Hirji said despite Niagara’s COVID-19 metrics, which place the region in the same group of Ontario communities hit hard by the pandemic — including Windsor-essex, Peel and Toronto — he thinks schools can open safely.
Schools were not a major driver of infections before being shuttered by the provincial government, and modelling by the provincial pandemic science ta
ble released last week showed that when schools are open, the overall infection rate rises “by only an incremental amount,” Hirji said.
Niagara Catholic District School Board said it would support and work with public health.
“Niagara Region Public Health has said it does not support broad asymptomatic testing in schools,” said Camillo Cipriano, NCDSB director of education, in a statement. “It is our understanding that a recommendation for testing would only be made if there is a community or school-based outbreak or a cluster of unrelated cases at a school.”
“Any testing that would take place would be voluntary for staff and students, and parents and staff would have notification ahead of the proposed testing date. No student would be tested without parental consent.”
However, Niathe NCDSB did not indicate if they were aware of what public health’s or the province’s asymptomatic testing plan was.
Warren Hoshizaki, the director of education for the District School Board of Niagara, was also unsure if testing was coming to the board’s schools.
“If asymptomatic testing does come to our schools, decisions on how it will be implemented will come from the experts at Niagara Public Health,” he said. “They have been a great partner to us through the pandemic, and we continue to meet weekly with them and work together to keep our school communities safe.”
Lecce announced this week an expansion of the asymptomatic testing in schools, which will see as many as 50,000 students and staff tested for the virus per week across the province.
In addition to working with public health units to ramp up asymptomatic testing of students and staff, Niagara-west MPP Sam Oosterhoff said the province has also been working with school boards to identify priority areas for allocating the enhanced testing.
Cases in Niagara are among the highest in the province.
Oosterhoff said public health units “have been given the lead working with school boards in the best way to ensure the tests are administered, recognizing their on-the-ground expertise.”
It is unclear who will be called on to administer those tests.
“That’s why there have been 625 additional public health nurses hired across the province, which is a lot of nurses as well, to ensure there is adequate support,” Oosterhoff said. “But we recognize, of course, that we’re going to also have to move, depending on what boards have particular outbreaks that need to be responded to.”
Sean Vanderklis is a Niagara-based reporter for the Niagara Falls Review. His reporting is funded by the Canadian government through its Local Journalism Initiative. Reach him via email: svanderklis@metroland.com