School testing program uncovers 32 COVID cases

3,706 tests conducted in Toronto, Peel, Ottawa, Hamilton and Sudbury

The province’s school testing program continues to report low numbers of COVID-19 cases, statistics obtained by the Star show.

Of 3,706 tests conducted, 32 new cases were found. The testing began in late January in Ottawa and Sudbury, and in February in those two public health regions plus Toronto, Peel and Hamilton.

While most of the staff, students or family members who were tested were asymptomatic, some areas also tested those with symptoms.

All 72 Ontario school boards have plans and sites to ramp up testing this coming week — now that all students in the province are back in class in person and the province has mandated they cover five per cent of schools each week at a minimum, and two per cent of students.

Education Minister Stephen Lecce has said when the voluntary testing program is fully up and running by boards and public health units, some 50,000 tests will be completed each week, both the PCR (polymerase chain reaction) and rapid tests.

Teacher and education unions and the NDP have been urging the province to expand testing, among other measures, to improve safety in schools as students returned and as new, more contagious COVID variants surface in communities.

The recent results include:

Testing held in Peel Feb. 12 and 13, for those at 336 schools, where 93 people were tested and one new case identified. (Results for two tests are still pending.)

In Toronto, testing was held Feb. 11 to 13 for 40 schools, with 917 tests completed and 11 new cases found.

In Hamilton, testing done Feb. 13 for two school sites, involving 86 people, found no cases. Another round conducted Feb. 20 at one location, using both PCR and rapid testing, found no cases among the 37 rapid tests.

In Ottawa, testing was conducted Jan. 30 and 31, Feb. 6 and 7 and Feb 13 to 15 for 35 schools, with 2,336 tests done and 20 cases found.

In Sudbury, testing for three schools was held between Jan. 29 and Feb. 3, with 274 tests finding no new cases.

According to the province’s school COVID-case tracking website, as of Feb. 19 some 255 of Ontario’s 4,828 schools had at least one case, and currently five schools are closed because of outbreaks.

Some 80 new cases were reported last Friday, with 64 in students and 16 in staff. In total, 365 cases have been reported across the province in the past two weeks.

The risk of in-person schooling and the role schools play in the transmission of COVID-19 continues to be a topic of much debate.

A provincial government source said that with almost 4,000 tests completed in recent days with a positivity rate of less than one per cent it “is promising and demonstrates schools are safe places for learning, (but) it only underscores the importance of keeping our guard up. Continuing to follow public health guidelines and avoiding congregation after school and on weekends is key to keeping schools open and safe.”

Federal aviation regulators are ordering United Airlines to step up inspections of all Boeing 777s equipped with the type of engine that suffered a catastrophic failure over Denver Saturday.

United said it is temporarily removing those aircraft from service.

The announcements come a day after United Airlines Flight 328 had to make an emergency landing at Denver International Airport after its right engine blew apart just after takeoff. Pieces of the casing of the engine, a Pratt & Whitney PW4000, rained down on suburban neighbourhoods.

The plane with 231 passengers and 10 crew on board landed safely, and nobody aboard or on the ground was reported hurt, authorities said.

The Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) Administrator Steve Dickson said in a statement Sunday that based on an initial review of safety data, inspectors “concluded that the inspection interval should be stepped up for the hollow fan blades that are unique to this model of engine, used solely on Boeing 777 airplanes.”

The National Transportation Safety Board said in a separate statement that two of the engine’s fan blades were fractured and the remainder of the fan blades “exhibited damage.” The NTSB did caution that it was too early to draw conclusions about how the incident happened.

Video posted on Twitter showed the engine fully engulfed in flames as the plane flew through the air. Freeze frames from different video taken by a passenger sitting slightly in front of the engine and posted on Twitter appeared to show a broken fan blade in the engine.

United is the only U.S. airline with the Pratt & Whitney PW4000 in its fleet, the FAA said. United says it currently has 24 of the 777s in service.

Airlines in Japan and South Korea also operate planes with the Pratt & Whitney engine. Japan Airways and All Nippon Airways have decided to stop operating a combined 32 planes with that engine, according to Nikkei.

The province’s Ministry of Health and public health units will consider the best way to vaccinate First Nations, Inuit and Métis adults in jails, according to a statement from the Ministry of Health.

Phase 1 of the province’s vaccine rollout now identifies all Indigenous adults as a priority group for vaccination, alongside health-care workers and those living and working in congregate living settings for seniors.

This marks the first step toward vaccinating those who live in and work in provincial jails, something advocates have been calling for as the number of outbreaks in jails across the province spiked in recent months, including at the Thunder Bay Jail and Thunder Bay Correctional Complex where more than 85 inmates have been infected with the virus and the local public health unit has issued orders to curb community spread particularly among the particularly vulnerable homeless population.

The federal government has already vaccinated 600 federal inmates deemed to be at highest risk from the virus — a move that was slammed by Premier Doug Ford. The provincial government has not said when all jail inmates and correctional staff will be vaccinated, but that people living and working in high-risk congregate settings will be part of the next phase of the vaccination plan.

Since December, there have been at least 590 inmate cases and at least 12 outbreaks at jails across the province, according to data released by the Ministry of the Solicitor General.

“The John Howard Society of Ontario applauds the news that Indigenous adults, including those incarcerated in Ontario’s correctional institutions, are being prioritized for vaccination. We see this as a very positive step, and would strongly encourage the prioritization of all incarcerated individuals and staff inside correctional settings in the next phases of the vaccine distribution plan for Ontario,” said Safiyah Husein, senior policy analyst at the John Howard Society of Ontario.

Indigenous men and women are significantly overrepresented in the Ontario jail population. According to StatsCan, 13 per cent of men admitted to provincial jail are Indigenous, while that proportion is 22 per cent among women. The general Ontario population is 2.8 per cent Indigenous.

In a statement, the ministry said the province is currently vaccinating northern and remote First Nation communities and Elders’ congregate living facilities in 28 First Nation communities.

Nishnawbe Aski Nation Grand Chief Alvin Fiddler said it is the right decision by the province to prioritize Indigenous adults for vaccination, including those in jail, but says ongoing supply chain issues make the timeline for when that will happen unclear.

“It is a concern especially in places like Thunder Bay where we hear about (jail) outbreaks happening still,” Fiddler said. “Unfortunately we have a lot of members who are housed in provincial institutions and they are even more vulnerable in those settings,” he said, noting that the vast majority of jail inmates are legally innocent and have not yet had a trial.

The federal government has already vaccinated 600 federal inmates deemed to be at highest risk from the virus