School won’t resume Sept. 8 as planned

VANCOUVER — Students in British Columbia won’t return to classrooms on the originally planned date of Sept. 8 as the provincial government looks to a more gradual return.

Children will be welcomed back to classrooms in the second week of September after staff review the latest BC Centre for Disease Control guidelines and school operation policies for COVID-19, Education Minister Rob Fleming said Tuesday.

“Having the restart week staged in some kind of manner that would have staff teams together for a couple days before we gradually welcome kids back to make sure that every school — all 1,500 of them in the province — are truly ready to welcome students is a good idea, and that’s the approach that we’ll be taking,” he said.

No official date has been set for children to return to schools. Fleming said the government and its steering committee are working to finalize how school operations will work.

In the past, students going back to class would return to their previous classrooms before moving to new ones, but Fleming said that isn’t safe now.

“That obviously can’t happen under these pandemic conditions.”

The announcement of a phased-in approach to returning to classrooms comes as Health Minister Adrian Dix and provincial health officer Dr. Bonnie Henry said in a joint statement on Tuesday that community transmission of COVID-19 affects schools.

“As we look to fall, what we’ve learned from other jurisdictions is that transmission in a school setting is a reflection of what’s happening in our communities; keeping our community transmission low and slow keeps us all safe.”And behind the scenes, public health is using contact tracing to mitigate the new growth in cases.”

There were 46 new cases in the province on Tuesday for a total of 4,111.

Premier John Horgan acknowledged last week the anxiety around returning to school for parents, students and teachers. However, he was confident that children will be safe when they return to their classrooms.

Meanwhile, government data shows 472 people battling COVID-19 infections in B.C. — more people than at any time since May 11.

The number of active cases has risen for the seventh consecutive day, and what is driving the momentum behind the rise is a steady stream of new infections.

On Aug. 11, the B.C. government announced that there were 46 new infections. That is the eighth day this month that the number of infections has been at least 43. There were only two days in July where the number of new infections were that high.

There are now 3,444 people who have recovered from their battles with the virus.

The vast majority of those actively fighting the virus are self-isolating at home, but eight people are in hospital, with five of those in intensive-care units.

Some good news is that the province recorded no new deaths from the virus that has spawned a global pandemic. The last death from the disease in B.C. was recorded on July 31.

In total, there have been 393 cases in

Interior Health.

“There have been no new health-care facility outbreaks in the region,” Henry and Dix said in a joint statement.

The outbreak at the Krazy Cherry Fruit. Co. in Oliver has been declared over.