New school screening guidelines exclude runny noses, headaches

Toronto to be consistent with province for now, public health official says

With less than two weeks before school starts, the province has updated its school screening guidelines for those returning to the classrooms on Friday. The most noticeable change is that symptoms like runny noses and headaches are no longer included in the list of possible COVID-19 symptoms for returning students.

Dr. Vinita Dubey, associate medical officer at Toronto Public Health, reviewed the updated provincial guidelines and said for now, the city will be “consistent” with the province, but may impose other screening tools if cases in Toronto continue to go up.

“Symptoms like runny noses, headaches and sore throats could be COVID but it could be other things,” she said, giving examples like allergies or coming in from the cold.

“They have less of a positive predictive value, but we think more people with COVID have coughs and troubled breathing. The other piece is that in children, maybe 30 per cent are asymptomatic so the screening tool is important. If you have symptoms, stay home and get tested, but it’s also about wearing a mask, staying your distance, that adds up.”

The screening form lists the following symptoms:

> fever and/or chills,

> coughing or barking cough (croup),

> shortness of breath,

> decrease or loss of taste or smell,

> nausea,

> vomiting and/or diarrhea.

The issue of runny noses in the screening guidelines has been brought up multiple times over the last year.

It was initially included as one of the symptoms that kept children out of schools and daycares, leading to long lines at COVID assessment centres late last summer.

Runny noses were then removed from the symptoms list in October by the province. In February, they were added again as the number of confirmed cases went up.

Most recently, at the beginning of August and wiht the province facing a Delta-fuelled fourth wave, Dr. Kieran Moore, Ontario’s chief medical officer of health, said in a press conference that runny noses will not be listed as a symptom.

“We’ve heard loud and clear from parents and looked at our testing, we did a lot of testing for very mild symptoms like runny nose, and we found that we didn’t get a lot of positives at a population level,” he said.

“So we’ve narrowed down the symptom list to those that are very specific to COVID-19 for children and adults so fever, cough, increasing shortness of breath, loss of taste or smell. And in children, vomiting and diarrhea is correlated with COVID-19 new onset. “