Voluntary asymptomatic COVID-19 testing will be coming to a school near you very soon.
The Directors of Education at the Lambton-Kent District School Board and the St. Clair Catholic District School Board both said their school boards are starting to put a plan together and the "CLASS" school consortium will organize the school testing. "CLASS" is the Chatham-Kent Lambton Administrative School Services shared by both boards.
Public school board director John Howitt said the plan is to have tests complete on staff and students at three public schools each week and that could include testing on weekends and evenings but stressed the testing is not mandatory. Howitt said a meeting has yet to take place with the private company doing the testing and more information will be coming.
Howitt said parental consent forms must be signed before the student testing is done. Catholic school board director Deb Crawford said the plan is to have about five per cent of the local Catholic schools tested each week.
Chatham-Kent Medical Officer of Health Dr. David Colby emphasized once again that students are not driving community transmission of the virus anywhere. He also said teachers are not a priority to get vaccinated against COVID-19 yet because they are not at an elevated risk compared to the general population and they're not at elevated risk of mortality. Dr. Colby said age is the biggest risk of dying from COVID-19.
"We would really place teachers in the same risk category as other people their age," said Colby. "There are currently no people actively teaching who are over the age of 80."
CK Public Health reports only three of the 40 total outbreaks in Chatham-Kent are school outbreaks and they have all been resolved. Those three school outbreaks accounted for a total of seven cases.
Colby asks people to be patient because more vaccines are coming and projections indicate their volume will increase significantly over the coming weeks. He also said there are other vaccines still waiting for Health Canada approval.
The province announced expanded asymptomatic testing in early February to keep schools and child care settings safe. According to the provincial government, the tests will offer an additional layer of protection and help keep schools and child care centres safe by identifying cases that might otherwise have gone undetected; reducing transmission of COVID-19 from community into schools and within schools; and reducing barriers and making it easier to get a test in your community.
In the fall, more than 9,000 asymptomatic students, staff, and household members got tested for COVID-19 in over 60 schools in Toronto, Peel, York and Ottawa during the first phase of the targeted testing program. The province reported about two per cent of the tests showed a positive result for COVID-19 during this phase, with the majority of positive cases coming from household cases and not staff or students within schools.
