School may be out for spring break but parents in three Island schools have been asked to keep an eye on their children after reports of possible exposure to COVID-19. Island Health, working with. . .
The Greater Victoria School District has announced a second COVID-19 exposure in as many days, this time at Lansdowne Middle School. The potential exposure was on March 3, 4, 5 or Tuesday, and Island Health is working on contact tracing in the school community. article continues below
They say in a release that all safety plans should continue being followed in workplaces, schools and grocery stores, for example. B.C. has recorded 648 new cases of COVID-19, including 79 that are variants of concern, the vast majority involving the one first identified in the United Kingdom, for a total of 717 of those cases. In a rare event, no deaths were reported on Friday in B.C., leaving the death toll at 1,397 people since the pandemic began. Thirty-two new cases were reported in the Island Health region, where 11 people are in hospital, including one in intensive care. Two facilities are currently experiencing outbreaks, including a retirement facility in White Rock and Ridge Meadows Hospital in Maple Ridge.
Island Health says it’s conducting contact tracing and will get in touch with anyone who might have been affected. An exposure is when someone who tests positive for COVID was at the school during their infectious period. Also new to the Island Health list of schools with COVID-19 exposures is Cedar Elementary in the Nanaimo-Ladysmith School District. The exposure was Monday or Wednesday. Greater Victoria School District has had only a few COVID-19 exposures during the 2020-21 school year, including one in November at Sir James Douglas Elementary and one in January at Ecole Macaulay Elementary. Board chair Jordan Watters said the district has been fortunate considering its size it’s made up of 47 schools and about 20,000 students.
Right now, students in elementary and middle schools largely attend school full-time, although some have staggered start times, while many secondary schools are on a “quarter system,” where they take two in-class courses over 10 weeks, ending up with eight in a year. The goal of the system is to reduce the number of people in the school at any given time. A return to a regular schedule would be a nice change, said Jodi Whiteman, who has a son in Grade 9 at Lambrick Park Secondary and serves as secretary for the Victoria Confederation of Parent Advisory Councils. “We’ll see in the fall it’s really quite far away.”