West Vancouver parents are calling on health authorities to change the way COVID-19 cases in schools are handled after nine students out of a class of 16 Grade 2 students at Caulfeild Elementary got COVID-19.
One of those students – who reportedly tested positive for COVID-19 after she was sent home to self-isolate – even ended up in hospital after developing a high fever, according to a parent who spoke to the girl’s family. The girl has since returned home.
Coralynn Gehl, a Caulfeild Elementary school mom who started a local Facebook group to share information on cases of COVID-19 in schools, has been speaking to local parents and passing on information from families.
Gehl said the girl’s mother still wonders if her daughter’s illness could have been avoided if families had been told of the exposure to the virus sooner. Other parents share those thoughts, said Gehl, who has started an online petition asking health authorities to send all students in a cohort home as soon as a case in school is identified.
Gehl said parents believe the current system – where there is a lag between a positive test result and families in a child’s school getting notice of a potential exposure – has allowed the virus to spread. Families want to know if there is a positive case in their own child’s class, said Gehl, adding that parents also want to see siblings of students who are self-isolating stay home until the incubation period is over.
“Because if I’m a parent and I’ve got a child who’s self-isolating because they’ve had a possible exposure, I’m being more careful when I go out into the public,” said Gehl. “When you send an eight-year-old child to school, they’re not wearing masks in classrooms, they’re all playing together. That child is in contact with lots of children in the course of a day.”
On Monday, Dr. Bonnie Henry, the province’s medical health officer, said she thinks parents are being notified of school exposures appropriately.
“Public health teams on the ground are working with every school, every school community,” said Henry. “Every parent who needs to know what’s going on with their child has that information.”
Henry added she is confident contact tracers are finding anyone who may have been exposed to virus within “a short period of time.”
So far, asking students to self-isolate when needed has kept the virus from becoming unchecked outbreaks in schools, said Henry.
“And we need to balance that with the disruptions of large numbers of students for no reason,” she said. “The vast majority of symptoms are not COVID.”
She said rates of COVID-19 remain very low among children and teenagers, making up less than 10 per cent of all COVID-19 cases in B.C., despite testing rates that have recently doubled and quadrupled among school-age kids. Only seven out of every 1,000 tests on those under 20 are coming back positive for COVID-19 said Henry. As of Oct. 1, 50 exposures had been reported in school settings provincewide, about half of which were in elementary schools and half at the secondary level. But she added, “What we’re not seeing is schools amplifying transmission in a community.”
Questioned why public health officials can’t provide more information about COVID-19 exposures in schools – such as what cohort or class an exposure occurred in – Henry said the current process of notification is designed to balance health protection and privacy.
In some cases, Henry said, families and staff have shared information themselves about positive COVID-19 tests. Sometimes those people have been the recipients of “nasty notes and bad behaviour,” said Henry, and that kind of reaction makes people reluctant to go for testing.
Gehl said she hasn’t witnessed that on the Facebook group she runs, where people have been overwhelmingly supportive. Meanwhile, Gehl said comments from Henry have done little to make local parents feel better when students not only appeared to catch the virus within their class but also passed it on to family members – including parents, grandparents and siblings – in some cases.
“It’s everything we were told probably wouldn’t happen,” she said. “‘Contacts of contacts are safe and siblings won’t get it and transmission will be minimal and kids don’t really get sick anyway.’ And we ended up with 16 people sick and one in the hospital.”
So far one Grade 2 class and one Grade 5 class at Caulfeild Elementary have been told to self-isolate after possible exposure dates on Sept. 16 to 18 and Sept. 21 to 24.
Rockridge Secondary was added to the list by Vancouver Coastal Health last week with Sept. 23 and 24 as possible exposure dates, after a Grade 9 student who has a sibling in the self-isolating Grade 2 class at Caulfeild tested positive for COVID-19.
A class at Sentinel was also sent home to self-isolate earlier in September after both a student and teacher tested positive for the virus.
