Father tracking Quebec’s COVID-19 cases warns of ‘school-driven’ spread
Posted September 4, 2021 5:30 pm.
Last Updated September 5, 2021 1:13 pm.
MONTREAL (CityNews) ─ The Quebecer who has been tracking COVID-19 cases in schools since the start of the pandemic believes current health measures are not enough to prevent the spread of the contagious Delta variant in Quebec’s schools.
Thousands of children, teenagers and young adults went back to class last week with a new set of public-health guidelines.
Students will have to wear masks in common areas and in class. But there won’t be any more class bubbles, and extracurricular activities are allowed.
That spells trouble according to Olivier Drouin, the Quebec father who founded the website COVID Ecoles Quebec, which publishes a list of schools in the province with COVID-19 cases.
“There will be more and more (cases) every day,” said Drouin. “Every time you see the number of cases in Quebec, you can say 13 to 15 per cent of those cases are school driven, school initiated.
“The trend is not a positive one. Already 372 cases and almost eight per cent of all schools in Quebec have COVID cases after only a few days back.”
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Drouin says some of the government’s rules flat out don’t make sense, while not enough has been done to the schools’ infrastructure to make that setting safe.
“There’s no real work on ventilation, air quality,” he said. “And I would say what’s new this year and very confusing on the ground is their contact tracing rules that drastically changed, and that it creating a lot of confusion and increased transmission because if you’ve been exposed to a COVID positive person, you don’t have to isolate.”
Students and teachers are mixed about being back in class in person.
“It feels great because for the social part, it’s obviously better because we can learn in person,” said CEGEP student Samuel Tremblay. “For the teacher, it’s easier for him to help us learn.
“I feel safe because I had my two vaccines. I think for the immunity maybe it’s not the best thing because we want everybody to be immunized. But now with the vaccine passport coming out right now, maybe it will get better and maybe each student will have to get checked for that.”
Most elementary school children are not eligible for the COVID-19 vaccine yet. And the elimination of class bubbles could make contact tracing very tricky, says one elementary school teacher.
“They know they’re going to see their friends, so for some reason it motivates them a bit more,” said teacher Valentina Manta. “Compared to last year, because they were stuck with the same 20 students all year long because they couldn’t see their friends, they couldn’t go see their siblings if they had other siblings. So that’s something that I find is better now compared to last year.
“But then again considering there’s no bubbles now, they’re all together and like it or not, we’re still in a pandemic.”
Quebec Education Minister Jean-Francois Roberge has said rapid testing would be available for schools. But a week into the school year, and staff told CityNews there was still no sign of them.
“If mandatory vaccination is not an option, there’s other solutions to the same problem like introducing rapid testing, changing contact rules and of course ventilation, ventilation, ventilation,” said Drouin.