More than 900 Toronto District School Board employees seeking COVID-19 vaccine exemptions are still working with children in schools as the board reviews their applications, a situation that experts say puts students at risk. not vaccinated.
The TDSB has published for several weeks the number of staff applying for medical or faith-based exemptions, which as of November 21 was 1,093. But it was unclear how many of those employees were allowed to continue working with the students while the board reviewed their applications.
When Star requested that number, the board initially said such a request would require a more in-depth analysis of their data “which is not available at this time.” Then a day later, when Star sought clarification, the board said that 920 of these unvaccinated staff members are in fact working day-to-day with students.
“Until we can make a determination related to their waiver request, they continue to meet the expectations of the ministry’s testing,” said board spokesman Ryan Bird, noting that unvaccinated staff should undergo rapid three antigen testing. times a week while the board reviews your applications.
University of Toronto epidemiologist Colin Furness called the situation “tremendously worrying” and “insanely unsafe.”
These staff “don’t want to be vaccinated and they don’t want to take unpaid leave, so the only other option is to opt for this,” he said.
The TDSB is one of the few boards in the province that implements its own COVID vaccine procedures for employees. Staff who reported that they were not vaccinated had until November 19 to receive their first vaccination or to receive unpaid leave. Those who had received one dose before November 19 were given another month to receive the second.
About 330 unvaccinated employees were placed on administrative non-disciplinary leave without pay on Nov. 22, Bird said.
Just over 88 percent of TDSB’s 41,719 employees have been fully vaccinated.
Those requesting faith-based exemptions should submit a form that answers questions about what faith, creed, or sect they belong to.
Staff whose medical or religious exemption requests are not approved have 45 days to be vaccinated or receive a non-disciplinary administrative leave.
Anna Dewar Gully, who has two children, ages 10 and six, enrolled in a TDSB school, said the waivers are “an important part of the story.” But he added that there are other holes in the board’s vaccination procedure.
She believes the real problem is that she lacks teeth, clear reporting mechanisms, and ways to follow up with unvaccinated staff.
“I feel like parents were led to believe that their children would be in classrooms with vaccinated adults,” he said. Instead, what is in place “is not strong enough to protect vulnerable children.”
Her two children spent time in quarantine after a positive COVID case at their school, and in one case, this was due to an unvaccinated adult. But Dewar Gully couldn’t get answers about who the person was or what area of the school they worked in, and the administration cited privacy concerns.
“Colleagues, staff members, and students all have no idea who those people are,” he said. “Wouldn’t you want to know which classrooms the unvaccinated teacher was in?”
Ontario’s chief medical officer for health, Dr. Kieran Moore, has said that the rate of legitimate medical exemptions granted in the province should be between one and five in 100,000, or 0.005 percent at the high end, based on true incidence. of rare adverse effects. reactions to the vaccine.
Medical exemptions require a letter from a doctor or nurse practitioner. To date, the TDSB has approved four requests for medical exemptions. If that were the final count for all staff, the rate would be 0.009 percent.
The board has granted zero faith-based requests.
In October, Star found that employees at 45 of the province’s largest school boards have filed medical exemptions for the COVID-19 vaccine at a rate 42 times higher on average than the exemption rate Moore said would be expected in the general population.
Dr. Anna Banerji, an infectious disease specialist at the University of Toronto Temerty School of Medicine, noted that legitimate medical exemptions are primarily limited to severe allergic reactions or a history of inflammation of the heart or its outer lining.
“So when you have 1,000 people who want these exemptions, how many of them are really acceptable from Ontario’s perspective? Probably not much, ”he said. “In the meantime, if these people come to work and they don’t have a real exemption, or if (the board hasn’t) found out if it’s exemptions, it puts people at risk.”
Banerji said he would not be surprised if vaccination became mandatory for teachers in Ontario in the near future, especially as cases continue to rise and with the emergence of the new highly transmissible Omicron variant. And he said that with children ages five to 11 who have just become eligible for the vaccine, it will take a while before they are fully protected.
In Toronto, about 10 percent of children ages five to 11 have received their first dose since appointments opened last week.
On Tuesday, the number of outbreaks in Ontario elementary schools reached 182, a high since the beginning of the school year.
Furness questioned why the TDSB takes so long to review these applications, and said the board should try to move these people into learning online, or at least outside of elementary schools.
The rate at which TDSB staff are trying to obtain exemptions, about 2.6 percent of the total, is “many orders of magnitude higher than it should be,” he said.
“I don’t know what the end game is for people looking for this,” Furness said. “But they are putting children in a dangerous position because of their own conviction and I am incredibly impressed.”
Reference-www.thestar.com