Students from Newfoundland and Labrador in kindergarten to grade 12 will be back in class on Tuesday morning, though the county’s teachers’ association says they cannot stand by the decision.
Dr. Janice Fitzgerald, the province’s chief medical officer for health, said on Thursday the decision to start the class again was not taken lightly. She said she understood the widespread concern – the Omicron variant of COVID-19 still infects hundreds of people in the province every day.
“We can not allow fear to guide our decisions,” Fitzgerald told reporters in St. Louis. John’s said. “One of the most important lessons that has emerged from this pandemic is how important school is for children. Not only for their academic well-being, but also for their physical and emotional well-being. ”
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But the Newfoundland and Labrador Teachers Association is not on board.
“The NLTA cannot support a return to personal learning on January 25,” President Trent Langdon said in a news release following Fitzgerald’s announcement. “This is simply too soon given the current COVID-19 situation in the province.”
Students have been learning from home since January 4th. They will have to take two quick tests before returning to school – one 72 hours before their first day and the other on Tuesday morning, before classes start, officials said.
Schools this week handed out kits of five quick tests per student. Officials say the three remaining tests could be used if students begin to experience COVID-19 symptoms.
Fitzgerald said parents do not have to report positive results from these tests, but she said the test regime is necessary.
“We ask parents to do the right thing and help us reduce the risk of COVID spread as students return to school,” she said.
About 75 percent of children between the ages of five and 11 had their first doses of a COVID-19 vaccine, which according to Fitzgerald is the highest vaccination rate among children in the country. Children will have to wear masks at school, and Fitzgerald recommended using masks with three layers, or wearing two masks at the same time.
Quick tests will also be provided to day care, she said.
Fitzgerald reported 360 newly confirmed cases on Thursday, with 25 percent of tests completed in the past 24 hours yielding a positive result. Two more people in the province have died from COVID-19 since Wednesday, she said.
There were 60 people in the hospital with COVID-19 on Thursday afternoon, and 20 of them were admitted due to the disease, a health department spokesman said in an email. Five of those 60 patients were in critical care.
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The teachers’ association said it agreed that schooling was critical for children, but warned that a return to school before it was safe would only result in further disruptions.
Fitzgerald said the province would remain in Alert Level 4, limiting households to 10 close contacts. The association said it would like to see schools reopen when health officials determine it is safe enough to loosen those restrictions and move to a lower alert level.
“We recognize that schools were previously open to personal learning during Warning Level 4, but it was before the extent and intensity of proliferation and outbreaks that we experienced with the Omicron variant,” the association’s news release said.
Tony Stack, chief executive of the province’s English school board, said there was a lot of help available from retired teachers, teaching assistants and about 1,100 substitute teachers if large numbers of teachers were forced out of work due to the disease.
This report by The Canadian Press was first published on January 20, 2022.
© 2022 The Canadian Press
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