NS to Close Halifax-Area School Due to Rising COVID-19 Case Count | The Canadian News

A Clayton Park-area elementary school will be temporarily closed amid a surge in COVID-19 cases and exposures at the school.

Parents of Duc d’Anville Elementary School students have been calling on the province to close the school as it continues to report new COVID-19 cases and exposures.

Attendance has dropped dramatically as some parents have chosen to keep their children at home. There have been 14 cases at the school so far and 10 exposures since September 20.

In an email to families Friday, Principal Adam Griffin said the school, in consultation with Public Health, will be closed to students beginning Tuesday, October 12.

“This is due to the continuing number of COVID-19 cases connected to our school,” he said.

Griffin said families can expect to hear from their teachers on Tuesday and that learning at home will begin that day. He said he will share more information on Monday.

The email also said Public Health will deploy its mobile test unit to the community next week and a negative COVID-19 test will be required to return to school on October 18.

Dr. Robert Strang, the province’s chief medical officer for health, said during a news conference earlier in the week that Nova Scotia was not yet at the point where it had to close schools.

But in a statement Friday, the chief doctor recommended the shutdown.

“While our goal is for students to continue learning in the classroom, it was clear to me that if stronger measures were needed, such as closing a school, we would not hesitate to act,” he said.

“The regional medical officer of the health team has been closely monitoring this situation and they are recommending a temporary shutdown to contain the spread.”

The closure is a ‘great relief’

Paul Wozney, president of the Nova Scotia Teachers Union, said the announcement will likely be a “great relief” to school staff, who have been concerned about the increase in cases at the school.

“These cases have been piling up for the better part of three weeks at this particular school, and they have sounded the alarm loudly and clearly,” he said.

He gave credit to the parents who have been pressuring the province to close the school.

Wozney said he was pleased that Public Health responded to his concerns.

“Some people will probably say that we would have liked to see this step a while ago, but at least it is being taken now, and I think we now have a precedent,” he said, adding that there are other schools with cases on the rise and now there is one. ” expectation “of how they will be addressed in the future.

However, Wozney expressed concern for parents who could not afford to keep their children at home, saying that many of the students who continued to attend school came from families that could not afford to miss a day of work.

In addition, he said there are many newcomers to that area and they are concerned that Public Health communication will be lost for those who do not speak English or French as their first language.

“There is a part of the fairness in this that I think sometimes gets lost,” he said.

“Everybody makes assumptions. They believe that everyone is like them … and really, schools are very diverse places. Even if we don’t see visible diversity, there is real diversity in the lived experience of families. “

25 new cases, 38 recoveries

The province also announced in a separate statement that there are 25 new cases of COVID-19. With 38 recoveries, the number of active cases is now 234.

Seventeen cases are in the Central Zone, four cases are in the Eastern Zone, three cases are in the North Zone and one case is in the Western Zone.

The province goes on to say that there is community spread in the Central Zone, mainly among people between the ages of 20 and 40 who are not vaccinated and participate in social activities.

He also said that two schools were notified of exposures at their schools on October 7. One of them was at Duc d’Anville.

“It is important to note that an exposure associated with a school does not mean that there is spread within the school or that the initial case was first exposed to the virus at school,” the statement said.

The statement also included updated data on the vaccination status of new cases. Of the 5,214 cases reported between March 15 and October 6, 88.7% were not vaccinated, 6.4% were partially vaccinated, and 4.9% were fully vaccinated.

Of the 290 people hospitalized in that time period, 87.6% were not vaccinated, 10% were partially vaccinated, and 2.4% were fully vaccinated.

And of the 32 people who died, 26 were not vaccinated, three were partially vaccinated, and three were fully vaccinated.

The province does not release COVID-19 updates on weekends or holidays, so the next update will arrive on Tuesday.