While the province announced added measures to protect schools from COVID-19 on Friday, including making masks mandatory for students in Grades 4 and up, serious concerns still remain with reopening day three weeks away, such as how infections will be communicated to parents and what would trigger a school shutdown.
Education Minister Zach Churchill and Robert Strang, the province’s chief medical officer of health, held the first public update of the province’s reopening plan since its release more than three weeks ago.
Unlike, his New Brunswick counterpart Dominic Cardy, who on Thursday pledged to hold twice-a-week news conferences to flesh out its provinces reopening plan, Churchill would not commit to weekly public information sharing sessions.
The minister said he and Strang “and whoever is appropriate” would make themselves available when needed and that his department would have fairly regular communication with parents.
“My voice and Dr. Strang’s voice are not always the most needed voice to communicate with parents.” said Churchill.
The minister said the department’s first and foremost goal is student and staff safety. “We developed our plan to be flexible, to best support the return to school for children, students and staff,” said Churchill, adding that regional centres for education and the Conseil scolaire acadien provincial will continue to communicate with families. Principals will also reach out to families with specific information about their school closer to September.
Friday’s news conference included some new protective measures for schools. Strang said the move to mask students in grades 4 to 12 follows new Public Health Agency guidelines. The decision against imposing masks on children under the age of 10 is largely due to evidence that they are much less likely to transmit the virus, said the doctor.
The mask order instructs students to wear masks inside schools, such as hallways, if they can’t maintain a two-metre distance. Students are permitted to remove masks at their desks provided there’s a minimum of two metres between desks. All students and staff will receive two free cloth masks.
The province has also earmarked an additional $40 million to safeguard schools, the majority of which is to hire more substitute teachers. As part of the move, the province is lifting the requirement for substitutes to hold a bachelor of education degree. Funding also includes money for additional custodial staff and lunchtime monitors.
Churchill also announced other measures, including a maintenance review of school ventilation systems, to ensure they’re running in peak form. Before and after school programs will be offered in accordance with public health guidelines. School sports will return with protocols that follow public health guidelines. Those details are in the final stage of development with Sports Nova Scotia.
Both Churchill and Strang pledged schools would notify families as soon as they become aware of COVID-19 cases in schools, along with what measures will need to be taken. But details about how those plans would work in practice have yet to be fully developed.
“If a case is identified in a school we will act quickly to identify anyone who comes into contact with that person,” said Strang. “That’s why we’re keeping students in their classroom cohorts and limiting contact with cohorts.”
Strang also said in the cases of school infection, entire classroom cohorts wouldn’t necessarily have to self isolate.
The minister remained confident that proper distancing can happen in most classes, and that “schools have been asked to be creative and innovative to maximize opportunities for spacing.” He said only one or two schools in the Halifax Regional Municipality area are facing space challenges.
Public health is developing scenarios that could force further restriction in schools, including a school shutdown, said Strang. But he said there is no concrete number of virus infections that could force a school shutdown, instead several factors need to be considered, including whether there’s virus spread in the local community.
“Even with an individual case, we have to look at where that person was likely exposed,” said Strang. “My team is working as much as we can anticipating a single case in a classroom, multiple cases in communities. We can’t make final decisions until we have a final case in front of us.”
Regardless, he said, public health would work with schools to make sure students can continue their studies. He also said he fully expects schools to be hit by COVID.
Tory education critic Tim Halman was clearly frustrated after the news conference, saying “I still don’t know what the first day of school looks like for my four kids.”
“Teachers still don’t have the details they need to get going to set up their classrooms.”
He also slammed the minister for not committing to weekly updates with reopening weeks aways.
Claudia Chender, NDP education critic, echoed those sentiments saying what’s missing from the government’s reopening plan is a “steady flow of communication,” including details on what could trigger a school shutdown and plans to ensure easy access to COVID testing in schools.
“We are a few weeks away from 12,000 children going back into close quarters with each other,” said Chender. “While I think it’s important that schools restart, this is the biggest reopening we’ve had since March, much bigger than the reopening of the commercial sector here in Nova Scotia.”
Chender said in the lead up to the reopening of the economy, government was holding regular weekly public briefings and that school staff, students, and parents should be entitled to the same.
The Canadian government says it will donate up to 200,000 vaccine doses to fight the mpox outbreak in Congo and other African countries.
It says the donated doses of Imvamune will come from Canada’s existing supply and will not affect the country’s preparedness for mpox cases in this country.
Minister of Health Mark Holland says the donation “will help to protect those in the most affected regions of Africa and will help prevent further spread of the virus.”
Dr. Madhukar Pai, Canada research chair in epidemiology and global health, says although the donation is welcome, it is a very small portion of the estimated 10 million vaccine doses needed to control the outbreak.
Vaccine donations from wealthier countries have only recently started arriving in Africa, almost a month after the World Health Organization declared the mpox outbreak a public health emergency of international concern.
A few days after the declaration in August, Global Affairs Canada announced a contribution of $1 million for mpox surveillance, diagnostic tools, research and community awareness in Africa.
On Thursday, the Africa Centres for Disease Control and Prevention said mpox is still on the rise and that testing rates are “insufficient” across the continent.
Jason Kindrachuk, Canada research chair in emerging viruses at the University of Manitoba, said donating vaccines, in addition to supporting surveillance and diagnostic tests, is “massively important.”
But Kindrachuk, who has worked on the ground in Congo during the epidemic, also said that the international response to the mpox outbreak is “better late than never (but) better never late.”
“It would have been fantastic for us globally to not be in this position by having provided doses a much, much longer time prior than when we are,” he said, noting that the outbreak of clade I mpox in Congo started in early 2023.
Clade II mpox, endemic in regions of West Africa, came to the world’s attention even earlier — in 2022 — as that strain of virus spread to other countries, including Canada.
Two doses are recommended for mpox vaccination, so the donation may only benefit 100,000 people, Pai said.
Pai questioned whether Canada is contributing enough, as the federal government hasn’t said what percentage of its mpox vaccine stockpile it is donating.
“Small donations are simply not going to help end this crisis. We need to show greater solidarity and support,” he said in an email.
“That is the biggest lesson from the COVID-19 pandemic — our collective safety is tied with that of other nations.”
This report by The Canadian Press was first published Sept. 13, 2024.
Canadian Press health coverage receives support through a partnership with the Canadian Medical Association. CP is solely responsible for this content.
HALIFAX – The Nova Scotia government says it could be months before it reveals how many people are on the wait-list for a family doctor.
The head of the province’s health authority told reporters Wednesday that the government won’t release updated data until the 160,000 people who were on the wait-list in June are contacted to verify whether they still need primary care.
Karen Oldfield said Nova Scotia Health is working on validating the primary care wait-list data before posting new numbers, and that work may take a matter of months. The most recent public wait-list figures are from June 1, when 160,234 people, or about 16 per cent of the population, were on it.
“It’s going to take time to make 160,000 calls,” Oldfield said. “We are not talking weeks, we are talking months.”
The interim CEO and president of Nova Scotia Health said people on the list are being asked where they live, whether they still need a family doctor, and to give an update on their health.
A spokesperson with the province’s Health Department says the government and its health authority are “working hard” to turn the wait-list registry into a useful tool, adding that the data will be shared once it is validated.
Nova Scotia’s NDP are calling on Premier Tim Houston to immediately release statistics on how many people are looking for a family doctor. On Tuesday, the NDP introduced a bill that would require the health minister to make the number public every month.
“It is unacceptable for the list to be more than three months out of date,” NDP Leader Claudia Chender said Tuesday.
Chender said releasing this data regularly is vital so Nova Scotians can track the government’s progress on its main 2021 campaign promise: fixing health care.
The number of people in need of a family doctor has more than doubled between the 2021 summer election campaign and June 2024. Since September 2021 about 300 doctors have been added to the provincial health system, the Health Department said.
“We’ll know if Tim Houston is keeping his 2021 election promise to fix health care when Nova Scotians are attached to primary care,” Chender said.
This report by The Canadian Press was first published Sept. 11, 2024.
ST. JOHN’S, N.L. – Newfoundland and Labrador‘s chief medical officer is monitoring the rise of whooping cough infections across the province as cases of the highly contagious disease continue to grow across Canada.
Dr. Janice Fitzgerald says that so far this year, the province has recorded 230 confirmed cases of the vaccine-preventable respiratory tract infection, also known as pertussis.
Late last month, Quebec reported more than 11,000 cases during the same time period, while Ontario counted 470 cases, well above the five-year average of 98. In Quebec, the majority of patients are between the ages of 10 and 14.
Meanwhile, New Brunswick has declared a whooping cough outbreak across the province. A total of 141 cases were reported by last month, exceeding the five-year average of 34.
The disease can lead to severe complications among vulnerable populations including infants, who are at the highest risk of suffering from complications like pneumonia and seizures. Symptoms may start with a runny nose, mild fever and cough, then progress to severe coughing accompanied by a distinctive “whooping” sound during inhalation.
“The public, especially pregnant people and those in close contact with infants, are encouraged to be aware of symptoms related to pertussis and to ensure vaccinations are up to date,” Newfoundland and Labrador’s Health Department said in a statement.
Whooping cough can be treated with antibiotics, but vaccination is the most effective way to control the spread of the disease. As a result, the province has expanded immunization efforts this school year. While booster doses are already offered in Grade 9, the vaccine is now being offered to Grade 8 students as well.
Public health officials say whooping cough is a cyclical disease that increases every two to five or six years.
Meanwhile, New Brunswick’s acting chief medical officer of health expects the current case count to get worse before tapering off.
A rise in whooping cough cases has also been reported in the United States and elsewhere. The Pan American Health Organization issued an alert in July encouraging countries to ramp up their surveillance and vaccination coverage.
This report by The Canadian Press was first published Sept. 10, 2024.
