As COVID-19 cases begin to pop up in Chatham-Kent schools, local health officials are assuring residents that they are working hard to control the situation and keep the area's 16,000 students safe.
On Tuesday, the first cases of COVID-19 in a school community in Chatham-Kent were confirmed at St. Anne Catholic School in Blenheim. Ursuline College Chatham also announced late Tuesday afternoon that the St. Clair Catholic District School Board had been notified of a positive case in the high school community. Meanwhile, the Lambton-Kent District School Board confirmed its first positive case in Chatham-Kent on Wednesday at Tecumseh Public School.
Dozens of students across Chatham-Kent have been sent home this week as a result of the positive cases and concerns surrounding probable cases.
During Wednesday morning's Chatham-Kent Board of Health meeting, the municipality's medical officer of health, Dr. David Colby, said that as a cautionary measure, cohorts in schools have been removed as identified by contact tracing to help stop the spread of COVID-19 in local schools.
He added that no COVID-19 cases have been transmitted within school environments, so far.
"There are a large number of students and staff members being isolated in schools at the present time. But I do not have any school-based outbreaks at this point," said Colby. "I am able to say with confidence that the contact tracing staff of the health unit, that are very well organized and very skilled at their jobs, have got ahead of this in all instances and we are testing widely to make sure that nothing has been missed."
Colby said all possible precautions have been taken by public health to help limit the spread of the virus in Chatham-Kent schools. He said in-depth protocols were developed by health officials, knowing that it was inevitable that cases would eventually be seen in the school community.
"This is not a surprise, it's happened in many if not most health units across Ontario," he said. "I'm just hoping we are able to say next month that we still have no school-based outbreaks."
Public Health Nurse Jake Zelina said the Chatham-Kent Public Health Unit worked on its COVID-19 safe school reopening plan throughout the summer alongside the Lambton-Kent District School Board, St. Clair Catholic District School Board and as well as Lambton Public Health.
According to Zelina, that included preparing and developing policies and procedures, simplifying Ministry of Health documents to create step by step process, and creating resources to help parents.
"We also developed some letters to parents as well, if there happened to be a probable case in the school, a positive case in the school, school closure, an outbreak. So we had all of those prepared ahead of time," he explained.
Zelina acknowledged that the past few days have been extremely busy for public health officials and school board officials but said he believes the model in place is working well. As the team works to keep school community members up to date with the current situation, they are also tasked with the challenge of keeping track of the ever-evolving information that comes out about COVID-19.
"We've been working with the guidance of the Ministry of Health documents and operational guidance. These are the resources that we do use. We're constantly receiving updates in regards to this as we know more about COVID-19. We're flying the plane as we build it," said Zelina. "We're asked to think on our feet and I think we've done a very good job of that."
According to Zelina, six COVID-19 focused nurses are currently assigned to schools in addition to over 10 trained staff members to help support with COVID-19 protocols. He said the main focusing is staying ahead of the game so that the caseload doesn't get out of control.
"We've done a situational assessment within our public health unit, specifically for our team, in regards to emergency management. We kind of learned from what other health units have experienced as well. We anticipated at least one case of COVID-19 within the school community, we could have upward of 50 to 80 cases and we were pretty much bang on with that," he said. "We developed a capacity within our team to deal with that situation."
If there is a positive case in a school, Zelina said that the health unit is reminding parents and guardians to not get their children tested right away, but wait for direction from public health officials.
"We do have specific strategies on when the right time is to test. We dont want to overload our community partners and the assessment centre and instill or cause any community panic," said Zelina. "We've been doing a great job with that and the community has been very, very understanding."