THUNDER BAY – Health authorities are urging all students and staff at Thunder Bay’s St. Martin elementary school to take part in a special testing clinic Saturday, warning it’s likely more cases could be discovered in the coming days.
The Thunder Bay Catholic District School Board closed the Westfort-area school Friday, due to an outbreak that involved nine confirmed cases as of Thursday evening.
The closure had been recommended by medical officer of health Dr. Janet DeMille to prevent further spread as the Thunder Bay District Health Unit investigates the outbreak.
“It is significant,” said medical officer of health Dr. Janet DeMille. “We’re still actively following up, and there may be further cases as a result. We’re certainly trying to manage that very assertively right now, and hopefully we’ll see it start to settle fairly soon.”
Around half of the school’s 550 students had already been dismissed due to exposure within their class or bus cohort when the decision came to close the school, she said.
“We were worried that spread had occurred outside of those particular cohorts, and that it could continue to spread,” she said.
TBCDSB director of education Pino Tassonewas hopeful students could be back in class as early as Tuesday or Wednesday, but said that will depend on testing results in the coming days. In the meantime, they’re learning virtually.
The health unit is asking St. Martin students and staff who haven’t already been tested for COVID-19 to attend a drive-through testing clinic at the school on Saturday.
Paramedics with Superior North EMS will be on site from 9 a.m. to 6 p.m. to perform the tests.
Tassone encouraged parents and guardians to take advantage of the opportunity to have children tested, saying it will help the school get back to face-to-face learning.
Students in exposed cohorts had already been contacted by health authorities with instructions for testing.
DeMille said low COVID-19 numbers in the broader community have so far kept the virus mostly out of schools, unlike elsewhere across Ontario.
“What we see across the province is that elementary schools are the number one place for outbreaks – it’s the Delta variant among an unvaccinated population,” she said.
“This is the first outbreak in a school setting since the beginning of the [school] year, so I think we’ve done really well. I think the biggest factor that has helped keep schools safe is that we’ve managed to maintain low community transmission of COVID-19.”
DeMille also pointed to public health measures in place within schools, such as mandatory masking for students in all grades but kindergarten.
“Likely what’s happening at St. Martin could have been a lot worse, if those measures hadn’t been in place,” she said. “One of the things we do is check about those measures when we’re following up, and there were a lot of measures in place.”
The episode also underlines how important it is for parents to complete pre-screening for COVID-19 symptoms before school, Tassone said.
Even more helpful will be the vaccination of elementary aged children, expected to roll out before the end of the month after Health Canada approved Pfizer’s children’s vaccine Friday.
“Knowing that our 5- to 11-year-olds will be vaccinated, hopefully sooner than later, is extremely positive,” said Tassone. “That’s obviously the group where in this case, we had an outbreak.”
Teachers and other school staff are not required to be vaccinated – Ontario’s education minister, Stephen Lecce, has claimed mandating vaccination would cause problematic staff shortages.
Unvaccinated school staff did not play a role in the St. Martin outbreak, DeMille said.
Further decisions on whether to extend the closure of the school are expected Monday.
