By Canadian Press

B.C. teachers want data on COVID-19 in schools to be publicly available

Sep 6, 2021 | 12:45 PM

VANCOUVER — The head of the B.C. Teachers Federation says parents and educators are anxious about no longer receiving notices about COVID-19 exposure in schools even as the number of overall cases in the province is expected to rise this fall.

Teri Mooring says previous notices weren’t perfect because they didn’t state how many cases of the virus were circulating in a particular school, but at least they provided some indication about what was happening.

Provincial health officer Dr. Bonnie Henry has said the notices created anxiety for parents, but Mooring says that’s insulting because having no information only causes more stress.

Mooring says notices will only be issued to those who are directly impacted, but others would also now be concerned about potential exposure to the highly transmissible Delta variant, which wasn’t dominant during the last school year.

She is calling for exposure data in schools to be publicly available on the B.C. Centre for Disease Control website, the same as how case counts in all health regions are reported.

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Henry recently presented modelling data showing new COVID-19 cases could exceed 1,000 a day by the end of the month and that high vaccination rates in the community would protect students.

This report by The Canadian Press was first published Sept. 6, 2021.

The Canadian Press