Western Canada: Alberta, B.C. bring back COVID-19 exposure notifications in schools

Good morning. It’s James Keller in Calgary.

Governments in Canada’s three westernmost provinces have been under pressure to introduce more public-health measures in schools – or even shut them down altogether – in response to rates of COVID-19.

Infection rates in Saskatchewan and Alberta are the highest in the country, and B.C. is also well above the national average. In all three provinces, school-aged children now have among the highest rates of new infections of any demographic.

In Alberta, public-health experts, parents and others have been calling for what they have described as a “fire break” lockdown that would include shutting down schools to bring infections under control. Edmonton Public School Board trustees approved a motion on Tuesday calling on the province to temporarily suspend in-person learning.

The province had ended most contact tracing in schools and stopped routinely alerting parents when there were cases of COVID-19. Instead, Alberta adopted a policy that declared an outbreak when 10 per cent of students in a school were away with any illness.

After insisting for weeks that the measures in schools were adequate, the government reversed course on Tuesday, bringing back contact tracing and exposure notification.

The province said it would resume public reporting of schools with outbreaks on Wednesday, while contact tracing will resume next Tuesday, when students return to classes after the Thanksgiving long weekend. School boards will initially handle notifying students who’ve been exposed to COVID-19 at school, but the province will take over that responsibility in the coming weeks.

Premier Jason Kenney said that COVID-19 remains a serious threat in Alberta and he noted that cases are growing in children between five and 11 years old, who can then spread the virus to other children and their parents.

The province is also asking for six-million rapid tests to send home for parents with children in Kindergarten to Grade 6, with the program initially targeting schools with active outbreaks. The government is also encouraging school boards to mandate vaccines for staff.

Alberta requires students in Grades 4 to 12 to wear masks in school and has resisted pressure to expand that to all grades, though several school boards have done that on their own.

B.C. announced last week that it would resume publicly posting notifications of COVID-19 exposures in schools. Such notifications had been going in letters to parents but now they will be posted online.

The province also expanded its mask mandates for students to cover children in Kindergarten through Grade 3. Higher grades were already required to wear masks, though school boards in Vancouver, Surrey and Burnaby had already put in similar policies.

Saskatchewan required masks in all schools in an announcement late last month, after several local school boards had already introduced mask requirements.

Dr. Saqib Shahab, Saskatchewan’s chief medical officer of health, recently said that a third of the province’s infections were in school-aged children. He said schools are not a source of transmission, but rather are reflecting rates of COVID-19 transmission in the community.

This is the weekly Western Canada newsletter written by B.C. Editor Wendy Cox and Alberta Bureau Chief James Keller. If you’re reading this on the web, or it was forwarded to you from someone else, you can sign up for it and all Globe newsletters here.