Ontario Education Minister Stephen Lecce makes an announcement at Father Leo J. Austin Catholic Secondary School in Whitby, Ont., on July 30, 2020.Nathan Denette/The Canadian Press
Almost a month into the Ontario government’s ambitious plan to have targeted asymptomatic testing offered in schools to all staff and students, only about a quarter of the province’s school boards have deployed any kind of COVID-19 testing.
Education Minister Stephen Lecce told boards in mid-February that they would begin offering tests in 5 per cent of their schools each week and to at least 2 per cent of their students.
As of Friday, only 20 of the province’s 72 boards had brought in testing for their students and staff, the government said. That is expected to ramp up, said Mr. Lecce’s spokeswoman, Caitlin Clark, adding that the government’s goal to offer asymptomatic testing at all school boards – unique in the country – is “an additional layer of protection” for students and educators.
COVID-19 news: Updates and essential resources about the pandemic
COVID-19 is caused by a virus called SARS-CoV-2, and as it spread around the world, it mutated into new forms that are more quickly and easily transmitted through small water droplets in the air. Canadian health officials are most worried about variants that can slip past human immune systems because of a different shape in the spiky protein that latches onto our cells. The bigger fear is that future mutations could be vaccine-resistant, which would make it necessary to tweak existing drugs or develop a new “multivalent” vaccine that works against many types, which could take months or years.
Not all variants are considered equal threats: Only those proven to be more contagious or resistant to physical-distancing measures are considered by the World Health Organization to be “variants of concern.” Five of these been found in Canada so far. The WHO refers to them by a sequence of letters and numbers known as Pango nomenclature, but in May of 2021, it also assigned them Greek letters that experts felt would be easier to remember.
ALPHA (B.1.1.7)
- Country of origin: Britain
- Traits: Pfizer-BioNTech and Moderna vaccines are still mostly effective against it, studies suggest, but for full protection, the booster is essential: With only a first dose, the effectiveness is only about 66 per cent.
- Spread in Canada: First detected in Ontario’s Durham Region in December. It is now Canada’s most common variant type. Every province has had at least one case; Ontario, Quebec and the western provinces have had thousands.
BETA (B.1.351)
- Country of origin: South Africa
- Traits: Some vaccines (including Pfizer’s and Oxford-AstraZeneca’s) appear to be less effective but researchers are still trying to learn more and make sure future versions of their drugs can be modified to fight it.
- Spread in Canada: First case recorded in Mississauga in February. All but a few provinces have had at least one case, but nowhere near as many as B.1.1.7.
GAMMA (P.1)
- Country of origin: Brazil
- Traits: Potentially able to reinfect people who’ve recovered from COVID-19.
- Spread in Canada: B.C. has had hundreds of cases, the largest known concentration of P.1 outside Brazil. More outbreaks have been detected in Ontario and the Prairies.
DELTA (B.1.617 AND B.1.617.2)
- Country of origin: India
- Traits: Spreads more easily. Single-dosed people are less protected against it than those with both vaccine doses.
- Spread in Canada: All but a few provinces have recorded cases, but B.C.’s total has been the largest so far.
LAMBDA (C.37)
- Country of origin: Peru
- Traits: Spreads more easily. Health officials had been monitoring it since last August, but the WHO only designated it a variant of concern in June of 2021.
- Spread in Canada: A handful of travel-related cases were first detected in early July.
If I’m sick, how do I know whether I have a variant?
Health officials need to genetically sequence test samples to see whether it’s the regular virus or a variant, and not everyone’s sample will get screened. It’s safe to assume that, whatever the official variant tallies are in your province, the real numbers are higher. But for your purposes, it doesn’t matter whether you contract a variant or not: Act as though you’re highly contagious, and that you have been since before your symptoms appeared (remember, COVID-19 can be spread asymptomatically). Self-isolate for two weeks. If you have the COVID Alert app, use it to report your test result so others who may have been exposed to you will know to take precautions.
Need more answers? Email audience@globeandmail.com
Canada vaccine tracker: How many COVID-19 doses have been administered so far?
Several boards said they have encountered problems with testing and are awaiting more information from their public-health units or ministry-supplied private vendors.
“The delay has been frustrating for us,” said Scott Scantlebury, a spokesman at Windsor’s Greater Essex County District School Board. He said the four local boards were assigned a third-party vendor, but two of them required French-language services that the vendor would not provide.
“We have, as of last night, been assigned a new third-party vendor … to conduct the testing and we are now able to proceed,” he said Wednesday.
In Toronto and Ottawa, hospitals or public-health units have worked with schools to set up mobile testing clinics or provide students and staff with at-home testing kits. Elsewhere, there have been long lineups for school-based tests or complaints that the testing sites are too far from a student’s school.
The government said school boards could work with their public-health units to identify schools for testing in areas with high community transmission rates or if symptomatic cases had been identified in classrooms. Testing is voluntary.
Of the 9,953 tests completed as of Friday, 66 came back positive for COVID-19, according to the government’s website.
Marit Stiles, the NDP education critic, said it is “disappointing” that the government took so long to roll out a testing program in schools and then expected boards to implement it within days.
“They’ve taken a wait-and-see approach for far too long, and now here we are in March, a year later, and they still haven’t rolled out this testing properly,” Ms. Stiles said.
Melinda Chartrand, chair of the Conseil scolaire catholique MonAvenir, a Catholic French-language school board, said only three of the 13 regions her board encompasses have school-based testing in place.
“It’s a huge undertaking,” she said. Her board stretches from the Niagara Peninsula to Peterborough and from Toronto to Georgian Bay.
She said the ministry-approved vendors are not equipped to deal with French schools and provide French-language services.
Similarly, Ronald Demers, chair of the Conseil scolaire catholique Franco-Nord in North Bay, said his board has not started testing.
He said the asymptomatic testing program is important. However, his board hasn’t been able to connect with the third-party vendor.
“We’re working extremely hard at getting it done,” Mr. Demers said. “We certainly hope that it will be before the end of the month. Every day that it’s not implemented, it’s a day wasted in trying to reach out and get our children and our staff tested.”
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