A physical distancing sign is seen during a media tour of Hastings Elementary school in Vancouver on Sept. 2, 2020.JONATHAN HAYWARD/The Canadian Press
The head of the teachers’ union in British Columbia is urging public-health officials to expand guidelines on masks to include elementary students after seven schools reported cases involving a COVID-19 variant of concern.
Teri Mooring of the BC Teachers’ Federation said school districts should be allowed to impose measures based on their needs, considering all the cases were found in schools in the Fraser Health region.
“It’s become really clear that some schools within districts are much harder hit than others,” she said Monday.
Health officials say testing so far indicates the cases are linked to the variant first identified in Britain.
School districts should have the flexibility to require students to wear masks because a provincewide directive does not take into account regions that are experiencing a high number of cases and now variants as well, Ms. Mooring said.
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
Provincial Health Officer Dr. Bonnie Henry announced mandatory mask guidelines earlier this month for students in middle and high schools.
Ms. Mooring said she doesn’t agree with the current directive, which says students are not required to wear masks at their desks. Dr. Henry has said that’s the same as in offices or restaurants, but Ms. Mooring said students sit close together and the other environments don’t compare well with schools.
Education Minister Jennifer Whiteside told a news conference on Monday that the health and safety of staff and students is “our highest priority.”
Deputy provincial health officer Dr. Reka Gustafson said the policy on masks in schools is based on the ability of individuals to comply with it and there are no plans to make any changes.
“I would say that based on what we know about the new variants of COVID-19, I would not recommend a change in our masking recommendation. But as with everything else in this pandemic we have continued to learn, we continue to review the evidence.”
Dr. Elizabeth Brodkin, Chief Medical Health Officer of the Fraser Health authority, said six of the schools linked to the variant are in Surrey and another is in Delta.
Testing of 300 students and staff will be completed on Tuesday but 35 staff have tested negative so far, Dr. Brodkin said. She declined to say how many cases have been detected at the schools, adding that some cases tested so far have been linked to the variant.
More in-depth testing will be done on the remaining cases to determine which variant is involved, Dr. Brodkin said.
“Most of the cases that we’ve identified over the weekend and in the previous week, in fact, don’t appear to be linked to someone who has travelled, which means that these viruses are now in our community.”
A joint statement from Dr. Henry and Health Minister Adrian Dix said there are 28 new confirmed cases of variants of concern, for a total of 101.
It said 58 of those cases were found in the Fraser Health region.
Dr. Victoria Lee, CEO of Fraser Health, said starting immediately, COVID-19 testing recommendations have been expanded to include all high-risk contacts of individuals who test positive for the virus, regardless of whether they are experiencing symptoms.
We have a weekly Western Canada newsletter written by our B.C. and Alberta bureau chiefs, providing a comprehensive package of the news you need to know about the region and its place in the issues facing Canada. Sign up today.