Wanting to be "open and transparent" with families, a Timmins school board is letting families know about an "unconfirmed potential case" of COVID-19 within its school community.
According to District School Board Ontario North East (DSB1) director of education Lesleigh Dye, letters were sent home to families at Schumacher Public School, Timmins Centennial Public School, and R. Ross Beattie Senior Public School.
Dye explained the board initially thought there were two different families with a parent getting tested for novel coronavirus. One of those parents has children in school at Schumacher Public and Timmins Centennial. As a precautionary measure, the students have not been in school.
"I can now confirm that it’s only one family member, parent, from Ross Beattie who is being tested. I really want to emphasize there has been no confirmation of COVID-19,” she said.
For the school board's pandemic plan, she said they are on tier one, which is a precautionary stage.
“We really wanted to be open and transparent with our families that there is an...unconfirmed potential case. As it turns out, the one case where we thought the testing was going to happen, because the individual did not have all three symptoms she or he has not been tested, whereas the Ross Beattie I do have confirmation that that parent has been tested,” she said.
In a pandemic, Dye explained the school board takes its direction from the health units, and they are working with the Porcupine Health Unit, and Timiskaming Health Unit.
"The health unit is sharing with us right now that contact to contact —so that would be parent to child and then contact from child to another child or staff member — the health unit does not see that as a concern at all right now because neither of these two situations are confirmed cases,” said Dye.
While she said the board is always intentional about cleaning at schools, there are extra precautions being taken.
"At these three schools in particular, we’re paying a lot of attention to the hard surfaces and that would be doors, door handles, table tops, because we are aware that the virus can stay on those surfaces for a time period. We are hugely emphasizing hand washing, really want people to pay attention to that their hands do not come close to their eyes or their mouths, and also want people to really be paying attention to how they’re interacting with their environment. You can pull a door open with a sleeve, if you’re sneezing...please sneeze into your elbow, please move away from a group of people if you are going to sneeze. All the things that we’ve heard about that we really want people to be mindful of at this time,” she said.
The DSB1 letter advises parents to not send their child to school if they have signs or symptoms of COVID-19 such as a fever, cough or difficulty breathing.
“I think what is so important is that we all need to remain calm. We do not have a confirmed case. The likelihood of us having a confirmed case, there’s a strong possibility. If we’re reading the news and what our health units are telling us, and the best way to prevent the dissemination is through hand washing,” said Dye.
There is only one school day before the start of March Break.
The province announced this afternoon that publicly funded schools will be closed for two weeks following the break. That means Ontario schools will be closed from March 14 to April 5.
