As the fourth wave of the COVID-19 pandemic wears on, Sask Health and school officials are finding many challenges in dealing with the impact the virus has, the board of trustees for the Holy Family Roman Catholic Separate School Division heard at their monthly meeting on Wednesday evening.
Education director Gwen Keith explained that every two weeks the directors of education in the area, including Lynn Little of Southeast Cornerstone, has a conference call with local medical health officers about what is happening with COVID, including an update on local statistics.
“Part of the challenge we have is the health people don’t have the manpower to do the work they did last year. We have to do the contact tracing – that’s a bit of a challenge,” said Keith.
Another part of the challenge are the rules in relation to vaccinated people, as they do not have to self-isolate if they are in close contact with someone diagnosed with COVID, she added.
“How are we supposed to know if they’re vaccinated?” she asked. “Somebody is identified as a close contact, they can be back in school but they can’t do anything else. That has issues.”
Trustee Jerome Sidloski related his experience where he had been in isolation after being in contact with someone. He was tested, and said once it was clear he would go back to work, but then he received a phone call indicating the information he had been earlier told was inaccurate.
“So when a parent gets told that message, no wonder they’re confused by it. Everybody’s getting mixed messages,” he said.
“Vaccinations and privacy, that alone is huge,” added Keith.
She noted she did not make any mention of contact tracing in the Safe Schools Plan, which was updated on Thursday after the provincial directive came down about mandatory masking in all indoor spaces.
“When there’s a person identified as positive, we are following the directives of medical health officers,” she said, adding they can receive requests to do contact traces any time of the day or night.
“There’s different rules if a person is vaccinated, but they don’t have to say they’re vaccinated,” said Keith, adding she could ask a parent of a student if the child is vaccinated, “but they don’t have to tell me.”
