Dozens of Alberta schools shut down over ‘respiratory illness’ outbreaks | Globalnews.ca

Outbreaks of respiratory diseases were reported in more than 20 Edmonton schools less than three weeks after classes began, Global News has learned.

An outbreak is declared by Alberta Health Services when schools report at least 10 percent of students are sick.

At this point, health officials are working with the school to determine next steps – a pre-pandemic process.

“’Respiratory disease outbreak’ is the terminology Alberta Health Services has provided and so they are working with (school) principals to determine if this is indeed the case – there could be many reasons why children get sick are,” Edmonton Public School board member Darrel Robertson told the school board Tuesday afternoon. EPSB’s districtwide absentee rate that day was 5.7 percent, or 6,214 students.

The EPSB had 17 schools listed in outbreak status on Tuesday:

• sweet grass
• Keheewin
• beacon heights
• Olivier
• Virginia Park
• Ekota
• Belmont
• King Edward
• Clara Tyner
• elm wood
• McKee
• duggan
• Kirkness
• York
• James Gibbons
• Belmead
• forest heights

Outbreaks occurred at four Catholic schools in Edmonton, but ECSD did not say which schools were involved.

A spokesman for the Alberta Health Service confirmed there are 22 school outbreaks in the Edmonton zone, three in the Calgary zone and one in the North zone.

Fourteen went to Edmonton schools this week and eight last week, according to the provincial health department.

Families received letters from their schools informing them of the outbreak status.

Only one Calgary public school is currently above the 10 percent threshold, a spokesman for the Calgary Board of Education confirmed.

And a spokesman for the Calgary Catholic School District confirmed one when an outbreak was reported at its schools.

At the beginning of the pandemic, CBE publicly reported COVID-related absences online as a district-wide percentage.

“As all COVID-19 public health measures were lifted by the province at the end of the final school year, the CBE’s school absence tracker was also discontinued at that time,” a CBE spokesman told Global in an email News, citing Tuesday’s absenteeism rate, it was 5.64 percent, or more than 7,000 students.

The Calgary Catholic School District said since the province moved to Step 3 in its June 14 reopening plan, CCSD is no longer tracking self-reported COVID-19 cases.

“On any given day, students may be absent from class due to illness, personal issues, deadlines, death, etc. As such, the Calgary Catholic School District (CCSD) does not report sick leave,” a CCSD spokesman said.

AHS does not test for diseases during outbreaks

AHS said they declare outbreaks based on symptoms, not tests, “and therefore (we) are unable to determine which specific illness affects each student.”

AHS policy is to keep students away from school until their symptoms have improved and, without the support of medication, they have not had a fever for at least 24 hours and are feeling well enough to return to class.

The provincial health agency said children under the age of 18 experience “relatively low” rates of serious illness from COVID-19.

“Children make up about 20 percent of the total population, but so far accounted for less than 1 percent of hospital admissions in September,” Kerry Williamson wrote in an email to Global News.

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“The total inpatient occupancy in the two children’s hospitals has so far been less than 90 percent in September, corresponding to this time of year before COVID.”

A recent Global News report showed that the number of children under the age of 10 hospitalized tripled in the first eight months of 2022 compared to all of 2020 and 2021.

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dr Craig Jenne, associate professor in the Department of Microbiology, Immunology and Infectious Diseases at the University of Calgary, said sewage tests don’t seem to have much influenza in either city.

But he said other diseases like RSV, the common cold and COVID-19 are known to circulate in the community.

“Without screening, we have no idea what the numbers could be,” he said.

Jenne said a common anecdote compares day care centers to petri dishes “where kids can experience and go through infection.”

“But what we’ve really appreciated over the last few years is the positive impact some of these public health measures have had on preventing infection,” Jenne said.

“Cohorts and wearing masks and things like that really drove those numbers down.

“And realistically, if we look at the province now, there are very few of those measures.”

EPSB remains the only school district of the four to publicly report its absenteeism rate system-wide and by school for transparency, the superintendent said.

Robertson noted that EPSB continues to track COVID-19 reported illnesses “so that we can better communicate our situation not only to our public but importantly to Alberta’s health services so they can see how they are supporting schools during an outbreak.” ”

Jenne said the information on sick leave that EPSB still provides is “extremely useful”.

“Unless we know what is causing the infections and where they are located, it is very difficult to design public health answers, advice and guidance for parents. But it is also very difficult to convey, for example, the importance of vaccinations if these numbers – although they are real – are not shared with the public,” said the University of C.

“In previous waves, this public reporting was essential to communicate accurately what is going on out there and to enable parents to make informed decisions about their own health care choices for their children.”

The EPSB superintendent told the board he would prefer to leave the transmission of health information to AHS.

“It’s really not our job as a school department to share health information,” Robertson said. “I think we need to leave health information to health professionals and create safe spaces so that if a student or staff chooses to wear a mask, that is respected.

“I don’t really think we’re over COVID yet.”

Hospitalizations, positivity rates rise in early fall

On Wednesday, the province reported 24 more COVID hospitalizations, bringing the total to 843. Patients in the ICU remained at 26 week-over-week.

And over the past week, 24 more deaths in the province have been attributed to COVID-19, bringing the pandemic’s total to 4,872. One of those people was 60 to 69 years old, and the rest of the deaths were among Albertans aged 70 or older.

The 7-day PCR positivity rate rose to 19.52 percent last week, more than two and a half points up from the week before.

For most of the year, PCR testing has been limited to those at clinical risk of severe illness with COVID-19 or living and/or working in high-risk environments.

Wednesday was also the first day that Albertans had access to bivalent boosters. Doses can be booked on the provincial website, by calling 811, or at local pharmacies.

Jenne called the vaccines formulated with Omicron “an important step.”

“Those who recently received a booster shot with the conventional formulation that we have been using for the past two years will still receive excellent protection against serious illness and hospitalizations. For those who may have been waiting or are undecided, this new vaccine offers better protection against infection and will continue to work if we get enough intake to keep people out of hospitals,” said the infectious disease specialist, noting that hospitals are always still have a great demand and stress.