THUNDER BAY – The medical officer of health at the District Health Unit said she’s confident the proper protocols were in place at a local elementary where a student on Wednesday was found to be infected with COVID-19.
Dr. Janet DeMille said as soon as the positive result was confirmed the health unit began mobilizing, working to complete extensive contact tracing to confirm whether or not the person, a young student, was an isolated case.
It’s the first positive COVID-19 result in a Thunder Bay school, and while it was inevitable, the student and family involved followed protocol and as soon as the symptoms showed themselves the patient isolated at home while awaiting test results.
“We immediately connected with the school. The school has a lot of measures in place, including how to respond when this kind of event happens. This was, of course, the first time we’ve gone through all of this in a real-life example,” DeMille said.
Anyone who might have been exposed to the virus, at the school or elsewhere, will be identified and contacted.
Unfortunately, at a school, that contact tracing can be a bit more involved.
“But with the information that we were provided by the school, we were able to follow up pretty much with everybody who would have been labeled as a close contact. High-risk is another way of putting that,” DeMille said.
“We followed up with everybody yesterday and a couple of additional people this morning, and are moving through the process of going through the investigation, making sure we’ve identified anybody that might be at risk.”
DeMille said the health unit communicated directly with the families or individuals who might have been exposed to COVID-19 and provided them with instructions and answered their questions. They also had discussions with the broader school community, particularly the families of those in the affected student’s cohort and staff at the north side school.
A case at a school was bound to happen, given Ontario’s rising case numbers. The region has done reasonably well since the pandemic struck, with just 106 confirmed cases, and only two of those considered active.
There has been one death.
“Certainly we knew it was likely going to happen at some point, that we would have a case associated with a school. We just kicked into gear yesterday to do the follow-up we would normally do,” she said. “We treat this as a significant situation, absolutely, because we know the implications for the school, for others that may have been exposed in that kind of setting.”
At the moment, the Ecole Gron Morgan Public School case is the only one being investigated in the local school system.
Rumours began circulating Wednesday night that cases had been found in other schools, but DeMille quickly quashed them the following day.
“Sometimes rumours happen or people maybe get ideas and they’re shared very quickly through social media,” she said. “But we have not received any reports of any additional cases. We do know there are a number of children who have symptoms who are staying at home and are seeking testing,” DeMille said. “Certainly that’s an issue, but we don’t have any other confirmed cases.”
