Don’t panic if you haven’t immediately received a call from a contact tracer and your school has been identified with a COVID-19 exposure.
Superintendent Patricia Gartland told a board meeting that contact tracers follow up in each situation where a student or staff member has been directly exposed.
Her comments were in response to a question from a Riverside secondary parents advisory council president who said her daughter was “terrified and waiting for a phone call” when she heard there was an exposure at her Port Coquitlam school on Sept. 18.
Rayne Johnson submitted the comment during Tuesday’s Zoom board meeting asking for an approximate window of time between an exposure announcement and a call.
“It may help to know how the timing works,” Johnson said.
But while Gartland provided assurances, she couldn’t given an exact window of how long to wait for a phone call.
Schools are required to give detailed information, including class lists and locations where people have been, Gartland said, and contact will be made if required.
“The most important part — Fraser Health will be in contact with you if they need to and it’s important to assure parents so they have that confidence,” she said.
TRANSPARENCY WELCOMED
However, Gartland added it’s also important to be “transparent around these exposures” and recently posted a letter explaining how the process works.
Public announcements of school exposure cases have become routine in Fraser Health as 18 have been publicized on a website to inform staff, students and parents of COVID-19 cases — most of them in Surrey.
On its website, Fraser Health notes that no action is required if a child’s school has been notified of an exposure unless contacted by public health or are otherwise directed by school officials.
However, if someone develops any symptoms of COVID-19, they are asked to seek testing and self isolate.
The process laid out doesn’t specifically say how long it will take for public health to identify and notify individuals but only those who are close contacts who are at risk of exposure are called.
“Learning groups, friends or other connections may not be determined to be a close contact,” the website further states.
However, while exposure announcements may cause worry in school communities, SD43 District Parent Advisory president Marvin Klassen said it’s best for the public to be informed.
“Parents have to make decisions respecting the safety of their family members every single day,” Klassen said in an email. “When making such decisions more information is better than less.”
Public health officer Dr. Bonnie Henry has also stated that it’s important for public notification of school exposures, forcing Vancouver Coastal Health to reverse its position and begin posting school exposures.
But she said at a recent press conference that close contacts would be identified first before exposure notifications were made public.
TEACHER RAISES CONCERN
Who is considered a close contact is also a concern however and a North Vancouver high school teacher has filed a WorkSafe claim after she contracted the virus following a possible exposure to a student who had the virus in her classroom.
The teacher wasn’t told of the possible exposure by health officials, said Renee Willock, president of the West Vancouver Teachers Association, because she wasn’t considered a “close contact” – usually defined as someone who has had close face-to-face contact with an infected individual for at least 15 minutes.
-with files from The North Shore News
