Supt. Terry Sullivan (Image Credit: CFJC Today / File)

By James Peters

COVID-19

SD73 superintendent worries about COVID-19 spread after upcoming Family Day long weekend

Feb 12, 2021 | 4:37 AM

KAMLOOPS — The superintendent of the Kamloops-Thompson School District says he’s concerned about the prospect of rising COVID-19 case counts in schools after the upcoming Family Day long weekend.

Terry Sullivan made the comment during an online town hall held Thursday evening (Feb. 11) addressing the COVID-19 situation in the district.

Sullivan says his fears about virus spread after the Family Day long weekend and March break are based on what happened in the wake of winter break. According to district data, there were five total school exposures in the 69 school days prior to winter break, and 42 exposures in the 28 school days so far in 2021. (See note below.)

Both Sullivan and Interior Health Medical Health Officer Dr. Carol Fenton, who also participated in Thursday’s town hall, have noted COVID-19 exposure in schools mirrors the presence of the virus in the broader community.

Despite his concerns, Sullivan reinforced to the approximately 250 people watching the town hall online that he believes schools are the safest place for students to be due to the controls put in place to prevent virus spread. He noted only 5.4 per cent of the district’s students and 2.2 per cent of the district’s staff have been directed to self-isolate to this point in the pandemic.

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The figures do not include the approximately 1,200 District 73 students who are not attending school buildings this school year, but rather learning via the district’s distance education program.

The town hall also addressed the concerning presence of COVID-19 at Sa-Hali Secondary School, where there have been six separate exposures since January 18.

Fenton noted there has been only one case detected at Sa-Hali Secondary this week. Parents were not informed of this case because health officials determined no one was exposed before it was detected and the individual went into isolation. Fenton says the fact that steps taken to isolate a large portion of the school population over the past several weeks seem to have stopped COVID-19 activity show that spread within the school has been minimal at most.

(EDITOR’S NOTE: An earlier version of this story contained errors in the exposure totals reported by Supt. Sullivan. Sullivan reached out to CFJC Today Friday morning to amend the figures.)