Image Credit: CFJC Today
COVID-19

Eighteen staff, 200 students at Sa-Hali Secondary in self-isolation due to COVID-19 exposures

Feb 2, 2021 | 2:22 PM

KAMLOOPS — The superintendent of the Kamloops-Thompson School District says about 200 students and 18 staff at Sa-Hali Secondary School are under mandatory self-isolation because of direct contact with COVID-19.

Terry Sullivan says to Tuesday afternoon (Feb. 2), there have been 14 positive cases of COVID-19 in the school — 11 students and three staff. (Note: Sullivan updated the total to 14 shortly after our interview.)

“I want to stress to parents, that doesn’t mean that we have 18 staff with COVID and 200 students with COVID,” Sullivan told CFJC Today. “What it means is that this is a precaution. We are being extra cautious with respect to trying to prevent the transmission of this virus.”

Sullivan says the full complement of students at Sa-Hali Secondary is about 900, with 73 staff normally at the school.

He notes many parents are keeping their students home voluntarily out of concern for the exposures at Sa-Hali Secondary. Sullivan says only about 20 per cent of students at the school have attended this week.

“This is what we see when we’ve had cases in schools — as we’ve had in other areas,” said Sullivan. “When we have cases, parents, naturally, are concerned about the possible transmission of the virus in schools. As a result, they withdraw their students from school until the situation normalizes.”

The superintendent stressed that schools are still highly controlled environments. He says the increased appearance of COVID-19 in District 73 schools mirrors increased spread in Kamloops and surrounding communities.

Sullivan told CFJC Today Monday that it’s still believed the cases come from community and household spread and today said transmission of the virus within the school has not been confirmed.

“We don’t know that. We’ve been communicating very closely with Interior Health… because they do the contact tracing. We do not,” said Sullivan. “They would do the interview with the person — the student or staff member — who has been confirmed to have COVID, and [the contact tracers] would depend very heavily on the information that they would ascertain from those interviews.”

When will the situation normalize? Sullivan says it’s too soon to say.

“We’re at the end of semester — we have project day tomorrow and we have a [professional development] day on Friday — so I think we’ll have a soft entry into the next semester. We’ll factor all of those things in as well, but we really want to look at the data as to when self-isolation periods end. We also want to monitor very closely over the next few days to see whether or not we’re going to see additional cases at the school.”