The medical health officer in Kamloops, Dr. Fenton, can help school districts implement vaccine mandates if needed (Image Credit: CFJC Today)

By Chad Klassen

SCHOOL VACCINE STATUS

IH medical health officer has power to request school vaccine statuses, weighing options for vaccine mandate

Jan 18, 2022 | 4:49 PM

KAMLOOPS — The province has been hesitant to implement a vaccine mandate for teachers, but the latest order from Dr. Bonnie Henry is taking it one step closer.

The medical health officer in Kamloops, Dr. Carol Fenton, can now ask for vaccine status of teachers and staff in the region. And if she feels it necessary, she can have School District 73 (SD73) implement a vaccine mandate.

“The first step is to find out the vaccination status. What is our baseline and how many of our staff are vaccinated and how many are vulnerable and what does that mean? Do we need to even do anything from there?” Dr. Fenton says.

The school district has been preparing for a potential vaccine mandate since the fall, although the board has been waiting for the province to pull the trigger.

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In November, SD73 sent out a voluntary survey to get a sense of which teachers and staff were partially and fully vaccinated. About 60 per cent replied, and out of the respondents, 92 per cent said they received the COVID-19 shot.

The district, with the help of Dr. Fenton under the new order, can now receive the vaccination status of all staff.

“It gives the MHOs in those school districts an understanding of which schools might be more at risk of closures because of outbreaks and transmission, so we can focus on those schools,” Dr. Henry said during her news briefing on Tuesday (Jan. 18).

SD73 Superintendent Rhonda Nixon added, “It doesn’t change anything for us. So even if we were told to collect proof of vaccination in a mandatory way, we still wouldn’t have a policy in place to enforce it until the board passed a motion.”

The board is expected to finalize the policies and procedures on Feb. 7 to be prepared if a vaccine mandate is implemented. Once the procedures are in place, then the district would be ready to deal with any teachers and staff who are not vaccinated.

“So what would happen, in our case in the draft policy, is you would have some options. So you could commit to rapid testing and we would have that process outlined and ready to go,” Nixon says. “You could not do rapid testing and go on extraordinary leave.”

Dr. Henry said on Tuesday the cost of rapid testing would be footed by each individual school district.

Dr. Fenton says vaccination rates are lower in some Interior communities compared to Vancouver Coastal Health (93-100 per cent vaccination rate), potentially making a vaccine mandate more necessary.

“Our other efforts to encourage vaccination haven’t made as much of a difference, so in some areas a mandate may make a greater difference,” Dr. Fenton says. “But at the same time, there are a lot of risks. We don’t want to encounter any functional closures if people don’t want to work there anymore.”

Nixon wants to ensure there is plenty of consultation and everyone’s on the same page.

“We do not have the intention to recommend moving forward [with a vaccine mandate] until Feb. 7. That was the board’s decision,” she said. “They base everything on the vaccine policy committee’s recommendations, and they know that we want to finish consultation, review any last questions, any concerns, bring it back to the committee and then finally to the board.”