Some school districts have stopped tracking COVID-19 cases and are instead reporting overall absences, which isn’t ideal for some parentss, but experts say is still a useful public health tool.
Learning that British Columbia will no longer track Covid cases in schools made Jordan and his wife more confident in their decision to keep their six year old child at home.
“Basically saying like ‘hey, we’re not going to do any more testing of children, and we’re not going to give you any more notices.’ The government just basically gave up.” said by Jordan.
Meanwhile, he is doing his own research on a crowd-sourced school Covid tracker, so he can try and assess when he feels safe to send his daughter back.
In the absence of PCR tests, B.C. has moved on to another method of gauging which schools have cases. If staff and student absence is more than ten percent above the usual rate, public health will investigate.
In Ontario, a thirty percent absence rate will trigger the same call and a notice to parents.
CBC News Deana said: “After this tracking does have flaws, it does not distinguish between a child who’s home sick, and those who are kept home by their parents or away on holiday.”
However, infectious disease specialist Lynora Saxinger says it is useful for public health.
As Dr. Lynora Saxinger from University of Alberta said: “If you ask people in public health what they look at, they look at trends. And they can look at trends at a school level or at a regional level. But if you’re seeing a trend, then no matter what the absolute number is, it tells you something is changing and that you need to look at it.”
Some school boards are finding their own way of refining the absence data. At the Upper Grand District School Board, they have their own website that tracks only absences for illness.
As Peter Sovran, education director from Upper Grand District School Board, said: “So far, the response has been positive, because we think we’ve been able to provide the type of information that everyone is looking for. And that is an approximation to the number of people who are away, whether they’re students or staff that would be Covid related.”
Resource: CBC News