According to the BC School Covid Tracker website, there has been a COVID-19 exposure at Valley View Elementary School in Courtenay.
The notification was posted Monday, Sept. 13. The exposure happened on Sept. 10 and is listed as a “variant of concern.”
According to the website, all cases listed on it have been confirmed by official public health letter, school letter, or BCCDC website.
On Aug. 31, Public Health Officer Dr. Bonnie Henry announced that health authorities would no longer post public notifications of each single exposure.
“It will be slightly different this year because the risk is different with the high rates of immunization that we are seeing, and we have seen now that transmission to people when you have that wall of vaccination is much, much less,” Henry said at the Aug. 31 briefing. “We will not be doing the notifications to school if there has been a single exposure. They will be doing an assessment as we do for every communicable disease, and every individual who is at risk will be notified.”
She added that, based on feedback, the procedure used during the 2020-2021 school year may have caused undue stress to parents.
“We’ve heard very clearly from people that the majority of people felt that the school-based letters were more anxiety-provoking than helpful,” Henry said. “We will absolutely be keeping the schools informed and working with the schools with our school response teams to make sure that every single case in the school setting is identified, that contacts are managed, and that the people are informed about what is happening in the school setting.”
Island Health will report when there are clusters or outbreaks at schools.
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