B.C.’s provincial health officer Dr. Bonnie Henry said Monday that two weeks into the partial reopening of schools in the province, things are going well.
“I’ve been very pleased with the reports I’ve heard,” she said. “I’ve had lots of really cool notes from happy children who’ve at least been able to go back and see their friends.”
Schools reopened June 1 on a voluntary basis for smaller numbers of students. Children up to Grade 5 have the option of attending school two days a week while students in grades 6 through 12 can attend school one day a week or by special arrangement.
Henry said the reopening has allowed everyone to learn how to make the school environment work, takes away fear, and helps both students and teachers learn “that a school environment can be safe.”
That’s important in terms of what could happen in schools this fall, she added.
“There are children who absolutely needed to be back in that in-classroom learning environment,” she said. “This has been incredibly important for them.”
In West Vancouver School District, about 40 per cent of elementary students returned to school for about two days each last week.
Numbers in North Vancouver were similar, with about half of all elementary students coming back to the classroom.
Numbers in high school were lower in both districts.
Across the province, more than 157,000 students went back to school during the first week of June - about 30 per cent of all students, according to the Ministry of Education.
Henry said Monday there have been no cases of COVID-19 associated with schools since they reopened.
The most recent numbers from the B.C. Centre for Disease Control show 38 children under 10 have tested positive for COVID-19 while 62 older children and teens between 10 and 19 have tested positive since the beginning of the pandemic, representing between one and two per cent of all cases.
Henry has said so far, data from around the world has indicated children are less likely to contract and spread the coronavirus than adults.
This article originally appeared here.
