Alberta’s top doctor hopes for more targeted contact tracing in schools

EDMONTON (660 NEWS) — Alberta’s top doctor says she recognizes measures to contain the spread of COVID-19 in schools are a big inconvenience to families, but contact tracing will eventually become more targeted.

Dr. Deena Hinshaw says if a student goes to school while infectious, all their classmates must typically stay home for 14 days.

“The reason for this approach is to gather information about who, who is most at risk of getting COVID from a school exposure,” she said.

“This will enable us to target exclusions in the future to only those who are most at risk.

“For now, our exclusions are broad to minimize risk of transmission and to evaluate our close contact definition, even with a cautious approach, it is likely that as the school year continues, we will eventually see some examples of transmission in schools.”

The goal is to keep transmission as low as possible but can’t prevent it entirely without imposing restrictions that themselves have harmful impacts, Hinshaw added.

Hinshaw says they continue to act quickly to limit spread of COVID-19 in schools. She says with community transmission happening it shouldn’t be a surprise to see cases in schools

— Jeff Slack (@Jeffslack660) September 14, 2020

“Living with COVID-19 means seeking balance between limiting the harms of COVID and limiting the harms of COVID restrictions,” she said.

Health officials reported 42 cases linked to 35 schools where someone was in the building while infectious.

There are six schools with two or more infections – four in Calgary, one in Edmonton and one in Lethbridge – but there’s no indication the virus spread within those institutions.

Hinshaw believes the province will see a second wave of the virus, but what that looks like is up to Albertans.

“This depends on how dedicated we all are to following the measures in place and how we collectively respond when cases are rising,” she said.

Here are the six Alberta schools listed as having COVID outbreaks (2 or more cases that were in the school)#yeg #yyc #ableg #covid19ab pic.twitter.com/fNZhIhCg9J

— Courtney Theriault (@cspotweet) September 14, 2020

“Our success in reducing the spread of the virus through community transmission will be determined by the actions of all of us.”

Alberta added 418 new COVID-19 cases from Friday to Sunday.

There were 105 cases found on Sept. 11, 173 on Sept. 12, and 140 on Sept. 13.

Alberta tested more than 46,000 people over the weekend, including nearly 19,000 on Saturday.

“We should not expect daily testing to reach 19,000 tests per day,” Hinshaw said.

“This has never been our goal to reach this level on a daily basis. What it does show is the dedication of these teams to help reduce lab testing turnaround times and this past weekend is one more example of all the work that is going into improving that metric.”

New cases by region over 72 hours:

Edmonton zone: +190
Calgary zone: +146
Central: +15
South:+5
North: +61 #yeg #yyc #ableg #covid19ab pic.twitter.com/DBZlUjP3bw

— Courtney Theriault (@cspotweet) September 14, 2020

There are currently active cases 1,538 in Alberta.

There are 37 people in hospital, seven of which are in intensive care.

One additional death was recorded bringing the total to 254.

The recent death involved a woman in her 70s from Edmonton zone who was not a resident in continuing care.

–with files from the Canadian Press