Thought of the Day - February 5 - Mask School

One of the topics of the week in BC has been an update to the school mask-use policy. Looking back at the advice from the fall, which you needed advanced education to understand, the plan has at least been simplified. Basically, all teachers and staff must wear a mask, even indoors. Kids in middle and secondary school also need to wear masks, and it is still up to the parents concerning elementary school children.

Unfortunately, the announcement continues to state "non-medical" masks only, there is no information on the importance of proper fit, and it continues to support cloth-mask use. In short, this is really the thinking from last year and is not taking into account the increased infection risk that the new variants seem to pose.

Of course, masks are just one of the required measures. Other measures: barriers, sanitation, management of heavy-breathing activities, and daily symptom-checks, have also been updated, in time to take advantage of the $110M+ second installment in federal aid. Oh, and to ensure the new measures are being followed, the government is going to create rapid-response teams to conduct inspections - sometime in the future. Unfortunately, concerns about school density, ventilation or inadequate contact tracing were not addressed.

So, while this week's announcement is a step in the right direction, we have not really caught up with the latest thinking on COVID - let's hope it is enough.

Cheers

Cliff