Though there are only a few weeks left before the summer break, the region’s top doctor said those weeks would be best spent in physical classrooms.
Dr. Charles Gardner, medical officer of health for the Simcoe Muskoka District Health Unit, said the decision to open schools is a provincial one, but he’d support it.
“I would welcome it and even welcome it now,” said Gardner during a media briefing on Wednesday afternoon.
The province’s chief medical officer of health, Dr. David Williams, said yesterday he’d like to see students back in classrooms before the province starts reopening with the first phase of the roadmap plan around mid-June.
“We now have our case count down very substantially compared to the height of the third wave,” said Gardner.
In Ontario, daily case counts have been under 1,500 new cases for three consecutive days. In Simcoe Muskoka, there were about 300 new cases confirmed last week, a decrease of 12 per cent compared to the week before.
“Even when we had schools open in the earlier waves, transmission was quite limited,” said Gardner.
He noted there were exposures in schools, but in many cases, those exposures were the result of students or teachers catching the virus in the community.
“Schools were able to have the success they had in preventing transmission because of the sanitation and infection and prevention control measures,” said Gardner.
Teachers have also now had an opportunity to get one dose of a COVID vaccine.
In Simcoe Muskoka, about 2,000 youth between the ages of 12 and 17 years old have had one dose of COVID vaccine, though vaccinations only opened to the youth age group last week.
There are another 9,000 youth under 17 years old booked to get a dose of vaccine in the next few weeks, and the health unit is working with school boards to run vaccine clinics during the weeks of June 14 and 21 for youth and their household members.
Gardner said he believes the health unit has the capacity to follow up with cases and contacts to track school exposures and declare outbreaks where necessary.
"I feel it's important for children to return," said Gardner. "We have a limited amount of time, but that limited amount of time would be beneficial."
So far, the province has not said whether schools will reopen for in-person learning this month.
The phased reopening roadmap does not refer to reopening schools.
During the roadmap announcement last week, Premier Doug Ford said there was no consensus among the province’s advisors on whether to reopen schools.
