More than 1,700 school students and staff members on Vancouver Island were infected with COVID-19 during the first four months of the school year, new data reveals.
There were 1,515 K-12 students and 227 school staff members who attended school in-person during their infectious or incubation period between Sept. 7 and Dec. 24, 2021, according to Island Health data obtained by CHEK News via a Freedom of Information request.
The majority of those infections — 1,268 to be exact — occurred between Oct. 17 and Dec. 24, a period that saw a massive spike of infections due to the Omicron variant.
There were also 360 student cases and 32 staff cases identified as part of a cluster within the Island Health region from Sept. 7 to Dec. 24. An unknown number of cases were not included because the individual’s “role was unknown or missing,” the FOI response notes.
The data, which is not routinely released, offers some insight at the scale of COVID-19 infections at Island Health schools for the beginning of the 2021/2022 learning year. It is likely the figures could be much higher as B.C. limited access to testing, especially during the Omicron wave.
Island Health defines a cluster as two or more cases within a 14 day period in a school setting. An incubation period is defined by Island Health as 14 days prior to symptom onset date while an infectious period is defined as 48 hours prior to symptom onset date to 10 days after symptoms.
The health authority’s FOI response to CHEK News does not state whether the cases where a student or staff member attended school while infectious are included in the cluster case figures. It also does not provide a monthly breakdown or state whether the figures provided are direct infections that occurred within a classroom setting. Previous FOI responses from Island Health have included a statement indicating such.
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Regional level data about COVID-19 cases at schools are not routinely disclosed or released to the public by Island Health. A previous FOI submitted by CHEK News to Island Health showed that 440 students and 34 staff members who positive and attended school between Sept. 8 and Oct. 17.
The BCCDC does release monthly K-12 situational reports — the most recent one showed over 11,700 students tested positive for COVID-19 between Dec. 15, 2021, and Jan. 18, 2022 — but they only provide information at a provincial level.
B.C. health officials continue to face criticism for the lack of information provided about school exposures throughout the pandemic. The British Columbia Teachers Federation has repeatedly decried the province’s communication strategy around COVID-19, calling it a “complete vacuum of information.”
Earlier this year, Island Health, under the direction of provincial health officials, abandoned exposure notifications, citing Omicron’s higher community transmission levels, shorter incubation period and increased use of rapid tests. The health authority now only posts notifications on its website when a school is dealing with an outbreak but does not mention functional closures.
B.C. School COVID Tracker, a crowd-sourced independent website, continues to provide updates on exposures, clusters, threshold limits and functional closures at schools.
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Nicholas Pescod
