Experts suggest that it would be safer to wait for a decrease in new cases of COVID-19 before the return to class scheduled for January 11.
• Read also: All developments in the COVID-19 pandemic
“Given that we are still growing, clearly, on January 11, if nothing changes and we reopen the schools, the cases could start again with a vengeance, and hospitalizations will follow”, argues Benoît Mâsse, epidemiologist and professor at the School of Public Health of the University of Montreal.
While Quebec on Saturday recorded 2,869 new infections with COVID-19 and 1,225 hospitalizations, the office of Minister of Education Jean-François Roberge announced Sunday that the plan for the reopening of schools in a week had not changed.
The same is true in Ontario, where Education Minister Stephen Lecce has confirmed that all elementary school children will return to class as scheduled on January 11, even though the province is recording nearly 3,000 more infections per day.
“The current data is very worrying. That said, our priority remains: to keep our schools open, ”Minister Roberge’s press secretary, Geneviève Côté, indicated by email.
When the school lockdown was announced on December 17, the province was recording 1,700 cases per day.
- Listen to Caroline St-Hilaire’s interview with Dr. Marina Klein, professor of medicine at McGill University, on QUB radio:
Worst case scenario
Among all the scenarios considered before the Holidays, “the current situation is the worst we expected”, laments Dr. Mâsse. These three weeks of closure will therefore not have been sufficient, according to the specialist. “We no longer have the leeway in the health system to rule out the decision to keep schools closed,” he says. Everything must be on the table. We are really at the end. “
“While waiting for the vaccination of nursing staff and residents in CHSLDs and RPAs, the next six or seven weeks will be very difficult,” adds Dr. Mâsse.
- Listen to the interview of the professor at the School of Public Health of the University of Montreal, Roxane Borgès Da Silva with Benoit Dutrizac on QUB Radio:
“Wait another week”
The environmental epidemiologist Michel Camus also agrees.
“We should wait another week and constantly reassess the situation. The criterion [pour rouvrir les écoles] should be the start of a decrease in cases in the population and in hospitals, ”he said.
Olivier Drouin, who set up COVID Écoles Québec citizens’ initiative towards the end of August, he also said he was “not very optimistic” at the idea of seeing schools reopen, himself a parent of two teenage girls.
“Imagine the aggravating factor of travelers arriving from all-inclusives and the variant that comes from England,” he explained in an interview with LCN on Sunday. […] Of course, that takes additional measures. “
– With the QMI Agency
- Listen to Richard Martineau’s interview with Olivier Drouin on QUB radio:
–
