B.C.’s top doctor says there won’t be a mandate for kids to wear masks when they return to school in about six weeks.
“Masks for long periods of time are not recommended by anybody in any situation,” Dr. Bonnie Henry said, noting there are other more important ways to keep children safe in schools.
“We know that that is not what keeps people safe. The most important thing is distancing, making sure that we have small numbers of people, making sure that we have barriers in place, and administrative ways of reducing this.”
She says the month long return to school trial in June provided officials with a lot of information into how things can be done safely.
“There’s been a lot of thought and effort put into it by groups including teacher’s unions, learners and parents, and our school districts across the province, and my office has been involved as well,” she noted.
“Our goal is to have as many children as possible back in school in a learning environment. We know that it is important. None of us wanted to have a pandemic imposed upon us, but we do know that we can manage this safely in our schools.”
Education Minister Rob Fleming echoed the sentiments of Dr. Henry when it comes to mandatory masks in schools.
“It’s really not possible, nor necessary for kids for example to be wearing masks all day. It’s probably a very difficult one to enforce, but also extremely uncomfortable and not necessary because there are important controls in place around COVID,” he said.
Fleming adds he is confident that health officials will be able to contact trace quickly if there was to be a COVID-19 outbreak in a school.
“There won’t be any outsides quote-unquote which includes parents coming onto the school property. It will be a secure site in that regard. We’re going to have kids kept to cohorts of children,” he noted.
“In the event that there could be an infection, we can use the contact tracing system that we have developed in B.C. that has served our province very well. I hope that does not happen at all, but those kinds of precautions are built into the health and safety protocols that we have.”
Both Henry and Fleming are expected to release the plan for September’s return to school sometime this week. Premier John Horgan noted the plan could be adapted on a weekly basis, and alluded to the possibility of different guidelines based on case loads in different communities.
“There is not going to be a cookie cutter approach to this,” he said.
