Through two weeks of school, the superintendent for the Kamloops-Thompson School District says there has not been a positive COVID-19 case.

However, Terry Sullivan says that doesn’t mean there won’t be any cases in the future as the province and the school district continues to weather the pandemic.

“If we have suspicions, we have isolation rooms in our schools,” he told NL News. “You know if it is a student, then the parents would be called, if it is a staff member then they would be isolated. If it was confirmed, then we would be informed by Interior Health, and if there wasn’t, we wouldn’t be informed at all. That’s basically the process.”

With about 15,000 students and 1,000 staff members, he says SD73 is bracing for the potential that there will be cases in the future as COVID-19 circulates in the communities.

Earlier this week, the B.C. Centre For Disease Control said that as of the end of August there had been 60 cases of COVID-19 in the Kamloops region – which includes Sun Peaks, Barriere, Chase, and Logan Lake. There were also no cases reported in the North Thompson Valley.

“There’s all kinds of suspicions. If somebody has an allergic reaction, if somebody has a cold, if somebody has another virus that would cause similar types of symptoms,” Sullivan added. “I don’t want to create any kind of perception that we are out of the woods on this because we are not. We are very life to that possibility and we’ve put procedures in place should that happen.”

He notes Interior Health has been all over this and they’ve been great in communicating with the district.

“That’s who I will be taking my direction from as we work our way through this,” said Sullivan, having previously told NL News that more than 95 per cent of students in the Kamloops area returned to in-classroom instruction when the school year got going on September 10.

“There always is going to be risk, I think, with a virus that has swept the globe and can have some really devastating effects, there is going to be some anxiety. And what we have done, I think we have done everything we possibly can do. We’ve followed all of the guidelines for school start-up issued by the Provincial Health Officer, Dr. Bonnie Henry.”