The Superintendent of School District 73 says there have now been 14 confirmed cases of COVID-19 at Sa-Hali Secondary school.

Terry Sullivan says there are currently 18 staff and about 200 students in self-isolation. Of the confirmed cases, eleven are among students and three are among staff with the cases coming after five exposure events at the school over a two week period, since Jan. 18.

“That doesn’t mean that 200 students have COVID and 18 staff have COVID, it means that we are taking extra precautionary measures as a result of these 14 cases to try to limit the transmission of the virus,” he said. We are going to monitor this very closely over the next few days.”

Sullivan told NL News the situation is concerning, but for now, SD73 is able to cope as there has been a significant drop in the number of students coming to Sa-Hali Secondary – about 20 to 25 per cent of normal – because of the exposures.

“Its a natural reaction, I think, on the part of parents if we have a number of cases that they withdraw their students from school until the situation stabilizes,” Sullivan said. “We’re able to cope at this point with [teacher’s on-call] and we are looking at where we need to go over the next few days with respect to it.”

In total, Sa-Hali Secondary has about 900 students and 73 staff.

Sullivan adds schools across SD73 remain safe places despite the increase in exposure events.

As for a possible temporary closing of Sa-Hali Secondary, he says it is an option, but it is the last resort.

“Interior Health is the authority with respect to the transmission of the virus in the school. Just because I think we see an increase in the number of students that have been confirmed with the virus in the school, that doesn’t necessarily mean that its been transmitted in the school,” Sullivan said.

“That is something that would be Interior Health’s parameters to be able to determine.”

In a statement, Interior Health says the situation at Sa-Hali Secondary is being monitored by a medical health officer who would determine whether an outbreak should be declared.

“An outbreak is called when cases are spreading within the school. We are not seeing a spread within the schools themselves. These cases are a reflection of what is happening in the community,” the statement said.

“Students are exposed at home or somewhere in the community and attend school during their infectious period, which includes two days before symptoms occur. Then they isolate at home, which stops the spread before it occurs within the school itself. No school closure has been ordered by Interior Health.”

During her COVID-19 briefing on Monday, Provincial Health Officer, Dr. Bonnie Henry, was asked if the province would step in to temporarily close a school if there is an increase in reported exposures.

“We do see exposure events with very little transmission in the school and the local Medical Health Officer works with the school to make sure we know who was in contact with who,” she said, noting it will depend on the situation at the school. “We have a definition of a cluster, so a small amount of transmission within a cohort, or an outbreak where we have more wide spread transmission between cohorts.”

“In some cases when several cohorts have had to go home or to be isolated because of risk of transmission or when the school doesn’t have enough people to run safely, those are instances where schools have closed, sometimes on the advice of the MHO and sometimes on the schools and the superintendent’s advice.”

Henry did say that health officials have seen an increase in COVID transmission in communities outside the Lower Mainland in recent weeks.

“There are a number of factors that go into it, but clearly every time there’s an exposure event, we need to work through what was being done? Were the precautions being followed? Who’s at risk? And that is what local public health does with each and every school,” Henry said.

Sullivan previously told NL News that the increase in exposure events in schools tend to reflect what is happening in the community.

“It doesn’t come from the school to the community, I can certainly say that fairly emphatically. It is coming from the community into the school and the numbers are proportional,” he said today. “As soon as I see the numbers start to rise in the community then I know its going to have an impact on schools. We just try to limit that impact and I think we have to a great degree.”

“When you take 11 out of 900 students and three out of 73 staff and you do the math, its a fairly small percentage of those numbers, but its concerning because we saw those numbers increase over a two week period but when we look at the transmission in communities compared to schools, its pretty clear that the transmission in school in very low compared to transmission in the overall community.”

According to the most recent data from the BC Centre for Disease Control, there were a record 124 COVID-19 cases in the Kamloops local health area between Jan. 17 and 23. There were 346 cases in the area in all of 2020 with at least 283 so far this year.

A full map of the COVID-19 case count can be found here.