The Province’s top doctor spent much of Wednesday’s COVID-19 briefing explaining the situation in the province’s public schools.
Dr. Robert Strang says the province intends to keep students in classrooms despite some recent cases popping up in schools.
He says due to the fact that most eligible students are vaccinated and symptoms tend to be milder in younger people they remain comfortable with in-class learning. ” We will continue to see cases in schools through the fourth wave, high vaccination rates and mild symptoms in children means we can have some tolerance for this,” Strang said.
Still, the Province has faced pressure from groups like Nova Scotia Parents for Public Education to be more forthcoming with COVID-19 data from schools. Strang says they intend to continue releasing COVID-19 data as they have throughout the pandemic and they will only issue exposure notices for schools when there is a risk of community transmission.
Strang also says that when there are two or more cases confirmed in a school the province then implements more restrictive COVID-19 measures to reduce the risk of spread. “We move them back to what things were like in wave three; keeping to classroom cohorts, reducing non-essential activities, and increasing cleaning in the school,” Strang said.
Strang also eased concerns that Thanksgiving plans may be at risk in Nova Scotia due to the recent rise in cases. He says our situation is not as dire as that in other provinces like New Brunswick who announced today that they will be implementing a restrictive circuit breaker to help reduce the recent surge in case numbers. New Brunswick Premier Blain Higgs announced on Wednesday that Thanksgiving celebrations will be limited to single households over the long weekend.
Premier Tim Houston’s remarks focused on the province’s new mandate for all 11,000 of their direct employees to be vaccinated by November 30. “This isn’t about us as individuals, we have to think about what we need to do to keep our families and communities safe,” Houston said. He went on to say that is the “Nova Scotia way.”
Houston also says that the NS Legislature unanimously approved a mandate that will require all MLAs that wish to attend legislative sessions will need to be fully vaccinated.
