Image Credit: ADOBE STOCK

Despite having more schools potentially exposed to COVID-19 than most other districts in B.C., the Central Okanagan and Kamloops-Thompson school boards are not bringing in mask mandates for children as young as kindergarten age.

Vancouver and Surrey school districts will impose a mask mandate for all school children from kindergarten to Grade 12 effective Monday, Oct. 4.

READ MORE: B.C. parents, teachers, unions calls on school districts to announce mask mandates

New postings on health authority websites show Surrey as the district with the most schools with possible exposures at 21. It’s the largest school district in the province.

The Central Okanagan school district, the fifth largest in B.C., has the second most schools listed with nine.

The Kamloops-Thompson school district has six schools on its list, just behind the seven in Langley and Victoria.

“I had thought that somebody might bring this up but nobody did last night,” Central Okanagan school board chair Moira Baxter told iNFOnews.ca today, Sept. 30, referring to last night’s board meeting. “I could have said we should do this, but I didn’t because I really felt other people (would). Even on our board we’ve got mixed feelings on this."

The board passed a motion earlier in the pandemic to follow public health orders, not doing more or less. Trustees had a debate two weeks ago on whether to encourage vaccinations or not, Baxter said. Two trustees voted against it but the majority voted to encourage vaccination.

At last night’s board meeting, a man who has been organizing anti-vaccination demonstrations in Kelowna attended and was vocally opposed, Baxter said.

“We receive both points of views quite frequently – every day in fact, over and over again – from the people who say you should not be doing anything, to those who say you should be doing more, so it’s trying to find that balance,” Baxter said. “Mostly, the people who say you shouldn’t be doing anything are more vocal.”

If it is necessary to do more, she’s prepared to call an emergency board meeting since another meeting isn’t scheduled for two weeks.

The Kamloops-Thompson school district is taking a similar approach to following public health orders and guidance from provincial health officer Dr. Bonnie Henry who says there’s minimal transmission of COVID in schools, superintendent Dr. Rhonda Nixon said.

That doesn’t mean she’s happy with the limited amount of information that is being provided.

"Interior Health sometimes is not letting us know that a person is positive," Dr. Nixon said. "What they're telling us is that putting out the total number of cases is not a good barometer, because there's a lot more layers to current cases."

Interior Health gauges the risk of exposure on factors like whether or not the infected person was vaccinated or they were at the school outside of the period of time where the virus was transmissible, she said.

"We've been so used to seeing the total number of cases, it's hard to adjust to the new language of 'potential exposures,'" Dr. Nixon said.

The province just started posting potential exposures in schools on Tuesday but, unlike last school year, is not providing information on the number of cases.

There were 15 schools listed Tuesday on the Interior Health region website. That jumped to 31 yesterday and grew to 41 today.

READ MORE: Number of schools with COVID exposures in Interior Health doubled in 24 hours

There are nine schools in the Central Okanagan public school district with potential exposures along with two private schools.

The Kamloops school district has six schools listed and one private school.

There are three public and one private school in Vernon on the Interior Health list, three in the North Okanagan Shuswap district (Salmon Arm, Armstrong and Enderby) plus one private school in Salmon Arm.

There’s one school each in Oliver and Merritt.

See the full list here.

In terms of the province’s five health regions, Fraser Health is the largest with the most potential school exposures.

The Fraser Health list started with 31 schools this morning, compared to the 41 in Interior Health, but Fraser Health jumped to 73 later in the morning, led by Surrey with 21 along with 14 independent schools.

The Vancouver Coastal health region only has one school listed, in North Vancouver. There are 18 in the Island Health region and one in the Northern Health region, but those numbers can change at any time.

 — With files from Levi Landry

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