Officials at the Chatham-Kent Health Alliance are keeping close tabs on the increasing number of COVID-19 cases in local schools.
In the last few days, three Chatham-Kent schools in both the Lambton Kent and St Clair Catholic school boards have confirmed at least one positive case of the virus, sending dozens of students into quarantine.
CEO Lori Marshall says it’s definitely concerning.
“We’re watching the impact to our assessment centre and watching the volumes there,” Marshall says. “We’re working with our friends at Public Health and the EMS community paramedics in the event we need to do some mobile testing and those kinds of things.”
Marshall says everyone in the community needs to step up to help reduce the spread of the virus..
“Even those of us who may not have kids in school, it’s our collective responsibility as a community to keep doing everything we need to do that will help our kids to be able to stay in school and also help to make sure we don’t have outbreaks in long term care or retirement homes or other congregate settings where we know people are most vulnerable.”
Marshall says a lot of lessons were learned during the first wave of the pandemic, but there’s more work to be done.