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Round Two of COVID Pandemic Activating the Human Factor Is Key to Providing SolutionsWith the economy opening up and schools having resumed classes Canada-wide, the evidence is pointing toward a second potentially explosive wave of COVID-19 infections. The potential to overwhelm the public health system seems to be the primary concern of government officials, not the fact that restart has been undertaken with insufficient safeguards for the safety and well-being of those resuming work and school. Hundreds of millions of dollars have been given to private interests by the Canadian state for the development of a vaccine.
Other countries with far fewer resources, Cuba and Vietnam for example, have achieved far better results because they have a human-centred, not capital-centred, approach. In Canada, the initiatives of front-line health care workers for the safe operation of long-term care facilities and the provision of home care, and those of teachers, education workers, parents and students for the safe functioning of schools within the existing circumstances, are ignored and obstructed. Many provincial governments, for example, made no provision for adequate distancing in classrooms. Teachers, parents and students making their own proposals are looked upon as a problem and not as a colossal force for setting norms and standards for schools and society at large, within the conditions of the present pandemic. Evidence of a coming second wave is mounting. Health Canada reported 1,766 new cases on September 21. Canada's Public Health Officer Theresa Tam said that "if the current rate of infection is maintained the epidemic is expected to re-surge." Of these more than 1,700 cases, 586 were in Quebec, 425 in Ontario, 366 in BC and 358 in Alberta. Such numbers have not been seen since May and the majority of cases in Ontario -- 67 per cent -- are people of working age, less than 40-years-old. Schools across Canada have resumed and there is a correlation with the spread of COVID-19, although it is still too early in the academic year to see the full impact. In Ontario, 118 public schools reported 138 new cases on September 22. Ottawa alone reported 40 new cases at 23 of 28 reporting public schools (29 students, seven staff and four unspecified). Since the start of the school year, Ottawa has a cumulative total of 193 student and seven staff cases. Toronto schools reported 13 new cases on September 22 (four students and nine staff) and Toronto public schools had not even all resumed classes due to staggered start dates this year.
The most valuable lesson learned in our experience of the first wave of COVID-19, as Canada lurches toward the second, is that activating the human factor is key to providing solutions. (Photos: FIQ, YouSeePee-YYC)
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Quebec reported
507 confirmed cases at 272 public and private schools, elementary and
secondary. Sans-Frontière, an elementary school in
Quebec City, was closed on September 22 due to an outbreak of 20
student and five staff confirmed cases. It is the second school in
Quebec to be closed due to an outbreak. BC is not yet
reporting the total number of COVID-19 cases and the number of schools
with cases. Support Our Students Alberta reported that as of
September 25 there were 142 schools (118 in the previous two weeks)
with COVID-19 cases, 33 with outbreaks (2 to 4 students and/or staff
cases) and five schools on "watch" with five or more cases.
Alberta’s Chief Medical Officer reported active alerts or
outbreaks in 97 schools with 163 active cases in total as of September
24. 