Ontario to roll out rapid testing for unvaccinated students in COVID-19 hot spots

Thestar.com
Oct. 6, 2021

Kids will miss fewer classes during an outbreak and shutdowns could be avoided with a new program that will deploy rapid COVID-19 testing in hot-spot schools and target unvaccinated students, says the province’s top doctor.

With the highly contagious Delta variant circulating, “there is a place for this type of testing” that will start as early as next week and will also be available in daycares, said Dr. Kieran Moore.

Ontario’s chief medical officer of health called rapid testing a “valuable tool to keep schools open,” which the province decided to implement after looking at data from similar programs in the United Kingdom and United States.

“Where the risk of transmission is very high and vaccine coverage is low at the community or school level, this measure may provide an additional layer of protection for schools and child care centres to minimize risk of outbreaks and potential closures,” Moore said at Queen’s Park.

“It saddens me every time we have to close a school for a brief period of time to get a round of testing and/or have to quarantine students for the 10 to 14 days,” he also said.

“When that occurs, we’re looking for any other new interventions we can put in play to minimize the disruption for parents and for teachers and workers, and to keep that school open, but to do so safely.”

While experts said the move is necessary, they also worried that false negative results from the rapid tests could lead to a false sense of security.

“If there is an outbreak and (public health) is thinking of closing down a school, this is potentially an additional measure you can use -- you can say, ‘You can come back to school if you test negative,’ ” said Dr. Anna Banerji, a pediatrics professor at the University of Toronto. “My concern is false negatives.”

Dr. Irfan Dhalla, co-chair of a federal advisory panel on COVID-19 testing and screening, said rapid antigen tests “are not a silver bullet, but they are a valuable component of a multi-component strategy” and something his panel had suggested earlier this year.

He said false positives are not an issue, but that “false negatives are a greater concern,” particularly if the rapid tests are being used instead of PCR tests, in which samples are analyzed in a lab.

“If there is a single case in a school, close contacts should get PCR testing, but then rapid tests could be provided to every other child in the school or their parents and they might find some transmission that they didn’t previously know about,” added Dhalla, who is also a vice-president at Unity Health Toronto.

That approach is in line with the province’s program, one that will fall on local health units to implement with the help of school boards.

The new testing plan comes as the government has come under increasing pressure from parents and opposition critics to provide more testing in schools, especially for elementary students who, because they are under 12, are not yet allowed to be vaccinated.

“We will do whatever we need to do to keep students and staff safe,” said Cathy Abraham, president of the Ontario Public School Boards’ Association. “We’ve been inquiring about it because as you know, businesses have been able to use it and have been doing testing for some time now, so for the last two or three weeks now we’ve been saying, ‘What about schools?’ ”

NDP education critic Marit Stiles, who has also been calling for rapid testing, said the government “should have used every available tool to keep kids safe and keep schools safely open” and that Premier Doug Ford only took action in light of reports of parents implementing rapid testing on their own.

“Those parents are left scratching their heads about this reversal, and are waiting to see if their schools will be included in the rollout of this strategy. ... They’re desperate to prevent the kind of disruptions and turmoil their kids went through last year,” she said.

The Star revealed details of the new plan ahead of its release. In a memo sent to school boards early Tuesday, Education Minister Stephen Lecce and deputy minister Nancy Naylor said the home screening tests are intended for unvaccinated students -- currently, students under 12 are not eligible for shots -- “with no symptoms and who are not considered high-risk contacts of a case.” The tests are voluntary.

Children with symptoms and those considered “high-risk” contacts “must continue to access PCR testing at a local assessment centre or community lab,” said the memo obtained by the Star.

In Ontario, more than 81 per cent of children aged 12 to 17 have had at least one dose of a COVID-19 vaccine and 73 per cent are double vaccinated.

The Toronto District School Board is now asking students to voluntarily disclose if they have been vaccinated. However, even those who have received a double dose will still have to complete daily screening before being allowed in the building.