For the third time, the Cariboo-Chilcotin School District and the Interior Health Region held a virtual town hall meeting.
The meeting saw Superintendent of Schools Chris van der Mark and Medical Health Officer Dr. Carol Fenton answer questions and address concerns from parents about various topics.
Fenton talked about what it would take for an outbreak to be declared in a school.
“I would declare an outbreak in a school if I saw transmission that was unexplained,” she said. “We’ve seen a number of cases that when you do the investigation, they all came from a sleepover, and that makes sense. The sleepover is over, so the transmission should not be continuing, and you see that it’s an isolated cluster, and you feel satisfied that it’s controlled. If we were to see case after case and we didn’t know where it was coming from, we would have to escalate from there. It’s case-specific based.”
Fenton said that it’s important people remember not to fiddle or touch their masks.
“One must not touch the mask when you are wearing it. I’ve seen commonly out in the community is people will grab the mask and then pull it down, say something, and then put it back up. People just contaminated both their face and their hand,” she said. “It is really important to learn how to put on the mask safely and to remember that you should wash your hands before and after every time you touch the mask.”
She continued that masks are just one of many different prevention measures.
“It is not a fail-safe. It’s one prevention measure in our prevention measure took kit,” Fenton said. “It’s one prevention measure in our prevention measure tool kit; that’s why we are very cautious about recommending masks.”