Students at St. Michaels Catholic School in Woodstock Remain in Quarantine

Thursday, 18 March 2021 at 14:56

By ChrisM

Southwestern Public Health explains why every single student at St. Michaels Catholic Elementary School has been told to quarantine after the school closed down last week.

WOODSTOCK - Students at St. Michael's Catholic Elementary School in Woodstock remain in quarantine and the school continues to be closed.

The school first closed last week after 3 people tested positive for COVID-19. Since then two variants of concern were also confirmed in members of the school community at St. Michael's.

The entire school community has been deemed high risk, which means they must quarantine for 14 days. Manager of School Health Erica Arnett provided an email statement to Heart FM explaining why all students and staff are considered at risk.

"The school has faced the rare occurrence of having some cases in individuals that have access to multiple classrooms. This left no classroom unaffected and thus every child was deemed high risk and under current protocols all need to self-isolate for 14 days. We understand this is a very difficult and stressful time for parents and families. It has also been a rare occurrence for a school to make the decision to close but it was done with safety in mind."

Arnett also explains why the school is not listed on the Provincial dashboard.

"Each school in every board is responsible for sending notice of their cases to the Ministry for reporting on the website. We have alerted the school board of the absence of the St. Michael’s cases from the provincial website and they are looking into this matter. We suspect a clerical or technical error and this will be remedied. We understand that the correct data will be uploaded in the morning."

The school is hoping to reopen on March 25th. Parents and guardians have received notifications from the Health Unit reminding them of the Class 22 order, which requires students at St. Mike's to self isolate for the full 14 days.