Outbreaks in schools plague Quebec’s record

The explosion in the number of cases of COVID-19 in school-aged children is much stronger in Quebec than in Ontario. Taking into account the fact that the neighboring province is more populous, the rate of infections among young people is four times greater in Quebec than in Ontario.

Suzanne Colpron
Press

Since the start of the pandemic, there have been 19,627 cases in Quebec schools and 9111 in Ontario establishments. As of Thursday, Quebec reported 4,657 active cases in the school network.

This phenomenon helps ensure that Quebec is the province with the largest number of new cases in relation to its population.

With an average rate of confirmed cases in the last seven days of 15.1 per 100,000 population, Quebec not only tops the list of provinces, but it is also well above the Canadian average of 8.6 cases. per 100,000 inhabitants, according to data compiled by the National Institute of Public Health of Quebec (INSPQ).

“We were very good after the second wave. Incredible in the third wave. In the fourth, we did better than others. But at the moment, we are in a very bad position, ”says virologist Benoit Barbeau, professor in the department of biological sciences at the University of Quebec at Montreal (UQAM).

On Thursday, for example, 1,807 new infections were reported. On the same day, Ontario reported 1,290. All things considered, there are 2.4 times more cases in Ontario than in Quebec.

Ventilation, a marked difference

How to explain this rise in cases, unique in Canada, and more particularly the high incidence in schools?

There can be several explanations for this phenomenon. According to experts interviewed by Press, one of the causes of the more marked transmission in schools could be the absence of air exchangers in classrooms in Quebec.

“It’s especially since the start of the school year that Ontario has stood out,” notes André Veillette, professor of medicine and director of the Molecular Oncology Research Unit at the Montreal Clinical Research Institute. “I can’t believe our kids are more boring than those in Ontario. The vaccination rates are about the same. The sanitary measures are the same. But from what I understand, they have put air purifiers in their schools. ”

In addition to providing better ventilation in the classroom, Ontario has been relying on the use of rapid tests for months. Quebec did not announce until Thursday the upcoming distribution of such tests to students.

But on the air quality side, the 90,000 CO readers₂ promised will not be delivered by the end of the year. At the Montreal School Service Center (CSDM), barely 18% of schools received CO readers₂.

“In Ontario, we really tried to put all the layers of protection in schools: we have universal masks, we have optimized ventilation and filtration and we have rapid tests,” notes the D^r Jérôme Leis, head of infection prevention and control at Sunnybrook Hospital in Toronto.

“It’s hard to say that the difference is related to one or more of these layers, but you have to try to put on as many layers as possible. ”

“If I had one recommendation for schools, it would be to install air exchangers,” adds André Simard, associate professor at the Northern Ontario School of Medicine and specialist in immunology. Here in Sudbury, the school board bought some for every classroom. In older schools, where there is not good ventilation, we see more cases. ”

The D^r Jesse Papenburg, pediatrician and infectious disease microbiologist at the Montreal Children’s Hospital, agrees that classroom ventilation can help reduce transmission in schools.

“Could we do better in Quebec in terms of ventilation? Should we have done more? Probably. But is that what explains the differences in incidence rates? I would be uncomfortable making this connection, ”he explains.

According to him, health measures are not the only ones involved. He explains, for example, that school is not necessarily the home of the spread of the virus. And that the real problem may be community transmission, meaning that children bring the virus contracted elsewhere into school.

“There is more community transmission at the moment in Quebec than in Ontario,” he observes. The most affected age group are children under 10 because they have not yet been vaccinated. So, this is not surprising. But that does not mean that there is transmission in the schools. ”

Ahead of the rest?

Another way of looking at it is to say that if Quebec has more cases, it is because it is ahead of the other provinces and because it was hit before the others.

“It seems like waves last 8 to 10 weeks, generally, but it’s not fair because you put measures in place and take them away,” he adds. You don’t control the virus, even with a large proportion of the population being vaccinated. ”

The D^r Jérôme Leis notes that the community transmission rate is already on the rise in Ontario, where “the effective reproduction rate is almost 1.2”.

In any event, it should be remembered that these outbreaks in schools, even if they are spectacular, do not have the same impacts as the outbreaks of previous waves. Because children are usually very resistant to the virus, even when not all of them are vaccinated. To date, one-third of young people aged 5 to 11 have received their first dose. As the vaccine may take two weeks to fully work, the impact of vaccination is likely to be felt more in early 2022.

The increase in cases among children, however, has social and community consequences. “More than 60% of outbreaks occur in daycare and school settings,” recalls Olivier Drouin, who brings together all the data on COVID-19 cases in schools on covidecolesquebec.org.

And even if their parents, who are most often vaccinated, do not become seriously ill when they contract the virus, their children’s infections cause a host of disruptions in family and professional life, quarantines, absenteeism at work. , and a puzzle for parents, schools and teachers on the front lines.

With the collaboration of Pierre-André Normandin, Press