Southwestern Manitoba school moves to remote learning after outbreak declared

Students at Miniota School have moved to remote learning after nine cases of COVID-19 have been linked to the small kindergarten to Grade 8 school in southwestern Manitoba, a school division official says.

Eight of the people who tested positive for the illness are students at the school and the other is a bus driver, said Park West School Division superintendent and CEO Stephen David.

Remote learning started on Thursday. Public health declared an outbreak at the school and told school officials Wednesday afternoon Miniota would have to make the shift to remote learning, David said.

The school has also been moved to the highest level — red, or critical — on Manitoba's pandemic response system, the province said in a Thursday news release.

Students won't return to the classroom until Oct. 18 at the earliest.

Cases have been linked to four of the school's five classrooms, David said.

He still hasn't gotten a clear indication of how the illness was spread among so many people at the school, which only has 75 students.

But in such a small, tight-knit region, he said he thinks both school-based transmission and community spread are possible.

So far, more than 40 close contacts have also been identified in connection with the school cases, David said.

Kids stay home as anxiety grows

Worry about the outbreak has also begun to spread among parents at the school, David said. While some students had to stay home on Wednesday, about 45 were still expected to come to class. Instead, only about 15 showed up, he said.

"What we often see in these instances [is] when there's the first positive case in the community, the anxiety level goes up quickly and people start to worry about whether or not they and then their children will be safe," David told CBC's Radio Noon host Marjorie Dowhos on Thursday.

"Miniota had been very fortunate over the last 18 months that they had no positive cases in the school."

And while that initial worry is understandable, David said he doesn't expect it'll last long.

"Miniota is a community well renowned for being very close-knit and very supportive of each other," he said.

"So they quickly transition, both at a school level and a community level, from worry and anxiety to, 'What do we have to do to keep people safe?'"

Another outbreak

Manitoba also reported a COVID-19 outbreak at Alonsa School, which has students from kindergarten to Grade 12.

As of Thursday, there were at least seven cases linked to that school, the province's outbreaks website says. All were among students.

Across Manitoba, a total of 35 new cases linked to schools were reported on Thursday, in the first update to to the province's school-related case information since Tuesday.

Of the new cases, 27 are students and eight are staff. There have now been a total of 247 student cases and 39 staff cases in Manitoba since the start of the school year.

Eleven new schools have now reported cases this academic year, for a total of 115 affected since the beginning of September.