New Westminster schools will be providing rapid tests for students to take home in the face of the continuing Omicron surge – but when that will happen isn’t yet known.
The Ministry of Education has started a four-phase rollout of COVID-19 rapid antigen tests in school districts around B.C.
First up are school districts in remote and rural areas, following by the rest of the districts within the Northern and Interior health authorities.
New Westminster won’t get any tests until Phase 3, when the remainder of school districts in the province will receive them for elementary and middle school students.
The final phase will be for all secondary students in the province.
Karim Hachlaf, superintendent of the New Westminster school district, said each family in the district’s elementary and middle schools will receive a kit that includes five rapid tests.
But he told the school board at its Feb. 8 operations committee meeting that he doesn’t yet have a timeline for when that will happen.
“The rollout has at least begun,” he said, adding he will alert the board and district families as soon as he knows more.
Rapid antigen tests remain the only option for most families when children show symptoms of COVID-19 because access to public health testing is extremely limited. Children can qualify for public testing if they are moderately to severely immunocompromised or if they are Indigenous.
Otherwise, families have been left to source their own rapid tests – and high demand means those tests are hard to come by.
At the province’s COVID-19 briefing on Feb. 9, Health Minister Adrian Dix said the province will be receiving 25 million more rapid antigen tests by the end of February. Plans for the distribution of those tests will be unveiled over the next week or so.
As of Feb. 5, Dix said, the province had more than 12 million tests ready to deploy. Between Feb. 8 and 19, those tests will be sent to areas of particular need – including public health testing centres, long-term care, acute-care facilities, and rural and remote communities. There are also 1.3 million tests designated for the K-12 education sector.
“We need to continue to ensure easy access to rapid antigen tests for those at higher risk for COVID,” Dix said.
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