Number of schools with COVID exposures in Interior Health doubled in 24 hours

By late afternoon yesterday there were 15 schools in the Interior Health region posted as having possible COVID-19 exposures.

That number has more than doubled now to 31 as of today, Sept. 29, and at least one Kamloops parent is saying people are keeping their kids home from school because the new online Interior Health postings don’t give any information about the number of cases.

“We have three classes impacted and one class is in isolation due to the number of positives in the one class,” Nicole Collins, whose child is in Juniper Elementary School in Kamloops, said in an email to iNFOnews.ca. “The current reporting without including details on the number of positive cases by Interior Health is grossly negligent. The result is that parents are not sending their kids to school.”

Yesterday there were possible exposures at two schools in Kamloops, three in the Central Okanagan and one each in Oliver and Vernon.

READ MORE: COVID exposures at 15 schools in Interior Health including 7 in Okanagan, Kamloops

Today there are six each on the list for Kelowna and Kamloops plus more in other Thompson-Okanagan public and private schools.

The list in Kelowna includes Kelowna Heritage, Kelowna Christian, KLO Middle, Springvalley Middle, Casorso Elementary and Ecole Glenmore Elementary. Also listed from the same Central Okanagan school district are Glenrosa and Chief Tomat elementary schools, both in West Kelowna.

In Kamloops, the list includes Juniper Ridge, Aberdeen, Pacific Way and Dallas elementary schools along with Valley View Secondary and St. Ann’s Academy. Logan Lake Elementary, in the same school district as Kamloops, is also on the list.

Others in the region include King’s Christian School and Shuswap Middle School in Salmon Arm, St. James School and W.L Seaton Secondary School in Vernon and Oliver Elementary School.

There are nine schools in the Boundary and Kootenay regions and two in Williams Lake on the list.

Out of 18 school districts in the Interior Health region, 10 have possible COVID-19 exposures.

The full list of school exposures in the Interior Health region can be seen here.


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Rob Munro

Rob Munro has a long history in journalism after starting an underground newspaper in Whitehorse called the Yukon Howl in 1980. He spent five years at the 100 Mile Free Press, starting in the darkroom, moving on to sports and news reporting before becoming the advertising manager. He came to Kelowna in 1989 as a reporter for the Kelowna Daily Courier, and spent the 1990s mostly covering city hall. For most of the past 20 years he worked full time for the union representing newspaper workers throughout B.C. He’s returned to his true love of being a reporter with a special focus on civic politics