Pharmacies providing COVID vaccinations
By Gillian Slade on March 16, 2021.
LETHBRIDGE HERALDGslade@abnewsgroup.com The recent alarming rise in school cases, (the most the division has experienced since the start of the COVID-19 pandemic last year), parallels what is happening in the broader community with 447 cases city-wide, putting Lethbridge firmly within the Alberta Health Services most severe outbreak category.Gilmore said the division was not contemplating school closures at this time, but admitted it is up to the province to take that action should they deem it necessary. The province recently ordered the close of St. Francis School in the Holy Spirit Separate School Division, for example, with rising COVID numbers there, said Gilmore.
“A jurisdiction doesn’t make that decision on its own,” she explained. “At this point in time, when we talk about 45 cases, and we have 12,000 students. For all of those students who have chosen to be in school, and those parents who anticipate their children will be in school, it isn’t always necessarily what’s easy. Because even though we have 1,000 students at home, we have another 10,000 in school. And so for those parents, those families, and certainly we will always make the best decision in the interests of health and safety– if any school ever gets to a level where we believe that there’s not safe level of staff in the school or if it gets so delivery is not effectively delivered, or it gets to the point where there is transmission happening in schools– but that is just not the case (right now).”
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