Students returned to classes all over BC on Thursday, Sept 10th last week. Now, just 4 school days later, we have reports of the first school-based exposure that could pose a moderate risk to attending scholars.
Delta Secondary School sent out a letter to parents on Monday announcing that a person who was at the school on Friday, Sept 11th has now tested positive for COVID-19. We do not know if the person was a student or a teacher, but it seems implied that the person was at the school during class hours. Contact tracing has begun, and anyone who was in close contact that may be affected will be contacted by Public Health.
There has been one other school exposure event in BC since classes returned last week, which took place at Johnston Heights high school in Surrey. The exposure has been deemed “low risk” however, as the person who tested positive did not have contact with the students during the time they were in the building.
Beyond the two exposure events mentioned above, there were also two other exposure events before schools reopened. The most recent took place at Ecole Panorama Ridge Secondary (also located in Surrey), on Tuesday, September 8th, and was determined to be “low risk” by Public Health. The other exposure event took place at a Grade 9 camp that took place off-campus and is associated with a Mulgrave School in West Vancouver. Several students have been placed in isolation as a precaution, and are continuing their studies remotely.
In other news, more controversy seems to be brewing around the Russian COVID-19 vaccine Sputnik-V. Last week a letter was sent to The Lancet science journal questioning the results from the vaccine’s Phase 1/2 study, the letter has now been co-signed by 38 different scientists from 9 different countries. The main concern seems to revolve around data sets that appear to be nearly identical, with multiple participants reporting identical antibody levels. Naor Bar-Zeev, deputy director at John Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health, who peer-reviewed the Russian data for The Lancet has gone on record saying “The results are plausible, and not very different to those seen with other AdV vectored products”. The vaccine is now headed into Phase 3 trials, which will see up to 40,000 participants taking part.
Throughout the pandemic this year 98 different recalls have been issued over different brands hand sanitizer. The reason for these recalls varies, some have improper warning labels for the kind of ingredients used, and others were made using Ethyl acetate which is known to cause dry and cracking skin. Some, however, contain a more concerning ingredient, Methanol. Methanol may cause conditions like dermatitis, eye irritation, headaches and upper respiratory system irritation. If you have been using hand sanitizer, I recommend checking the official recall list to see if yours is on it.
That’s all for now, stay safe everyone!
BC COVID-19 Info 