Order on vaccine disclosure for B.C. school staff confuses, surprises teachers

A new health order saying a lack of information about unvaccinated staff in B.C. schools is a “health hazard” came as a shock to the head of the teachers’ union who is wondering why the province didn’t just introduce a mandate.

Education Minister Jennifer Whiteside says the order issued Monday does not actually require staff in B.C. schools to disclose their vaccination status to their employers, although that is how many initially interpreted it.

“The order doesn’t require disclosure. It’s an enabling order. It enables medical health officers in health authorities to make a decision, if they deem it necessary, to require a school to engage in a disclosure process.”

Just finished speaking with Education Minister @JM_Whiteside about the new health order affecting schools – that allows for mandatory reporting of staff vaccination status that has perplexed many including @bctf. #bcpoli #covid19 @CityNewsVAN #bced

— LizaYuzda (@LizaYuzda) January 18, 2022

What the order does, according to Whiteside, is empower a school district’s medical health officer to order disclosure in a particular district at a particular time. It is not, she stresses a “blanket” provincial policy.

“Their intention is to be able to support school medical health officers in a geographical area where they may need to have a better understanding of what the vaccination rate is amongst school-based staff in particular,” she says.

“It’s another tool that public health can use to help manage clusters and outbreaks in particular areas.”

RELATED: Delta schools mandating COVID-19 vaccine for staff

BCTF President Teri Mooring says they were not expecting an order related to schools to be issued Monday, and members have been left with more questions than answers.

“We are surprised that if the provincial health office felt the need to act that they didn’t just put in a vaccine mandate for K to 12 schools across the province, we’ve been calling for this. And that would be a lot more straightforward than this order,” she says.

“It does talk about there being ‘an immediate and urgent need for action.’ We haven’t heard from the provincial health office or any of the local health authorities, about schools being in such urgent need for action … This order implies a lot of information that neither members of the public nor people that work in the system actually have.”

For @bctf Pres @TeriMooring it sounds like this order opens door to imposing regional mandates and finds it concerning as it reads as an immediate and urgent need for action but it leaves more questions than answers hoping for clarity Tuesday.#bcpoli #covid19 @CityNewsVAN #bced

— LizaYuzda (@LizaYuzda) January 18, 2022

The order, as far as Mooring can see, would open the door to vaccine mandates in parts of the province with lower rates of immunization and higher rates of transmission.

Mooring says students, staff, and families don’t have enough information about rates of transmission in schools. The union has been demanding access to N95 masks for staff and improved ventilation, as well prioritization of teachers and support staff for boosters, and a province-wide campaign to increase vaccination rates among eligible kids.

“We’ve all along been concerned about the spread of Omicron in schools, and concerned that not enough is being done. And so this is surprising.”

RELATED: BCTF calls on province to step up COVID-19 measures in schools

Whiteside says in the week since in-person classes resumed for most students, there have been five “functional closures” of schools, meaning the doors have been closed due to staff shortages caused because staff are ill themselves or are in isolation after being exposed to COVID-19. Province-wide, she says student attendance is at 80 per cent.

“That’s a higher absentee rate than we would normally see, but really not unreasonable given the context that we’re in with this particular phase of the pandemic.”

Unlike student attendance, staff attendance is not tracked and recorded in a systematic way across the province. Whiteside says that data the province does have shows 90 per cent of staff were at work Monday.

“The data is not quite as robust for staff as it is for students. We’re still working out, we’re still tweaking that system. We don’t quite have all districts reporting in yet. So it’s a bit of a rough number.”

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Meantime, the union representing support staff in elementary and high schools has announced 200,000 rapid tests will be sent to schools this week — enough so that each staff member in each district will have two to take home.

“This first shipment of rapid tests will be for at-home use by symptomatic staff members to rule out COVID-19. They will not be used to determine if asymptomatic staff can attend school,” says a statement from CUPE K-12.

“Deployment and distribution to staff will be managed by the individual school districts. The tests will arrive prepackaged in boxes of five, so they will need to be repacked on by school districts into sets of two. This may cause a slight delay in getting them to staff.”

Provincial Health Officer Dr. Bonnie Henry and Health Minister Adrian Dix will be holding a briefing Tuesday, where new health orders are expected to be announced.

“If there’s concerning information about schools we certainly expect to hear tomorrow,” Mooring says.