Rapid testing to start at Regina Catholic high schools

With a little over six weeks left in the school year, Regina’s Catholic school division is rolling out rapid testing for COVID-19 in its four high schools.

In a letter sent to parents, the division announced rapid tests would be available to high school students, their families and staff at the schools Monday to Friday from 3:30 p.m. to 8:30 p.m.

The letter makes clear that the tests are for screening purposes only for people who don’t have symptoms.

According to Twylla West, communications and media co-ordinator with the Regina Catholic School Division, most students in the high schools are between 14 and 17 and so can give verbal consent to testing.

West said rapid testing will be expanded to elementary schools at some point.

“Which schools (and) when? We don’t know yet. But we’re looking at expanding that scheduling to include all the elementary schools eventually,” said West.

The division has been planning for rapid testing for a long time, but West said there were a lot of things to figure out and wait for guidance on, like how to deal with the records created by testing which are covered under different privacy laws.

West gave the example of temperature checking, which was being floated for schools last summer.

“But once I take your temperature and write it down, I’ve created a health-care record, and now there’s different privacy laws that apply to that,” said West.

The divisions also had to wait for a tender from the provincial government to be filled by someone to provide a third party to actually administer the tests.

West said there were a lot of moving parts and they involve things the division doesn’t normally do. She pointed out they’re not doctors or nurses, they’re educators.

“So when we’re talking about having the education sector do something that would typically be done by the health-care sector, there’s a lot for us to learn. So we’re certainly learning a lot but that doesn’t mean that we can just jump into this,” explained West.

Regina Public Schools

Regina’s public schools are still fine-tuning their plans to use the rapid tests.

Terry Lazarou, the supervisor of communications with the division, said there are some details yet to be finalized but he’s hoping to have information out to staff and parents before Monday.

The public division is wrestling with many of the same things the Catholic division is. Lazarou explained there are legal implications around allowing a minor to be tested. He also talked about making sure parental choice is respected.

“So while we very much believe that vaccines are an important way forward, there may or may not be parents who don’t agree with that. We certainly are not in a position as a school division to have kids be tested for something that their parents don’t want them to,” said Lazarou.

The school division also wants to make sure the testing won’t disrupt learning.

Lazarou said one of the elements that took a long time was to get contracts finalized and signed with the third party to administer the tests.

When the provincial government first announced rapid tests in schools, it suggested school nurses could administer them, but Lazarou said there aren’t many schools that have nurses.

There are a few things the public division is planning on having in its rollout.

Lazarou said the division wants to create a way for employees who go unto multiple schools to get tested.

“So that they’re safe and we know that they’re safe going from school to school … (It’s) people who basically go from building to building and would, in previous months, been disrupting the cohorts that we’re trying to keep so students stay safe,” explained Lazarou.

He said the division is also interested in having high school students take the tests where they go to school, as most of them will be of an age to give consent.

Elementary schools appear to be a bit more complicated than the others parts of the plan. Lazarou explained the division needs to figure out how to get consent from parents for the tests, and whether testing will be done at every school or whether it will be done at a central location.

By the time rapid tests are deployed in the public division, it will have been at least two weeks since kids were back in class after a period of remote learning, and three weeks after the division received the tests.

Lazarou said the division has been working with the response planning team, ministries, and the Saskatchewan Health Authority to figure things out. He said there is a sense of urgency but they couldn’t create a testing program haphazardly.

“We have to ensure that everything is done correctly for the sake of privacy and following HIPA (Health Information Protection Act) rules. Whether we could have done it sooner is absolutely a good question, however we can only proceed with the information and the planning that we have,” said Lazarou.

A long road to rapid tests

Students at Regina schools have been back in class since May 3 after about a month of learning from home, with a week of holidays included. The schools had been pushed to remote learning after a rise in COVID-19 cases in the Queen City and a corresponding rise in cases at schools.

In February, Premier Scott Moe admitted the province needed to do better in getting rapid testing out to priority areas, including schools. He said tests were being sent to schools, as well as other priorities.

About two weeks later, the government announced it would be sending out over 700,000 rapid tests across the province, including to schools, and they would be deployed within the next week or two.

About a month after that, the provincial government announced it would be sending out about 100,000 rapid tests to schools in the province.

In mid-April, a Saskatoon spoke out, saying it was still waiting on information and help from the provincial government to use the rapid tests it had.

At the end of April, Regina Public Schools announced students would be back in class the following week, and that it had now received rapid tests from the provincial government.