I
hate to burst your bubbles, but this is the greatest chink in the
armour of back to school safety protocols. This lack of safety protocols
on buses is extremely widespread. Not only will many buses be
carrying 70 or more students ranging in age from junior kindergarten to
grade 12 (the younger ones without masks); many of these buses will
also be transporting students from a number of different schools at the
same time --seven different schools in my case, and perhaps a daycare
centre or two.This is the norm in rural areas where several school
boards, seek to reduce costs and student travel time by transporting all students that
live in given area on one bus. Once they get into town they are dropped off at whatever school they attend, or, in some cases, may even board a different bus at one of the schools if the one they came to town on isn't going to their school.
But none of this concerns you, because your children won't be riding the bus, right?
WRONG! The chances are that at least one child in your child's school
bubble/cohort is taking the bus --a bus that has exposed that one child
to 70 other children attending several different schools. Children who will not
be practising physical distancing while on the bus --a bus which sooner or
later will be carrying one or more contagious but asymptomatic or
pre-symptomatic students. (Studies suggest that younger people, especially children, are often asymptomatic. Asymptomatic and pre-symptomatic people can and do spread the virus.) Each rider of
each bus will be penetrating a class bubble/cohort in one of several
schools on a daily basis. Children may unknowingly have become infected because a contagious bus-rider penetrated their in-school
bubble. The newly-infected child could bring the virus home to their own family bubbles, long before
anyone in the contact chain has displayed symptoms. Contact tracing doesn't usually begin
until after someone shows symptoms and has tested positive. In all likelihood that will be days later, by which time the virus could have spread far and wide.
Many family bubbles will soon be doubly exposed: Not only will children attending school risk bringing the virus home; many of their parents who couldn't afford daycare will now also be returning to work, where they too may be exposed to the virus and bring it home. The later means that children whose parents had hitherto stayed safely at home are now more likely to contract the virus at home from one of their parents.
All this means that the re-opening of the schools will cause an exponential increase in the risks of exposure. It is wishful thinking to believe that the protocols currently in place will prevent a second wave of COVID 19 infections. So what can be done? Is there a way to safely re-open schools? No, but risks can certainly be cost-effectively managed and mitigated much better than what has been proposed to date! Daily wastewater testing at each school would cost-effectively greatly reduce the risk of a huge spike in transmissions.
WASTEWATER TESTING: Wastewater testing does have limitations. It will not identify individuals who have contracted the virus. That said, there are three things it does very well:
1) It will identify whether or not the virus is present in a building, a neighbourhood, a community or any group of people who share a common sewage system.
2) It can also provide solid information about whether the total number of infections is increasing, by what amount, and how quickly. and
3) It can do this regardless of whether or not any of the infected people in that cohort are showing symptoms. It will detect asymptomatic carriers of the virus.
All this information would provide authorities with an early warning system. Once alerted to the presence of the virus, authorities can take action immediately to reduce the risk of spread. All possible carriers could be tested, all those who test positive isolated, and contact tracing could begin. All this before anyone in the chain of infections has even begun to show symptoms!
Wastewater testing is not new technology. It has been used successfully in previous pandemics, and is being used for this pandemic in many countries today, including Canada. The analysis of wastewater samples is similar to the process being used to analyze nose swab samples from individuals; for the same price as testing one individual an entire school, neighbourhood or community can be tested. The biggest hurdles will be finding/creating a suitable method and place from which to draw wastewater samples, and standardizing wastewater testing process, timetable, etc.
It is my hope that parents, school boards, teachers, school bus operators and drivers, all levels of government and the general pubic will acknowledge the inadequacies of current protocols to safely re-open schools, and insist on and put in place a wastewater testing regime in all schools that will provide an early warning system that will allow us to act before this pandemic gets totally out of hand.
For more information on, and history of the epidemiology of wastewater testing see:
Testing for COVID-19 in sewage could serve as 'advance warning,' help prepare for 2nd wave
National Wastewater Surveillance System (NWSS)
Calgary scientists hope to find early warning signs of pandemic's 2nd wave — in feces
Poop may tell us when the coronavirus lockdown will end (History of Wastewater epidemiology)
Epidemiology of the silent polio outbreak in Rahat, Israel, based on modeling of environmental surveillance data (How Israel avoided a Polio outbreak using wastewater testing)
"When students come back to school at UNCC, they'll be getting welcome bags with masks, sanitizer and thermometers. But a swab up the nose or a blood sample aren't the only ways to tell if someone has COVID-19 — UNCC officials say they will be using wastewater to test for COVID-19." --Source
