As a high number of COVID-19 infections, driven by the Omicron variant, collides with our traditional influenza season, provinces and territories are shifting coronavirus tracking in schools.
Like most sectors, education is grappling with serious limitations in COVID-19 testing after multiple regions drastically cut access to PCR tests amid sky-rocketing cases, and any tracking of rapid antigen tests typically relies on self-reporting.
So officials are largely falling back on a familiar metric in classrooms: Tallying staff and student absences.
It’s data that public health is already familiar with monitoring in school settings — for example, in the annual tracking of influenza, said Dr. Lynora Saxinger, an infectious disease specialist at the University of Alberta in
