CALGARY — The opposition NDP says it has leaked documents showing that Education Minister Adriana LaGrange and Health Minister Jason Copping knew of outbreaks of COVID-19 in central Alberta schools last month, but didn’t tell parents or students.
The report titled “Central Zone Summary of Declared Outbreaks” is current as of Tuesday afternoon, and lists outbreaks in more than 170 buildings in central Alberta.
WATCH: Education Critic Sarah Hoffman releases leaked documents showing the ministers of health and education covered up outbreaks in Alberta schools
Of these outbreaks, the documents show several schools with dozens of cases.
“Jason Copping and Adriana LaGrange had this information and they covered it up,” said Sarah Hoffman, NDP Critic for Education. “They hid it from the students, staff and families at these schools. That is gross negligence.”
Hoffman says the list included outbreaks at several schools in the province.
The provincial NDP says some of the schools sent home letters from Alberta Health Services (AHS) that said a respiratory illness had been declared, sometimes identified as COVID-19, but there were no details offered on the severity of the case.
“Since the beginning of the school year, the UCP refused to contact-trace cases of COVID-19 in schools and they didn’t require close contacts to isolate. Now we know they deliberately covered up information gathered by AHS about the spread of COVID-19 in schools,” Hoffman said.
Alberta’s opposition is now calling on the government to release similar reports for the rest of the province and a commitment to update them daily.
In a statement late Friday, Nicole Sparrow, Press Secretary with the Office of the Minister of Education says it is unfortunate that the Opposition has either misunderstood or misrepresented the facts around COVID-19 in Alberta schools, “especially when their actions might needlessly cause fear for parents, teachers and students. The safety of our schools has always been our top priority throughout the pandemic.”
“Alberta Education continues to work closely with Alberta Health and Dr. Hinshaw’s team to monitor the impacts of COVID on our schools and continue to listen to the advice of the Chief Medical Officer and do what is necessary to ensure a safe and successful school year.”
She adds earlier this week Alberta’s Government announced new measures to help safely continue in-person learning.
“These measures include resuming public reporting of COVID-19 cases in schools, initiating contact notification in schools, clarifying COVID-19 outbreak definitions, providing rapid testing kits and encouraging school authorities to have proof of COVID-19 vaccination policies for adults.
“This is on top of the health measures already in place in schools such as mandatory masking for all school staff and students in grade 4 and up, class cohorting in elementary schools, staying home when sick, proper hand hygiene, daily screening for symptoms using the Alberta Health Daily Checklist and isolating if they have core COVID-19 symptoms.”
Alberta Health Services (AHS) also took to Twitter to address the “leaked documents” saying the document is not distributed to government and is a list of sites under investigation, and not all case numbers listed are COVID-19 cases.
For schools, this include outbreaks based on 10 per cent absenteeism from respiratory illnesses. The case numbers listed are not all COVID-19 cases. The case numbers include confirmed COVID-19 cases, and also all students absent from school due to illness and other reasons. 3/7
— Alberta Health Services (@AHS_media) October 9, 2021
