VICTORIA — British Columbia's education minister says he wants to learn from other provinces and countries like New Zealand before starting to reopen schools, but no plans will be announced until the health and safety of staff and students are fully addressed.

Rob Fleming said Tuesday scenarios are being considered for what would be a controlled and measured return to classrooms, though timelines have not been set.

He said 23,000 computers and devices have been loaned to families. Printed material and flash drives have also been delivered to students in remote areas without access to the internet.

Several thousand children whose parents are essential service workers are attending schools and there are plans to accommodate more of them, Fleming said.

"We will continue taking direction from the provincial health officer and from the premier and cabinet on when and how schools would be able to increase the number of students receiving in-class instruction and what a phased approach would look like," he said.

Schools are set to reopen after more than a month in New Zealand on Wednesday for most students whose parents need to return to work. Fleming said the province is monitoring that country for its own plan.

"This will help us in B.C. inform an evidence-based plan that minimizes the risk for COVID-19 transmission," he said, adding that data from updated modelling on the pandemic expected to be released on Friday will be considered.

"We will return to regular school life down the road and that road will be sooner and shorter if we continue to act together and act now with measures to prevent the further spread of COVID-19."

Quebec, which has been hardest hit by COVID-19, is reopening some primary schools in mid-May. Ontario expects to keep schools closed until at least the end of May, but Premier Doug Ford has said that will depend on whether the virus remains a threat.

Fleming said B.C. will announce plans only after considering what personal protective equipment and handwashing stations are available, and the number of students who would be permitted to attend school at any given time.

Stephanie Higginson, president of the B.C. School Trustees Association, said parents of younger children in particular need a break as they try to provide care and be teachers.

"Remember that what you're doing is good enough and this is happening to (our children) too. My nine-year-old reminds me of that sometimes in ways that I don't actually see until about three hours later. And then I remember why he's acting the way he is."

Most of the students attending school in B.C. are in elementary grades.

The highest priority has been given to students whose parents work in essential jobs including health care, social services and law enforcement.

Grocery store workers and those in transportation, agriculture and sanitation jobs are part of the second category of essential workers whose kids are provided a child-care space in school.

Ritinder Matthew, a spokeswoman for the Surrey School District, said a fourth elementary school opened this week to accommodate Grades 1 to 7 students.

"We are prepared to open more sites if necessary," Matthew said.

Children from one family are kept together at the schools, which have 138 students who are practising physical distancing, Matthew said. Support workers and substitute teachers are guiding activities while teachers provide online learning for students at home.

— By Camille Bains in Vancouver.

mcgruff10 said:

Spiritual_Chaos said:

mcgruff10 said:

bbiggs said:

Interesting findings regarding the airborne qualities of the virus.  It looks like we should know within a week or two if the airborne virus particles are infectious or not.  Let's hope not.

http://www.msn.com/en-us/news/world/airborne-coronavirus-detected-in-wuhan-hospitals/ar-BB13kV91?li=BBnb7Kz&ocid=iehp

“It kind of emphasizes the importance of avoiding small confined spaces,” Dr. Marr said.

Would a classroom of 28 students and myself be considered a small confined space?

You should be more worried about being in the lunchroom with your colleague than in the classroom. G says.

How about when I am on duty in a lunchroom with 400 students?

mcgruff10 said:

Spiritual_Chaos said:

mcgruff10 said:

bbiggs said:

Interesting findings regarding the airborne qualities of the virus.  It looks like we should know within a week or two if the airborne virus particles are infectious or not.  Let's hope not.

http://www.msn.com/en-us/news/world/airborne-coronavirus-detected-in-wuhan-hospitals/ar-BB13kV91?li=BBnb7Kz&ocid=iehp

“It kind of emphasizes the importance of avoiding small confined spaces,” Dr. Marr said.

Would a classroom of 28 students and myself be considered a small confined space?

You should be more worried about being in the lunchroom with your colleague than in the classroom. G says.

How about when I am on duty in a lunchroom with 400 students?

oftenreading said:

At least Trump sometimes tries to pretend to be empathetic, even if it doesn't come off so well.

https://www.theguardian.com/world/2020/apr/29/so-what-bolsonaro-shrugs-off-brazil-rising-coronavirus-death-toll

'So what?': Bolsonaro shrugs off Brazil's rising coronavirus death toll

More than 5,000 Brazilians have lost their lives to the coronavirus – even more people than in China, if its official statistics are to be believed.

But on Tuesday night Brazil’s president shrugged off the news. “So what?” Jair Bolsonaro told reporters when asked about the record 474 deaths that day. “I’m sorry. What do you want me to do?”

Bolsonaro’s 11-word response – the latest in a series of remarks belittling the pandemic – sparked immediate fury. One newspaper, the Estado de Minas, stamped the president’s words on to a black front page beside Brazil’s death toll: 5,017.

“Bolsonaro isn’t just an awful politician and a bad president, he’s a despicable human being,” tweeted Marcelo Freixo, a leftwing opponent.

“My name’s Messiah,” Bolsonaro also told reporters on Tuesday, in reference to his second name, Messias. “But I can’t work miracles.”

A wave of disgust swept over social media as word of the president’s comments spread. “A sociopath,” tweeted the musician Nando Moura. “What a tragedy,” wrote the journalist Sônia Bridi.

“It’s a mockery. An insult. It is intolerable,” tweeted Mariliz Pereira Jorge, a scriptwriter and commentator.

 Since Brazil confirmed its first case on 26 February, Bolsonaro has continually minimised the pandemic. Photograph: Evaristo Sa/AFP via Getty Images

Another critic superimposed Bolsonaro’s words on to a photograph of the muddy graves into which scores of Brazilian bodies are being deposited each day.

“Bolsonaro wants to turn Brazil into the Republic of So What,” the political commentator Bernardo Mello Franco wrote in his column on Wednesday.

The president’s son Carlos Bolsonaro claimed on Twitter that his father’s comments were being distorted by liberal journalists seeking to destroy his reputation.

Since Brazil confirmed its first coronavirus case on 26 February, Bolsonaro has continually minimised the pandemic, rejecting media “hysteria” over its dangers and suggesting Brazilians could swim in excrement and emerge unscathed.

The Trump-admiring populist has also purposefully undermined social distancing guidelines, mingling with supporters and sacking his health minister on 16 April after he publicly challenged the president’s behaviour.

Last week, Bolsonaro’s popular justice minister, Sérgio Moro, resigned from government, partly as a result of the president’s anti-scientific stance on Covid-19, according to one person who knows him.

There is no escaping the scale of the tragedy unfolding in Brazil, with daily images of gravediggers in protective suits emerging from some of the worst-hit cities, including Rio de Janeiro, São Paulo, Recife and Manaus.

As Bolsonaro made his remarks, newspapers and television programmes filled with stories about the mothers, fathers, sons and daughters losing their lives to the pandemic.

In Rio, the victims included Ana Maria, a 56-year-old nursing assistant who had worked in one of the city’s biggest public hospitals and was laid to rest on Tuesday by men in white suits.

“She gave everything to her job until the very end,” her daughter Taina told Associated Press.

In Vila Operária, a redbrick favela to the north of Rio, at least 10 residents were reported to have died, including four members of the same family.

Health specialists fear Covid-19 – which is moving into poor regions, having initially affected middle- and upper-class areas – could wreak havoc on Brazil’s most deprived and vulnerable communities.

“I’m scared,” Josiete Pereira do Carmo, who lost her mother and three uncles, told one local TV network. “We can’t lose anyone else.

Spiritual_Chaos said:

cincybearcat said:

 I knew these vaccines would be discovered and approved way earlier than 12-18 months.  That was just talking normal vaccines in an abnormal world.

What normal vaccines take 12-18 months to develop? I _believe_ Giesecke said that 18 months would pretty much be a world record in getting a vaccine out. I'm no vaccine expert, what normal vaccines take 12-18 months?

pjl44 said:

Some positive news on the treatment front from a remdesivir study:

https://www.statnews.com/2020/04/29/gilead-says-critical-study-of-covid-19-drug-shows-patients-are-responding-to-treatment/?utm_campaign=breaking_news&utm_source=hs_email&utm_medium=email&utm_content=87139697&_hsenc=p2ANqtz-8D6sCosT8QH0ZQbkIO5iXTcK4A0VztDwsZeSAcMn6iEnaUe5_cbDkoEpg4zf7ydHhYQIvgXaC_CFsjW5JmybP9VcuZnQ&_hsmi=87139697

pjl44 said:

mrussel1 said:

pjl44 said:

Some positive news on the treatment front from a remdesivir study:

https://www.statnews.com/2020/04/29/gilead-says-critical-study-of-covid-19-drug-shows-patients-are-responding-to-treatment/?utm_campaign=breaking_news&utm_source=hs_email&utm_medium=email&utm_content=87139697&_hsenc=p2ANqtz-8D6sCosT8QH0ZQbkIO5iXTcK4A0VztDwsZeSAcMn6iEnaUe5_cbDkoEpg4zf7ydHhYQIvgXaC_CFsjW5JmybP9VcuZnQ&_hsmi=87139697

I saw that too.  I thought the Gilead study had failed and it was going back to the drawing board.  Their stock surged then tanked in the course of a week. 

Their study in China ended early because of low enrollment. So naturally the WHO accidentally posted results on their website before quickly taking them down. Their ineptitude continues.

https://www.politico.com/news/2020/04/23/who-gilead-coronavirus-drug-204749