On Tuesday, 8,237 students citywide were absent due to illness, representing about 7.54 per cent of all Edmonton Public Schools students. The number increased by about 500 on Wednesday. On its website, the department categorizes student absences as either related to COVID-19 or cases of “other illness.” Only a small percentage of families report that their child is sick with COVID-19 or has a close contact: 0.06 percent on Tuesday and 0.07 percent on Wednesday. The remaining absences were classified as other illnesses. The level of illness-related absences is the highest seen this year and the highest since Jan. 28, when 8.31 percent of students were absent. The month of October saw the highest number of average student absences in 2022, apart from January, when the return to classes after the holiday break was delayed due to the Omicron variant.
“Our department is seeing an increased number of student absences in schools,” an EPSB spokesperson told CTV News in a statement. “We all continue to play a role in keeping each other safe and healthy, and we appreciate families keeping their children home when they are sick. We also appreciate parents notifying schools when their child is absent.” According to an epidemiologist, early data suggest that the increase in illness could be a result of COVID-19. “We have growing evidence that, like measles, COVID-19 disrupts the immune system,” Colin Furness of the University of Toronto told CTV News Edmonton. “It damages the immune system, which means that after the COVID is over and gone, you’re more vulnerable to other kinds of infections, and that can be a bigger problem in children. So we’re seeing a lot of respiratory illnesses. A lot more than what could be gathered in any other way.” While Alberta school divisions no longer receive COVID-19 data from the province, AHS notifies a school community of an outbreak when 10 percent or more of a school’s total student population is absent. On Tuesday, the Edmonton public schools department’s website showed 51 schools with an absentee rate of 10 per cent or higher. Absenteeism levels ranged from 10.02 per cent to 19.02 per cent at Avonmore Primary School. Of those 51 schools, 11 had more than 15 percent of their students absent. “It brings us back to reality and the reminder that we’re still in a pandemic,” Wing Li, spokesperson for the group Support our Students Alberta, told CTV News Edmonton. She wants to see the health department provide more guidance to families and the provincial government to provide more resources to schools to support children with learning delays. “It doesn’t look like there’s anyone really in charge right now,” Lee said. “I think they’ve abandoned us under the guise of getting back to normal. We know it’s not normal. We’re dealing with disease after disease, but there’s no help.” AHS confirmed to CTV News Edmonton on Sept. 21 that 22 letters were sent to families regarding outbreaks of respiratory illnesses at schools in the Edmonton Zone during a two-week period. At the time, AHS said it’s not unusual to see an increase in respiratory illnesses in the fall and winter. AHS could not determine what the respiratory illness was because students are not tested during these outbreaks. Furness also said everyone from the public sector to schools and provincial government should take steps to prevent disease rates from rising. “Mask wearing, we know, works well when the right kinds of masks are worn and everyone does. There’s no doubt about it,” Furness commented. “We don’t want to live our whole lives behind a mask, however, it would be very simple to look at the sewage signals and say when they reach a certain threshold, we cover for two weeks, and when they come back down, we can take out the masks”. This is a developing story. More to come.
