Manitoba return-to-school update from premier, education minister set for 2 p.m.
CBC
Premier Heather Stefanson and Education Minister Cliff Cullen will given an update on Manitoba's return-to-school plans as COVID-19 cases continue to surge in the province.
The 2 p.m. news conference will be streamed here and on Facebook and CBC Gem.
Stefanson and Cullen will also be joined by Dr. Jazz Atwal, Manitoba's deputy chief provincial public health officer.
The province already delayed the return to school after the winter break by a few days, until Jan. 10, to assess the impact of the Omicron variant.
In recent days, the teachers' union and board of Winnipeg's largest school division have publicly called for moving almost all students to remote learning.
The Manitoba Teachers' Society and the Winnipeg School Division's board of trustees both say they want schools to move back to red-level restrictions, the highest on the province's pandemic response system, at least for the month of January.
"The concern, of course, is that if we get into in-person learning and we see large numbers of cases within students, within the staff in schools, it could make for a very disruptive month of learning in January," Manitoba Teachers' Society president James Bedford told CBC News last week.
In a statement on Friday, the union said it's opposed to any hybrid learning arrangements and optional remote learning, which Bedford said make teachers' jobs "extraordinarily difficult."
The statement also asked the province to provide medical-grade N95 masks to all education staff who are still at school during remote learning, since the children of critical service workers would still be allowed to go to class.
Betty Edel, the chair of the Winnipeg School Division's board of trustees, sent a letter to the province with a similar request for remote learning and those safety measures. She also wants to see rapid tests made available to all staff and students.
On Monday, the provincial COVID-19 dashboard was updated to show an increase of 5,411 new cases, along with six deaths, since Friday.
The provincial test positivity rate had skyrocketed to 37.9 per cent as of Monday, up from 30.7 on Friday.
