Ford says Ontario will announce decision this week on whether schools will open

The Ontario government will decide whether schools will re-open for in-class instruction in January in the next several days, Premier Doug Ford said Tuesday.

Speaking at a workplace vaccine clinic in Mississauga on Tuesday, Ford said cabinet will meet soon to determine if Ontario schools are reopening to in-person learning in January. 

"They are going to be coming out. I know the Minister (Elliott) has been sitting down at the table along with the minister of education and we will be having an announcement in the next couple days but we just want to see how things go and obviously speak to the chief medical officer, Dr. Moore," he said.

Across the GTA, most public boards are scheduled to restart on January 3.

But most boards also distributed wireless devices to students and instructed them to bring all of their belongings home in December, in anticipation of a school shutdown.

The term ended in December with dozens of schools closed due to COVID-19 outbreaks or staff shortages due to the pandemic, and approximately 12,000 confirmed cases among students and staff between Sept. 1 and Dec. 18.

Ontario's seven day rolling average of new cases exceeded 8,000 on Tuesday, with demand for PCR testing outstripping available supply, sending positivity rates above 20 per cent.

Speaking with CP24 on Tuesday night, the medical director of critical care at Michael Garron Hospital said there is a lot of confusion when it comes to the COVID-19 policies being announced by the province in light of the rising number of infections.

“A week from today my three kids are supposed to go back to school, so is my wife who is a teacher, but we haven’t heard anything from the government about how that’s possible,” Dr. Michael Warner said.

“And if it is possible, what’s going to be done to keep teachers, staff and students as safe as possible?”

He added that thus far, the province has not provided further guidance on preventing the spread of COVID-19 in schools and is still focusing primarily on mask wearing and hand hygiene protocols, which are only so effective against an airborne virus. Warner said he also hasn’t heard of any ventilation upgrades occurring over the Christmas holiday.

“I don’t think we’ve done enough to make sure the school environment is as safe as possible,” he said.

Warner was one of numerous GTA doctors who took to social media Tuesday night to ask why 10,000 people were being allowed into the Scotiabank Arena to watch a Toronto Raptors game while the government makes other policy changes for long-term care and considers whether schools will reopen in a week.

While he hopes schools will reopen in early January, Warner said when he sees crowds of people indoors with improperly worn masks he is not convinced. Events such as those “just adds gasoline to the fire of the spread of Omicron,” he said.

“In my view, whatever economic benefit there’s going to be at this Raptors game tonight, the economic benefits of having kids in school will be much more profound,” Warner said. “If the case numbers rise … to the point where the government is forced to not open schools, we will remember nights like tonight where we could have done something different.”