Heather Wright/The Independent

One of the biggest elementary school COVID-19 outbreaks in Lambton County appears to be easing.

That’s according to the director of education at the Lambton-Kent District School Board who says students who were isolating are being told to return to class at Brigden Public School.

Seven students and two teachers tested positive for the virus in the last two weeks. Lambton Public Health officials quickly determined the virus was being spread in the school and started sending classes home after being in contact with those who had the virus.

John Howitt says “multiple classes” were sent home because of the virus. “Being an elementary school, the majority of the students within the school are not eligible to be vaccinated so pretty consistently, class cohorts are dismissed when students are unvaccinated,” says Howitt.

“Given each of the 10 grade levels at Brigden are not eligible to be vaccinated it did impact a large number of students and classes.”

Lambton’s Medical Officer of Health, Dr. Sudit Ranade, says closing the school completely was the absolute last option considering what that does to the student’s mental health and learning schedules.

“What tends to happen before we would need to close the school is a school is effectively operationally closed, because so many children have been isolated.”

Howitt says while the virus disrupted in-school classes, learning continued online.

“When the entire cohort dismissed, in many ways, it’s actually easier to run the remote method than when some of the students are in person and some are at home.

“While the majority of the school’s cohorts would have been dismissed at that time, given the ages of the students we’re able to call for synchronous remote learning.”

Life is now slowly returning to normal at the rural school. Howitt says some classes have been cleared for a return.

And that is a relief to parents who had to make alternative arrangements to be at home during the isolation period.

“I think that’s why we’re hearing such interest in the vaccination eligibility happening, (for five to 11 year-olds) hopefully in a very short time frame,” he says. It’s expected elementary school students may begin vaccination by December.