A case of a COVID-19 variant has been found at Bellerose High School, and families who were impacted were notified this week.
On Friday, St. Albert Public Schools superintendent Krimsen Sumners confirmed one variant case has been found at Bellerose Composite High School and one class is isolating as a result.
“There is a second case of COVID at Bellerose, but there has been no confirmation that it is a variant,” Sumners said.
Around 30 students are now isolating at home as well as three staff members. Everyone who has been impacted has been notified at this point.
“If there's anything further, we'll be sure to share that information with the Bellerose community. And so our practice is that we've been trying to be as transparent with families as we can, without giving away anybody's personal medical information,” Sumners said.
All the students and teachers who were sent home are now conducting online learning.
“It really is hats off to the teachers that are on the ground. They're the ones who are making the big adjustments and ensuring that kids are getting what they need,” the superintendent said.
St. Albert Public Schools manager of communication services Paula Power said the event is a reminder to stay vigilant with COVID-19.
“Everybody's getting tired of COVID-19, and so we just really need to remind people that all those measures that people have been taking the last year, we still need to be very vigilant about them,” Power said.
Bellerose is not the first school in Alberta to discover a variant case, with the first cases being found in schools in February, but it is the first variant case in the St. Albert Public district.
The province reported its first case of in-school transmission of a variant on Feb. 11.
Latest St. Albert figures
For the second day in a row, St. Albert is sitting at 18 active COVID-19 cases.
Sturgeon County is holding steady at two cases for the second day in a row.
Morinville has increased in active cases, up from nine on Thursday to 10 on Friday.
Across Alberta, another 411 cases were diagnosed after 10,559 tests were run for a positivity rate of 3.89 per cent. Over the last week, the average for the provincial positivity rate sits at 4.33 per cent.
There are currently 4,639 active cases in the province. There are 243 Albertans in the hospital with 44 in intensive care.
Another two deaths have been reported to Alberta Health in the past 24 hours.
So far, 275,719 doses of vaccine had been given out by the end of the day on March 4.
