Mar Jok Elementary School closes temporarily amid continued COVID-19 exposures

An elementary school in West Kelowna has closed temporarily because of continued COVID-19 exposures.

Students will move to online learning.

Interior Health has declared an outbreak and asked all members of the school community to self-monitor for symptoms and get tested if they are sick.

The health authority had identified increased COVID-19 activity at Mar Jok Elementary in recent weeks and asked several school community members to self-isolate. Despite efforts to break transmission chains, a handful of exposures continued.

A temporary closure of an entire school is a rarity in the Central Okanagan School District.

“We have not had to move a school to online learning since a year ago spring,” SD23 Superintendent Kevin Kaardal told Kelowna10, although some individual classes have been moved online as part of isolation measures.

Kaardal said in the case of Mar Jok Elementary, Interior Health was not seeing the interruption in transmission of the virus so the school district followed their direction in moving to the temporary closure.

“In this case [our] layered safety measures didn’t seem to be enough,” Kaardal said. "There seems to be more infection in the community at the moment … and that’s reflected often in our schools, as far as we understand.”

Will there be a vaccine mandate in SD23?

Kaardal said the school district board will start to consider whether to introduce a vaccine mandate in schools in an in-camera meeting tonight, although he did not want to prejudge that outcome.

“Cases in our community is something the board will have to consider,” he said.

So far, no school district in B.C. has voted for a mandate.

During Tuesday's regular media briefing, provincial health officer Dr. Bonnie Henry said local health officials had been working with schools district's on helping to ensure everyone at school who is eligible for a vaccine gets it.

She supports the idea of a mandate in those areas of the province - Interior and Northern Health - where transmission is high, even though younger people do not get particularly sick from the virus.

"Yes, we are very supportive of mandates in those areas particularly, because of the risk in the community right now," Henry said.