The Medical Officer for Kamloops says they’re continuing to keep an eye on COVID-19 exposures in schools in the area.

Dr. Carol Fenton wants people to know the system is working well, despite there being as many as 12 active exposures in schools as of Monday afternoon.

“You know we do take a cautious approach so if we hear that someone attended school while infectious, we do the investigation, we send out the notification so that everybody knows and everybody does the safe thing, and we prevent any infection from happening, as much as possible,” she said on NL Newsday.

As of yesterday, there were five active school exposures in the Kamloops area, and Fenton says it reflects the situation in the broader community. Most of the school exposures have been since the Christmas break, with the latest data from the BC CDC showing 900 cases in the first two months of the year after just 346 in all of 2020.

“Most often, someone school-aged is exposed from a parent or someone else in the community, they get infected and they bring it to school,” Fenton added. “We’re not seeing widespread transmission in the school setting, which is very reassuring that our system is working and so we just need to be vigilant and reduce the transmission in the community.”

As of this morning, there were active exposures at Beattie Elementary, Brock Middle, and NorKam Secondary in Kamloops as well as at Savona Elementary and the Sk’elep School of Excellence on Tk’emlúps te Secwepemc.

Kamloops-Thompson School District Superintendent Terry Sullivan previously told NL News he is concerned about the prospect of cases rising after March break, next week.