B.C. students are set to return to school on Monday, but thousands of people are making a last-ditch effort to keep them home a bit longer.
A Change.org petition is calling on the B.C. government to extend school winter break in a bid to slow the spread of the COVID-19 virus, and a more virulent strain that has shown up in the province.
As of Saturday afternoon, the petition had more than 15,000 signatures.
Petitioners are asking the Ministry of Health and B.C.’s provincial health officer Dr. Bonnie Henry to extend the break by two weeks.
B.C. has seen a spike in COVID-19 cases in the past month, with more than 500 new cases a day in the last week, the petition states.
They are asking Henry extend the winter break for all students and “make a new plan on how to safely return to school.”
Health officials confirmed shortly after Christmas that B.C. had recorded its first case of the mutated strain of the virus, which was first detected in the U.K. two weeks ago.
An asymptomatic traveller who arrived in Vancouver from London 12 days ago has been confirmed as the first carrier of the new, more infectious COVID variant into B.C.
Bonnie Henry said last Sunday that a passenger on an Air Canada Flight 855 arrived on Dec. 15 without symptoms and tested positive on Dec. 19. That person is self-isolating on Vancouver Island.
The more infectious COVID-19 variant has led to many countries restricting flights arriving from Britain.
Last weekend, Public Health Ontario reported Canada’s first mutant cases in a couple from the Durham region, east of Toronto, that had been in recent contact with someone who returned from the U.K.
There was also a new variant case reported in Ottawa the same weekend.
The Public Health Agency of Canada says the new variant might be more transmissible, but has not proven to be more dangerous or to affect vaccine effectiveness.
According to a study released Sunday by the Centre for Mathematical Modelling of Infectious Diseases at the London School of Hygiene and Tropical Medicine, the variant is 56 per cent more transmissible than other strains.
On Thursday, Henry said there were no plans to delay the return to school and said that B.C. officials have not seen a lot of spread of the new variant of the virus.
