The Thames Valley District School Board ran into a speed bump on Wednesday as the board began offering voluntary asymptomatic coronavirus testing for staff and students.
TVDSB is offering testing for select students at two different schools per week.
East Elgin Secondary School in Aylmer, Ont., served as the first testing site of the week. The second round of testing this week takes place at Westminster Secondary School in London on Thursday.
The initiative was brought on by the Ontario government after the Ministry of Education mandated that school boards make testing available for two per cent of in-person students in elementary and secondary schools each week.
The province contracted GVT Lab and Imaging Services Inc. to carry out testing for TVDSB, however the school board said the laboratory vendor was delayed on Wednesday, forcing testing to start two hours behind schedule.
“The delay is kind of beyond the school’s control, it’s set up by the ministry vendor,” said Doug Lusk, the head of guidance at East Elgin Secondary School.
“Unfortunately, miscommunication has occurred, so instead of starting at 2 p.m., it looks like it’s going to be a 4 p.m. start.”
While testing was only supposed to last until 7 p.m. on Wednesday, the school board extended testing to 9 p.m. to accomodate the delayed start.
Lusk said the school didn’t know ahead of time how many students planned on seeking testing. TVDSB allows eligible students to register for the testing, but walk-ins were also being accepted on Wednesday.
However, Lusk says a good chunk of staff planned on getting tested.
“(The staff) are very eager… we are kind of on the front line day after day, right? Dealing with kids who are exposed to their own families at home and in the community, and we go back to our families and we want to make sure they’re safe,” Lusk added.
Only a handful of students were seen lining up outside East Elgin at around 2 p.m., when the testing was originally set to start.
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Among them was Reese Noels, a Grade 9 student at East Elgin.
“It’s nice to know you can go … just to make sure that you’re not sick or anything,” Noel said.
“It would be nice if everybody could do it.”
The student says he’s had relatives test positive for the virus in the past. While he tested negative at the time, he’s concerned about testing positive in the future even if he doesn’t have any symptoms.
“I just don’t want my family members to get it, I’m not as worried about myself because they say the younger are asymptomatic most of the time, but just to be safe it helps to get tested.”
Grade 12 student Kelly Verkest was also early to Wednesday’s testing and hoped to get results before making a socially distanced visit to a family friend with an autoimmune disorder.
Verkest feels its better to be safe than sorry when it comes to coronavirus testing, adding that her experience with the virus in the past has shown its spread can be hard to predict.
“When my family got it, I just assumed that I would’ve had it too, but then I got tested and I was negative two times … I was kind of confused,” Verkest said.
Victoria Ainscow-Gillespie arrived just before 3 p.m. hoping to get a test for Alexander Ainscow-Gillespie, an elementary student at Summers’ Corners Public School who is in her care.
By the time she arrived, she was informed by East Elgin staff that testing wouldn’t start until around 4 p.m.
“We’re from St. Thomas and I took him out of school at Summers’ Corners, so it would be nice to get it done,” Victoria told Global News, adding that she was willing to wait if he meant getting Alexander a test.
“My step-son and his wife … they’re bringing out all six of their kids to have (them tested).”
Linda Nicholls, the superintendent of human resources at TVDSB, says they’ll be looking to learn lessons from the testing process at East Elgin in order to improve the experience for when testing opens in London on Thursday.
Nicholls says TVDSB plans on providing the testing for the rest of the school year with testing sites set up at one rural area school and one London school each week.
“Every Friday, we’ll promote and tell people where we’re going to go next week,” Nicholls said.
“We’ll really track as to where our COVID cases are happening in our community and try to be responsive to that.”
Parents will be notified by email on Monday of each week if their child is eligible to be tested. The email will contain links for online registration that should be completed prior to testing.
More testing sites will be posted at www.tvdsb.ca/testing as they are designated.
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