Christian Heritage cases continue to climb

The COVID-19 outbreak at Brandon’s Christian Heritage School has now registered a total of 17 cases, according to the province’s outbreak dashboard as of Friday evening.

This marks an increase from the 14 cases that were registered on Wednesday evening and the 10 cases that were on display as of Monday night.

The public was first made aware of this outbreak, which is linked to the delta variant, through the province’s Sept. 23 COVID update, which revealed that at least one class at the school had been moved from in-person learning to remote learning as a precaution.

While the Sun eventually learned that a Grade 3 class had made this transition, Christian Heritage officials later revealed that individuals from Grade 1, 4, 5, 6 and kindergarten classes have also been impacted by the outbreak.

In a Tuesday evening email to the Sun, Christian Heritage board of directors president Michel Latreille said the province first notified the school about this spread on Sept. 18, with an official notice sent out to parents that same day.

On Sept. 21, the Grade 3 class was moved to remote learning, although Latreille maintained on Tuesday that “any additional cases as of the time of this statement that are attributed to the CHS community were acquired outside of the school.”

When asked if Christian Heritage officials are considering the possibility of moving the whole school to remote learning due to this outbreak, Latreille said on Friday that such a move is unnecessary.

“Any cases that were acquired at school were in the Grade 3 classroom,” the president wrote on Friday afternoon. “Any additional cases related to the CHS outbreak did not occur at the school so at this time there is no increased risk or concerns at this time that would have us activate our plans to initiate remote learning for the entire school.”

As of Friday evening, the province identified a total of 133 COVID cases in Manitoba K-12 since the beginning of the fall term on Sept. 7.

Of these 181 cases, 155 cases are students and the remaining 26 are school staff.

Outside Christian Heritage, individuals from local schools such as Vincent Massey High School (Grade 12 class), Riverheights School (Grade 1 class), Betty Gibson School (Grade 1/2 class) École New Era School (Grade 5/6 class), Crocus Plains Regional Secondary School (Grade 10) and École O’Kelly School (three separate grades) have also contracted the virus.