COVID-19 in Ontario and The Impact on LU Students
In the wake of Covid-19 and the holiday season coming to a close, Orillia has been seeing a fair share of Covid outbreaks in local places. The outbreaks are everywhere and are becoming unavoidable with numbers in Ontario escalating daily due to the new variant Omicron. With the rising numbers and vaccination rates being higher, rules are changing.
Self isolation time has once again been dropped from 10 down to 5 days for fully vaccinated individuals, only a rapid test is needed and you should not be booking a PCR test to confirm. Booking a PCR test with a positive rapid test was deemed unnecessary in the new year but mandatory isolation is not. If you or someone in your home tests positive your entire house should be isolated due to close contact. You can be asymptomatic and still test positive which means the vaccines are working to prevent hospitalization and death. If you are not fully vaccinated, the isolation period remains 10 days for yourself and anyone in your house.
With the rise in numbers, Lakehead University has pushed in-person learning to start on January 25, 2022, but classes will still begin online on January 10, 2022. To enter campus you still must be vaccinated and show proof with a daily screening and vaccination records. The University can still remove in-person learning for the remainder of the year for classes that do not require labs, tutorials or placements. If you are attending those classes your program chair will be deciding what is happening. If you are a student who is already completely online nothing will be changing for you. Online classes through Zoom and other mediums will be running as they were set to run.
William Boily, a fourth year student, notes that “not going out has been a debilitating blow to the mental health of young people all around,” going on to say that “making school an online only environment not only doesn’t facilitate learning, but I’m pretty sure has fostered lots of cheating. People are not getting the full experience and knowledge from their classes.”
Ontario is still unsure what they would like to do in relation to public schools, the government has pushed the start date back two days to January 5, 2022, to get out PPE and supplies. Before winter break students were told to bring all of their belongings home with the anticipation they will not be going back. Students and their families will have the option to move their students fully online even if the school does not.
With the ever-changing climate of the pandemic capacity limits in restaurants, bars, movies, and shopping have all once again been lowered for the time being. Meaning people can still go out but the amount of seating is lowered once again.
With the situation of the pandemic continuing to change and numbers rising and declining, we will keep having to change our plans and rearrange our lives for the safety and security of others.