BREAKING Bob Cole, veteran CBC broadcaster and former voice of 'Hockey Night in Canada,' dead at 90
Bob Cole, legendary CBC broadcaster and former voice of Hockey Night in Canada, has died. He was 90.
Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis on Wednesday announced that the state has put out a revised rule which follows a "symptom-based approach" to quarantining students, meaning asymptomatic children exposed to COVID-19 in classrooms could be sent back to school by parents.
"If somebody is symptomatic, of course they stay home. If there's a close contact, but somebody has not developed any symptoms -- you monitor them, you notify the parent," DeSantis said. "The parent always has the right to have their kids stay home, if they think that's in the best interest of the student and the family 100 per cent, we would not want to intrude on that. But if a parent has a healthy child, that child has a right to be in school."
DeSantis said the new policy recognizes that quarantining healthy students is "incredibly damaging" for students' educational advancement and disruptive for families.
Dr. Joe Ladapo, Florida's new state surgeon general and Department of Health secretary, said, "It's also important to respect the rights of parents as the governor described.
"We respect that some parents may be less comfortable sending their kid back to school after being exposed. And so the new rule allows for those parents to keep their children home for a period of time. And the new role also allows for parents who are more comfortable letting their healthy child return to school," Lapado said.
The decision has been criticized by school officials who are in favour of COVID-19 preventative measures such as mask mandates and additional quarantining.
"This rule is likely to promote the spread of COVID-19 by preventing schools from implementing the common-sense masking and quarantine policies recommended by the vast majority of health care professionals, including those here in Alachua County," said Alachua County Public Schools superintendent Dr. Carlee Simon in a statement. "The State is, in fact, doubling down on policies that may ultimately put students, staff and the entire community at greater risk."
With the spread of the Delta variant driving a surge of cases as the new school year opened, schools in some states have faced difficulties balancing COVID-19 prevention with differing statewide orders.
Alachua County is among those in Florida whose school systems have come under fire from DeSantis for defying the state's ban on mask mandates.
"We will be reviewing the new rules and any notifications we receive from the State with our legal counsel and medical advisors. In the meantime, we will continue to follow the masking and quarantine policies currently in place in our schools," Simon said.
Regarding the quarantining of students exposed, recent research has found that regular COVID-19 testing of all students and staff in schools can catch positive cases that symptom-based testing may miss.
As many as nine in 10 cases among students and seven in 10 cases among staff may be missed by conventional reporting mechanisms, according to research published Wednesday in the journal JAMA Network Open.
For the study, students and staff in three schools in Omaha, Nebraska, participated in a weekly PCR-testing program between November 9 and December 11 last year. Over the study period, nearly 2,900 self-collected saliva samples from 458 staff and 315 students with no symptoms were tested.
Among those, 22 students and 24 staff members tested positive, a higher rate than those identified through symptom-based testing strategies, the researchers noted. The case rate was 7% among students and 5.3% among staff in the weekly testing program, compared to 1.2% among students and 2.1% among staff using conventional reporting mechanisms. Cases detected even exceeded the infection rates reported at the county level.
The researchers said that the differences in community-case rates and those among students and staff in the weekly testing program suggest that the strategy may help mitigate school-based transmission risk.
Bob Cole, legendary CBC broadcaster and former voice of Hockey Night in Canada, has died. He was 90.
New York's highest court on Thursday overturned Harvey Weinstein's 2020 rape conviction, reversing a landmark ruling of the #MeToo era in determining the trial judge improperly allowed women to testify about allegations against the ex-movie mogul that weren't part of the case.
Honda is set to build an electric vehicle battery plant next to its Alliston, Ont., assembly plant, which it is retooling to produce fully electric vehicles, all part of a $15-billion project that is expected to include up to $5 billion in public money.
MPP Sarah Jama was asked to leave the Legislative Assembly of Ontario by House Speaker Ted Arnott on Thursday for wearing a keffiyeh, a garment that is banned at Queen’s Park.
Researchers are working to better understand if some Canadian military veterans may be suffering from Chronic Traumatic Encephalopathy, also known as CTE -- a disorder previously found in the brains of professional football and hockey players after their death.
Residents of John D'Or Prairie, a community on the Little Red River Cree Nation in northern Alberta, were told to take shelter Thursday morning during a police operation.
During a special winner celebration near their hometown, Doug and Enid shared the story of how they discovered they were holding a Lotto Max ticket worth $70 million and how they kept this huge secret for so long.
A West Virginia father is getting some sense of closure after authorities found the remains of his young daughter and her mother following a deathbed confession from the man believed to have fatally shot them nearly two decades ago.
The first cargo ship passed through a newly opened deep-water channel in Baltimore on Thursday after being stuck in the harbor since the Francis Scott Key Bridge collapsed four weeks ago, halting most maritime traffic through the city's port.
Mounties in Nanaimo, B.C., say two late-night revellers are lucky their allegedly drunken antics weren't reported to police after security cameras captured the men trying to steal a heavy sign from a downtown business.
A property tax bill is perplexing a small townhouse community in Fergus, Ont.
When identical twin sisters Kim and Michelle Krezonoski were invited to compete against some of the world’s most elite female runners at last week’s Boston Marathon, they were in disbelief.
The giant stone statues guarding the Lions Gate Bridge have been dressed in custom Vancouver Canucks jerseys as the NHL playoffs get underway.
A local Oilers fan is hoping to see his team cut through the postseason, so he can cut his hair.
A family from Laval, Que. is looking for answers... and their father's body. He died on vacation in Cuba and authorities sent someone else's body back to Canada.
A former educational assistant is calling attention to the rising violence in Alberta's classrooms.
The federal government says its plan to increase taxes on capital gains is aimed at wealthy Canadians to achieve “tax fairness.”
At 6'8" and 350 pounds, there is nothing typical about UBC offensive lineman Giovanni Manu, who was born in Tonga and went to high school in Pitt Meadows.