Omicron suspected, not confirmed, at St. Boniface daycare

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This article was published 13/12/2021 (1011 days ago), so information in it may no longer be current.

A St. Boniface daycare that had warned parents an omicron COVID-19 case had been detected at its site has learned provincial officials only suspect the highly contagious variant, but haven’t confirmed it yet.

The confusion relates to how Manitoba reports confirmed and suspected cases of highly contagious variants, which it ceased doing last month.

Little Voyageurs Learning Centre is set to reopen Wednesday after it chose to close Dec. 5 upon learning two people with COVID-19 had attended the daycare during the period when they might have been contagious.

Manitoba officials say the daycare has complied with all public health rules, and director Lisa Nemetchek sent parents regular updates with as much information she felt she could share without identifying who had COVID-19.

“I’m treading very carefully. Nobody has ill intent here,” she said Tuesday.

On Dec. 11, Nemetchek says a public health official told her one child’s case at the daycare’s École Provencher site involved the omicron variant. She asked if she could pass that along to parents, and did so in an email, she said.

Manitoba hadn’t added to its count of five omicron cases since Dec. 8, raising questions as to whether there was a three-day delay in contact tracing.

That was clarified Monday, when officials informed Nemetchek they were still conducting sequencing on the virus — meaning the province suspected it was an omicron case, but was waiting for full confirmation.

Parents were confused as to whether the province had dropped the ball on contact tracing, or whether the daycare had delayed informing parents. In fact, both bodies decided to be proactive in the face of the new variant.

Unlike other provinces, Manitoba only reports variant cases once genetic sequencing has confirmed the variant, which takes days to complete.

Before that, provinces screen for possible variants, which involves testing all positive samples for a particular gene which, if not present, is flagged as a likely variant and sent for full sequencing.

Public Health Ontario publishes a daily report that shows how many cases of each variant have been confirmed, and which ones have been flagged as likely variant cases, to be sequenced. Alberta posts regular updates with similar data.

Manitoba does not share that information, but public health officials do inform sites of a possible variant case, such as the St. Boniface daycare.

“While we are still learning about the implications of the omicron variant, Manitoba is performing significant contact investigations to delay the spread of this variant in the province,” a spokesperson wrote on Tuesday.

The province would not say how many presumptive omicron cases had been found during screening, and are awaiting sequencing results.

Nor would officials say what precise technology was used to screen samples. They would not reveal how long it takes to sequence a suspected omicron sample.

Manitoba Health stopped reporting the number of variants just as omicron surfaced in Canada.

A Nov. 26 notice on the province’s open data website says “Manitoba will no longer publicly report variants of concern online, or results to public health” because 98 per cent of cases involved the delta variant and so “there is no longer any clinical implications when this information is received.”

Manitoba Health will continue listing confirmed variant cases in its daily bulletins, it said, but has no planto revive the data site, which in the past indicated how many cases of each variant remained active and how many cases had recovered.

The department also wouldn’t say whether it’s tracking that data internally.

“As we are seeing in other jurisdictions, once community spread of omicron occurs, it quickly overtakes delta as the dominant variant,” the spokesperson wrote.

“Manitoba will continue to report confirmed cases of omicron while the number of cases remains low, however, as the percentage of omicron cases increases, the public reporting of omicron will stop as all cases will be managed the same.”

dylan.robertson@freepress.mb.ca