The Windsor-Essex County Health Unit hasn't made any decisions to this point on whether school boards can make the change back to regular semesters sooner than the initial government announcement.
Last week, the province announced they will allow high schools to shift back to regular semesters come February, and potentially sooner if they have their local public health unit's support.
Acting medical officer of health, Dr. Shanker Nesathurai, says they meet with the school boards at least once a week and know that managing the public health component is a joint responsibility between both sides.
"Right now the burden of COVID-19 is still pretty significant in schools in Windsor Essex. It's still significant in the community and Windsor Essex has suffered disproportionately as it relates to school related cases and school related closures. All of those things will weigh in our decision making, but I have not made any firm recommendations up to this point," he said.
From the public health service's perspective, the most important thing is to keep schools open for instruction according to Dr. Nesathurai.
He says that means having kids in schools learning from their teachers.
"We know that young people have suffered disproportionately because of school closures and classroom dismissals. We've dismissed about 450 cohorts of young people to date, and if you think there's probably 20 people in a cohort then it's 9000 children. 9000 children have been affected by COVID-19 exposures in schools."
Dr. Nesathurai says by going from two classes to four classes you will also increase the number of people that are potentially exposed.
He says you may improve the education, which is clearly improved by having more classes, but the consequence of that risk benefit decision is that you may end up dismissing more children from schools.
"That's sort of the policy choice, policy decision making. The one thing that would modulate this is if we had 95-97 per cent of vaccinations in schools. Because when we get to that level of vaccination then one can re-evaluate what public health measures you need even if a case breaches into a school. We're far from that," he stated.
Dr. Nesathurai says that's just one more factor for parents to consider when deciding to vaccinate their children, something he recommends.
Numerous school boards have requested the move away from "modified semesters," which saw students take four courses each term, alternating which two classes they had each week.