Region of Waterloo Public Health is in the process of hiring around 20 new public health nurses.

Those nurses are being brought on to mainly assist in the region’s over 200 schools, with students set to return to class in the coming weeks.

“These nurses will be involved in things like assisting schools with infection prevention and control, case and contact management, outbreak management, and supporting the communication … engagement with parents, and with our healthcare partners.” Dr. Hsiu-Li Wang, the region’s Commissioner of Public Health and Emergency Services and Medical Officer of Health, said during a media briefing on Tuesday.

She also noted as with any place where people gather they expect to see COVID-19 cases, “But all the measures that the schools are diligently putting in place will help limit and control the spread of COVID-19.”

Those measures include daily screening for symptoms at home – for both students and staff, promptly isolating anyone who develops symptoms at school, physical distancing, and enhanced hand hygiene.

Dr. Wang adds anyone who has symptoms should stay home.

“We used to, in our culture, be strong, so to speak … go to work or school, even if we were not feeling well. We need to really change our mindset as we live with COVID … it’s better for us, all of our community, if we actually do not try and tough it through. If we on the other hand have a low bar for deciding, ‘No, we’re not going to go to work or school’ … because we could have something and spread it to others. So if we have any potential concern about that, we should stay at home, and seek testing.”

Public health continues to work with the local school boards to help them implement the Ministry of Education’s return to school plan.

Funding for the new nurses is being provided by the province.

On Monday, the Waterloo Region District School Board unanimously passed a motion, requiring every student to wear a mask.

The original directive from the province only covered students in grades four through 12.