Niagara Region Public Health has been given the go-ahead to hire about 16 nurses to help schools open as safely as possible next month.

Dr. Mustafa Hirji, acting medical officer of health for Niagara Region, said public health nurses are being hired immediately so they can be ready for several roles when school starts in less than three weeks.

“The most important role is, of course, working proactively with schools to prevent illness and infection,” Hirji said Wednesday as Niagara reported six new cases of COVID-19.

Hirji said the public health nurses will also be following up and working with schools if there are cases or outbreaks there.

It’s also expected they will help out in public health’s COVID-19 call centre answering any school-related questions that come up.

The province announced July 30 it will spend $50 million to hire up to 500 additional nurses in public health units to provide supports to schools and boards. The move is part of Ontario’s plan for reopening schools — which have been closed since March break due to the pandemic — for in-person classes in September.

Hirji said Niagara has been advised by the province that it will receive funding for about 16 full-time nurses and he’s hopeful the positions can be filled quickly.

During the pandemic, the public health unit increased its pool of casual nurses, some of whom were new graduates. They’ve been working part time on the COVID-19 info-line answering questions from the public and supporting the team that does case management contact tracing and managing outbreaks, to a lesser extent.

“We’re actually hoping that perhaps some of them will chose to become full-time nurses and work for us,” Hirji said.

The public health agency is advertising for the new positions through multiple channels.

The nurses will be engaged with all of Niagara’s elementary and secondary schools, of which District School Board of Niagara and Niagara Catholic District School Board alone have more than 150.

Hirji said public health is still determining how the nurses will be allocated and whether they will be assigned several schools each or if they will take a team approach.

The key part of what they’ll do is proactive work to prevent infections, he said. They’ll be going into schools, seeing how things are set up, observing where challenges are in keeping physical distances, ensuring children routinely use hand sanitizer and giving feedback and advice.

They’ll be training staff and students on everyday practices they can adopt to ensure they stay healthy and emphasize why it’s important for everyone to be practising the behaviours.

Hirji said the work builds on what public health is already doing in schools.

Niagara has a school program with nurses that follows the World Health Organization’s comprehensive school health model. Hirji said the basic idea is to try to make a school a place that’s going to promote health, both at the school itself and by building skills for the long term.

“This is really adding to the work we do with that model to add a stronger component of infection prevention,” he said.

“Staying safe from infections is part of that healthy school approach.”

Niagara has had 925 cases of COVID-19 since March 13. Of those, 822 people have recovered and at least 64 have died. There are 39 people currently sick with the virus.

Of the six new cases reported Wednesday, four were from contacts with previously known cases and two were from essential travel to the U.S.

A case reported on Tuesday that had an unknown source has also been linked to travel to the U.S.