When Betty Zou and a group of concerned parents in East Toronto hatched a plan to create arapid testing program at their children’s school, they never imagined they would soon be providing tutorials and sharing “how to” documents with families in communities across Canada.
“We were approached by Health Canada and the region of Waterloo and the province of Ontario basically to try to roll out rapid testing to workplaces and so we decided to start a pilot initiative in Waterloo region to support workplaces,” explained Sarah Mostowich, the program lead at StaySafe.3 east-end Toronto schools have confirmed cases of COVID-19: public health
The parent-led program at Earl Beatty Junior and Senior Public School began with around 60 students, but within just two weeks has ballooned to include more than half the student population. “We want the kids to be in school. We don’t want to see outbreaks at schools, cases at schools. We want to keep them safe,” she said.