MONTREAL -- Quebec's school children could see their school's sports activities return to normal in two weeks time, if the province's COVID-19 numbers remain stable.
On Friday, Premier Francois Legault announced the first phase, which went into effect upon the resumption of classes, that allowed kids to take part in sports and artistic activities solely with other children in their classroom “bubble.”
But Legault promised that unless there is a significant increase in COVID-19 cases, sports and arts will return to normal on Sep. 14.
“If everything goes well, we'll bring back sports, but if kids from the same class want to play sports, they can do so as of today,” he said.
Legault acknowledged that the return to class, which took place in the French system on Thursday, comes with risks, but said the risk is lower than that of keeping children at home. He noted the importance of sports and art to children's physical and mental health.
“We have a major challenge facing us in the next few days. We have close to 1 million kids going back to school, so we have to be careful,” he said. “Some parents are scared about the situation so what we decided as a first step is to keep kids within one classroom, including for sports and arts. If everything is going well and we don't have a major increase in the number of cases, we'll restart sports and arts for more than one classroom.”
Legault also acknowledged the situation at Polyvalente Deux-Montagnes, where 20 teachers have self-isolated following two positive COVID-19 tests.
“When we have a case where we have 20 teachers in quarantine, of course it has an impact on our children,” he said. “But it's a very small number compared to the million children going back to school.”
