CALGARY -- Rundle School and St. John XXIII School — both in Calgary's northeast — have been chosen for the rapid COVID-19 testing pilot program being done by the province.
Health Minister Tyler Shandro said 100,000 test kits have been made available to the schools for the program.
Rundle School is part of the Calgary Board of Education and serves students in Grades K-6 while St. John XXIII is part of the Calgary Catholic School District and has students from Grades K-9.
Education Minister Adriana LaGrange said testing teams will be set up at the schools to screen students and staff who do not have symptoms.
That will be done again a week later, followed by a third round a week after that.
"We are one of the first provinces to run such a trial on site at schools and offer testing to the entire school population during the school day," LaGrange said last week.
"This will make it easy for students and staff to get tested with little disruption to the school day as possible.”
Participation in the pilot program is voluntary.
The province is handing out about 500,000 rapid tests in total, with 325,000 going to the oil and gas sector, 76,000 to WestJet and 56,000 for workers in banking, telecommunications and transportation.
Rapid tests will also be available for workers at High River's Cargill meat processing plant.
Health Minister Tyler Shandro has previously said anyone who comes back with a positive result from a rapid test will still need to be tested using a regular PCR test.
Once complete, the school pilot program will provide Alberta Health with information about how it can be expanded to other schools in other areas of the province.
