HALIFAX -- As the number of global cases of COVID-19 continues to grow, it has governments and schools scrambling to keep parents and teachers informed ahead of group trips to Europe scheduled to start in a few weeks.
It's up to individual school groups and parents if they want to go abroad, but on Thursday night, the acting deputy minister of education and executive directors from the region's school boards met to discuss COVID-19 and European school trip concerns.
They decided the decision making process was good, but clarity was needed.
So on Friday, regional centres of education issued a letter to families, saying they're monitoring the situation, and are in close contact with health officials.
The letter advises families to go to government websites for the latest on COVID-19, which can help parents decide if they feel comfortable sending their kids on these trips or not.
However, the COVID-19 situation is evolving every day, so, officials say the regional centres for education do have the power to cancel these trips -- but will only cancel them if advised by health officials.
As for the travel company, EF Tours tells CTV News in an email that it's reaching out to every group that has planned travel to an impacted region to make sure they feel safe and supported. It goes on to say “after the increase in new cases reported in northern Italy, we decided to proactively reroute groups that were scheduled to travel to or near the quarantined towns and have taken the additional measure to not have overnight stays in Venice or Milan for the next month as we continue to monitor the impact.”
EF Tours couldn't comment on specific tours in the Maritimes, but say some groups are changing their itineraries, some are postponing -- like Moncton High -- but many are monitoring the situation.
Groups can also make changes to itineraries that include travel to an impacted region without penalty.
