BARRIE, ONT. -- It's been a little more than a month since the province released its plan for the safe reopening of Ontario's schools, and still, many questions remain unanswered.

CTV's Madison Erhardt spoke with Associate Medical Officer of Health for Simcoe Muskoka, Dr. Lisa Simon, about the health unit's role in supporting our schools.

Madison: What happens if there is a COVID-19 positive test in a Simcoe County school?

Dr. Simon: If there is a positive test result, then the health unit would be made aware of it. We would follow up with the individual and their family to make sure that they knew to be self-isolating and provide them with any additional guidance.

At the same time, we would talk both with the family and with the school about who that individual may have been exposed to in a school setting or in other settings during the time that they were contagious.

Madison: Is it different for elementary school and high school?

Dr. Simon: The process is the same either for elementary or for high school.

The main difference might be that in high school, you are allowed to have a larger number of students who you come in contact with.

You can have up to 100 in high school, whereas it's 50 in elementary school. With that said, though, for most high schools in Simcoe Muskoka, the way the timetables work, there is only one class per week, and so that will limit the number of individuals they are in contact with.

Madison: What questions have you been getting most from parents, teachers and students?

Dr. Simon: A common one is what are the requirements around screening closer to school and what to do with the result of your screening test.

So in that regard, I can't emphasize enough the importance of every student, staff, parent and essential visitor completing the screening processes before they come into school each day. That's really going to be one of our key ways of keeping COVID out of our schools.

Madison: What would cause the health unit to shut a whole school down? How many positive cases would there have to be in a school?

Dr. Simon: The potential to shut down an entire school, which is referred to as dismal of an entire school, would really be considered if there was evidence of widespread COVID transmission.

For example, if there were multiple classes where there were one or more cases, and it wasn't clear that the situation could be contained just by managing the situation in one class or another, there may be the need to shut down an entire school to break those chains of transmission and then bring back classes one by one.

However, I think that's not going to be a common scenario. I think it's much more likely that we will see a few cases here and there just like we see in the community now.

There may be the odd outbreak that we hope will be contained, and public health will be helping to manage that quickly.