COVID-19

Thank you for your cooperation!

If everybody works together, we can run an excellent course where we’ll all learn a ton—while maintaining an acceptable level of risk for our staff, for you, for the other students, and for the local people in the region where your course will take place.

• All courses will take place outside (until October 2020) and have been adapted with screening and 2 metre physical distancing throughout (see details below.)
• If you have any symptoms prior to your course or you’ve had close contact with a COVID-19 positive individual, please notify us as soon as possible. Do not travel to the course site.
• If your age or existing medical conditions make you ‘high risk’, you should consider not participating, and instead, consider taking a course later in the year or next year.
• If you live with high risk individuals, you should consider not participating because of the risk to them if they get infected.
• We’ll ask that you read and sign a ‘COVID course participation agreement form’ which will document your consent to participate in the course. It states that you agree to adhere to our screening and transmission prevention guidelines (listed below).
• If you don’t follow the guidelines below, you’ll have to leave the course.

Please avoid going into any stores near the course location or on your way to or from the course.

Shop for groceries in your home neighbourhood, in advance of your course. Please bring everything you need with you to be self-sufficient.

NOTE: If you need to leave the course early or cancel because you screen positive, you’ll get a full credit to repeat the course anytime in the next 18 months.

Pre-course screening

Before your course, we’ll screen you as well as all of the other participants and instructors. Screening questions include:

• Have you had close contact in the last 14 days with any individual who has tested positive for COVID-19 or is presumptive positive for COVID-19?
• In the past 14 days, have you experienced:
  • • • Fever over 37.8°C / 100°F  ?
      • Persistent cough?
      • A loss of smell or taste?
• In the past 14 days, have you experienced new or worsening:
  • • • Sore throat, runny nose, nasal or sinus congestion?
      • Shortness of breath or difficulty breathing?
      • Fatigue?
      • Headache?
      • Muscle aches?
      • Confusion?
      • Nausea, vomiting or diarrhea?

If you screen ‘positive’, we’ll ask for further clarification, and we may ask that you get medical clearance before you can join the course.

First morning / upon arrival

When you arrive at the course for the first time, your instructor or Boreal River staff will screen you independently for symptoms and risk factors.

We’ll have an area dedicated for this, away from the main meeting area.

Any students who screen positive will be transferred to a later course.

Daily check-in

Each morning, we’ll have a ‘check-in’ before training begins.

Your temperature, pulse rate, respiratory effort, mental status, and general well being will be assessed. You’ll record these and keep track of your own vital signs.

If you have symptoms during the course

• Your course will take place outside (for courses until October 2020)
• We’ll maintain 2 metre distancing between people at all times. (People who live with each other don’t need to distance.)
• All participants and instructors will wear masks when within 5 metres of each other or 5 metres of any course equipment or building facilities—except for during on-water sessions (for whitewater rescue courses).
• Wash your hands before adjusting or removing your mask.
• Please arrive wearing a mask (and have a couple extra).
  • Your mask does not need to be medical grade, but needs to:
    • • have at least two layers of material with tight weave;
      • fully cover your nose, mouth, and chin.
• Practice wearing your mask and not touching your face in the days leading up to your course. These habits take some time to get used to—but you can do it!
• For on-water training sessions (river rescue courses only): for safety reasons, we won’t wear masks around the river but we will maintain physical distancing of 2 metres.
• All ‘public’ courses include mandatory pre-course online learning.
• We will supply outdoor hand-washing stations with soap and clean water.
• No sharing snacks or supplies, unless it is with somebody you live with.
• On courses with indoor bathroom facilities (example: Wilderness First Responder), we’ll maintain a cleaning schedule to disinfect all surfaces.
• All participants and instructors will wash their hands frequently with soap and water for at least 20 seconds.
• Please avoid touching your face (especially your eyes, nose, and mouth).
• If you need to sneeze or cough, cover your face with your upper arm.

• We will distribute equipment for each person to use for their own practice throughout the course, please don’t share this equipment.
• We will disinfect any group equipment that needs to be shared (example: CPR manikins on medical courses) in between users.

Your course InfoPack (you’ll get it once you register) includes a packing list.

In addition to the regular items, please also bring a drybag each day with your own:

• extra facemasks (non-surgical) which covers your nose, mouth, and chin
• mask container to keep your mask in during meal breaks (zip lock, Tupperware, or other reusable container)
• eye protection: this must be commercial eye protection with side guards. Prescription glasses alone are not safety eyewear. The eyewear must have side shields. Full face shields are also acceptable.
• thermometer: starting 3 days before your course, start taking your temperature once a day at the same time. Log these results and bring them as well as your thermometer to class
• hand sanitizer with 80% alcohol
• snacks and lunch
• water bottle (2 litres)
• coffee or tea thermos (optional 🙂 )
• sunscreen
• bug repellent and/or headnet
• bring enough clothing options and layers to be comfortable outside, regardless of the weather. For medical courses: please bring a change of clothes so if your clothes get wet early in the day, you can change and stay comfortable throughout the day.

For Wilderness First Aid and Wilderness First Responder courses, you’ll need to bring your own ‘hypo wrap’ and splinting materials*—you will be splinting yourself and homemade manikins (we’ll provide the manikins). Please bring:

• 1 small fleece or wool blanket for splint padding
• 3 old fleece or wool shirts for splint padding
• 1 insulate pad or Therm-a-rest style lightweight inflatable camping mattress
• Some cord, straps, or webbing —several 1 metre strands would work well
• We can use sticks for rigid splinting materials but if you have telescoping hiking poles, those work great
• 2 tarps (8’ x 10’ or bigger). Old tent flies can also work
• 1 sleeping bag
• Garbage bag
• Backpack or large drybag to fit this all in (let us know if you’d like to borrow one)

*Old outdoor supplies work great for training (splinting and hypo wrap practice). Please don’t feel like you need to go buy any of the above items for this course . If you don’t have one of these items, borrow from a friend. Please let us know if you need help sourcing something and we can help you out.

As you know, since the start of this pandemic, our understanding of best practices has been changing constantly.

Currently in Canada, things are generally improving to the point where we can run these courses, if we all adhere to the mitigation measures described above, within an acceptable level of risk.

We ask that you follow these guidelines as closely as you can—and adhere to your instructor’s requests with regards to safety.

If you don’t adhere to these safety guidelines—besides this being dangerous—it may cause stress and distraction for your classmates and instructor(s), which will detract from the learning, and you’ll have to leave the course.

It’s possible that in the weeks leading up to your course or during your course, new information comes to light or the situation changes—and the instructor or our office staff feels like we can no longer carry out the course within an acceptable level of risk.

If we need to suspend a course because of safety concerns related to the COVID-19 situation, we’ll reschedule the course, and all students will get a credit that they can use for any course of the same value, valid for 18 months.