UPDATED: N.S. students who travel internationally on March Break must self-isolate for 14 days

Update, March 13, 2020: Today the N.S. government announced that students and children in daycare who leave Canada must go into self-isolation for 14 days after they return. This reverses comments made on March 11 by Education Minister Zach Churchill.

The new rulealso applies to all N.S. public sector workers. More details are available here.

The text below is the old story from March 11:

If a student is feeling well after travelling abroad over March Break, Nova Scotia's education minister says that student can come back to class.

Zach Churchill made the comments on Wednesday following news that neighbouring New Brunswick is advising families to keep students at home for two weeksif they have travelled internationallyover COVID-19 concerns.

"We're taking the advice of the chief medical officer and his advice right now, is that anyone coming back who is symptomatic self-isolate and not show up," Churchill told reporters.

March Break runs from March 16 to 20 this year.

Churchill said a mandatory quarantine is not on the table at the moment.

"We're actually looking at the attendance policy. We don't want to discourage anybody from staying home, so we're actually looking at potentially not having the attendance impact if that's the case," he said.

No COVID-19 cases in Nova Scotia

While the World Health Organization declared COVID-19 a pandemic, as of Wednesday, March 11, there have been no confirmed cases of it in Nova Scotia.

In Canada, the federal government is advising people to avoid all cruise ship travel because of COVID-19.

As of today, the following destinations have travel health notices for COVID-19:China, France, Germany, Hong Kong, Iran, Italy, Japan, Singapore, South Korea and Spain.