The number of active cases of COVID-19 associated with Ontario’s public schools has surpassed 1,000 for the first time in weeks.
The Ministry of Education says that there were another 86 new school-related cases of the virus confirmed over a 24-hour period ending Friday afternoon, up from 85 during the same time-period last week.
The number of active cases associated with Ontario’s public schools now stands at 1,006.
That is up nearly 10 per cent from this time last week when there were 918 active cases linked to schools. It is also the first time since Oct. 29 that the number has been above 1,000.
The recent increase in cases among school-aged children and educational staff comes amid a steeper rise in infections in the broader community.
In fact over the last week Ontario’s active caseload has risen by more than 23 per cent, outpacing the increase within public schools.
Speaking with reporters following an appearance on Monday morning, Mayor John Tory said that the increase in cases is concerning but he said that the city will remain focused on boosting vaccination rates as its first, second and third priority.
To that end, he said that he is hopeful that Health Canada will soon approve the COVID-19 vaccine for use in children aged five to 11, paving the way for the launch of a major campaign to vaccinate school-aged children.
“We had hoped that the approvals would be forthcoming in time for us to have some fairly sort of large and widespread activities by even as early as next week,” he said. “We now understand that it is coming fairly soon, it won't be very long thereafter. So I am hopeful that by, say, the beginning of the month that we'll be able to get underway.”
The number of school-related cases of COVID-19 had steadily declined throughout October but now appears to be on the rise again.
Today marks the third consecutive day in which the number of new cases exceeded the total number of lab-confirmed infections from the previous week.
There are currently four schools closed within the Greater Toronto and Hamilton Area (GTHA) due to COVID-19 outbreaks. Peel Public Health ordered EEC René Lamoureux in Mississauga to close today after a 10th case was confirmed at the school. All students will move to remote learning until at least Friday.There are also at least 125 individual classroom cohorts self isolating in the GTHA, up from 98 one week prior.
That number, however, is likely an underrepresentation of how many kids have actually been switched to remote learning as a number of major boards don’t publicly post the data.
Meanwhile, the total number of school-related cases confirmed since the beginning of the school year now stands at 5,626. At this point during the 2020-2021 school year there had only been 3,387 confirmed cases among students and educational staff.
