Ontario reported another 227 COVID-19 cases tied to its publicly-funded schools on Thursday, with the total since early September now exceeding 9,000 cases.
The Ministry of Health says 198 of Thursday’s cases involve students and 24 involve staff, with the associations of another five cases not known.
The province says 884 of its 4,844 publicly funded schools have at least one active case of COVID-19 and 13 are closed due to outbreaks or other operational reasons.
Additionally, York Region Public Health has shut down two private religious schools in Vaughan due to COVID-19 outbreaks.
Officials say Eitz Chaim School – Springfarm Branch and Netivot HaTorah Day School and Child Care in Vaughan are closed after a total of 42 COVID-19 cases were found between them.
COVID-19 cases tied to public schools made up 24 per cent of all known active cases in the province on Thursday.
Across the rest of the Greater Toronto and Hamilton Area, there are now 1,119 active cases of COVID-19 tied to schools, up from 1,051 yesterday and less than 900 one week ago.
At least 228 class cohorts have been sent home, and four schools are closed.
There have now been 9,111 cases of COVID-19 detected in Ontario public schools this school year.
At this point in the 2020 school year, there had been 6,076 lab-confirmed COVID-19 cases detected in public schools.
Earlier on Thursday, the province’s COVID-19 Science Advisory Table recommended mass asymptomatic surveillance testing using rapid tests for public school students in regions experiencing moderate or worse spread of infection.
The Ford government is preparing to send every public school pupil home with five rapid antigen tests for the winter holiday break in a bid to prevent reintroduction of infectious students when school resumes in January.
