COVID-19: Ottawa Public Health Declares First School Outbreak of the Quarter – Ottawa | The Canadian News

Ottawa Public Health says an elementary school on the local French Catholic board is facing an outbreak of COVID-19, the first school in the city to face an outbreak since children returned to the classroom this year.

Two students tested positive for the new coronavirus at the École elementaire catholique de la Découverte in Orleans, according to OPH’s COVID-19 panel.

Outbreaks in schools are declared when two people have tested positive in the environment within a two-week period, at least one of whom was likely exposed to the virus in the classroom.

All high-risk contacts in the class were asked to isolate themselves after the exposure, according to an OPH spokesperson, who told Global News on Monday that the school remains open despite the outbreak.

Ontario’s COVID-19 reporting system has not been updated since July to reflect the new cases in schools across the province.

There are currently six active outbreaks in other child care settings, such as camps and daycare centers in Ottawa, and two other outbreaks affect a warehouse and a religious setting in the city.

The OPH reported 52 new COVID-19 cases locally on Monday, up from 61 cases on Sunday and 75 cases on Saturday.

There are currently 408 active cases of the virus in the city.

The positivity rate of the coronavirus in Ottawa is 3.6% during the last week.

There have been no new COVID-19-related deaths in the city since Friday, which marked the first local death in the pandemic in more than two months.

The OPH dashboard shows that there are currently seven people in the hospital locally with COVID-19, one of whom is in the intensive care unit.

On the vaccination front, about 81 percent of eligible Ottawa residents have now received two doses of the COVID-19 vaccine, while 87 percent have received at least one injection.

See link »