Fifteen Ontario public schools are now closed due to COVID-19 outbreaks
Fifteen of Ontario’s public schools are now closed due to COVID-19 spread – the highest number of school closures seen in the province to date this year, with the number of closures now exceeding what occurred at this point in the 2020 school year.
The Ministry of Education says 170 new cases of COVID-19 were detected in the past 24 hours, including 154 in students, 13 in staff and three in people whose association to school was not disclosed.
Five additional schools closed in the past 24 hours, bringing the total number of schools closed to 15.
On this date last year, only four of the province’s 4,844 publicly funded schools were closed due to COVID-19 outbreaks.
The school system did not see double-digit school closure numbers in the 2020 school year until Dec. 7 and did not exceed 15 closures until Dec. 14.
Nearly 14 per cent of all Ontario schools are now dealing with at least one active case of COVID-19.
There are now 1,397 active cases in public schools, up more than 22 per cent from one week ago.
The increase in Ontario’s active caseload over the same time period was only 14 per cent, suggesting that schools are increasingly being tied to higher case counts compared to the broader community.
The first few dozen children under the age of 12 received pediatric doses of the Pfizer-BioNTech COVID-19 vaccine from Tuesday to Wednesday, with more than 90,000 appointments for children booked across Ontario over the next few weeks.
Education Minister Stephen Lecce said the recent increases in COVID-19 transmission tied to schools is manageable, saying “eight in nine” elementary schools in the province do not have an active case of COVID-19.
“We’re taking nothing for granted, we’ve stepped up the testing by design, we know that winter months can mean higher cases, and we are being very cautious on the way forward,” he said, referring to recent decisions to make in-school assemblies virtual and adjusting high school lunch timing as examples of his prudence.
Schools across the Greater Toronto and Hamilton Area reported 672 active cases of COVID-19 among students and staff on Wednesday, 20 more than Tuesday and 45 more than one week ago.
At least 128 class cohorts in the GTHA are at home self isolating and three schools – Grenoble Public School in Toronto’s Flemingdon Park area, Micheline-Saint-Cyr Elementary School in Etobicoke, and Nativity of Our Lord Catholic School in Etobicoke – are closed.
CTVNews.ca Top Stories
For the first time in report's history, Canada's air quality worse than U.S.
Air quality in Canada is now worse than in the U.S., according to the 6th Annual World Air Quality Report. Of the 15 most polluted cities in the two countries, 14 were in Canada.
A newspaper says video of Prince William and Kate should halt royal rumour mill. That's a tall order
Prince William and his wife Catherine have been filmed at a farm shop near their Windsor home, The Sun newspaper reported -- the first footage of Kate since she had abdominal surgery for an unspecified condition two months ago.
WATCH LIVE As former prime minister Mulroney lies in state, public tributes in Ottawa begin
Members of the public who wish to pay tribute to Brian Mulroney can visit his casket in Ottawa starting this afternoon.
BREAKING Roy McMurtry, former Ontario attorney general, dies at 91
CTV News has confirmed that former Ontario attorney general Roy McMurtry has died.
Hertz CEO out following electric car 'horror show'
The company, which announced in January it was selling 20,000 of the electric vehicles in its fleet, or about a third of the EVs it owned, is now replacing the CEO who helped build up that fleet, giving it the company’s fifth boss in just four years.
'You ask for your money, they disappear': Ontario man loses $17K to AI crypto scam
A Toronto man is spreading the word of a cryptocurrency scam that lures victims using AI-generated news sites after he lost $17,000 in investments.
DEVELOPING Canada's annual inflation rate ticked down to 2.8 per cent in February, defying expectations
Statistics Canada says the annual inflation rate edged down to 2.8 per cent in February.
High thoughts: The habits of Canadian cannabis users are revealed in a new StatCan report
Statistics Canada has conducted a series of surveys to measure the impacts of legalized cannabis since the Cannabis Act took effect in 2018. The latest one, the 2023 National Cannabis Survey, sheds light on users' preferences and habits last year.
Demand soars for solar eclipse glasses in Canada. Are they worth buying?
The demand for total solar eclipse glasses used to safely view the rare celestial event has been ramping up as sellers, along with astronomy and eye-care experts in Canada, warn that viewing the eclipse with the naked eye is dangerous.