TORONTO -- A Thorncliffe Park early learning school has been ordered to close for a week as the investigation continues into the more than two dozen COVID-19 cases found at an adjoining elementary school.

Toronto District School Board tweeted Sunday night that Fraser Mustard Early Learning Academy will be closed to students and staff until Dec. 14.

It is to “allow TPH time to finish investigating & conduct additional COVID-19 testing,” the TDSB said.

According to the TDSB dashboard, as of Friday, there are seven active cases of COViD-19 at the academy, which has 23 kindergarten classes and houses a child-care centre.

The early learning school is located adjacent to Thorncliffe Park Public School, where 26 cases among students and staff members were uncovered last week following asymptomatic testing.

The cases prompted the East York elementary school to close until Wednesday.

The Ontario government adjusted its COVID-19 testing guidance for school staff and students in Toronto, York Region, Peel Region and Ottawa to allow voluntary asymptomatic testing.

The testing pilot is in place for four weeks and will let health officials better track how the virus is spreading in and around schools.

Three teachers at the school walked off the job Thursday last week due to the ongoing outbreak.

Thorncliffe Park is one of the neighbourhoods in the GTA that has been hardest hit by the pandemic.

Last week, Education Minister Stephen Lecce suggested the data indicate that transmission in the Thorncliffe Park community is far worse than what was discovered within the school.

“The principal within this school has communicated that the positivity rate compared from the community to the school is quite vast. In the community, it is roughly 16 per cent positivity, whereas in the school it is roughly four per cent,” Lecce said in response to the situation at the Toronto elementary school.

“There is a four time increase of transmission happening in the community, notwithstanding that those schools are right at the heart of those neighbourhoods.”

It should be noted that the 16 per cent positivity found recently in the wider neighbourhood reflects cases found among all those with symptoms and close contacts of previously identified cases, whereas the four per cent positivity found inside the school reflects a near complete profile of everyone who regularly sets foot in the building.

- with files from Codi Wilson