Publicly-funded schools in Ontario have seen an increase in the daily number of new COVID-19 cases.
The provincial government released numbers on Tuesday showing 121 new cases of the virus in schools across the province; 75 cases are school-related student cases, 22 cases are school-related staff cases and an additional 24 cases are unidentified individuals.
In the last 14 days, there have been 793 cases reported in Ontario schools; 508 schools have at least one confirmed cases of COVID-19.
Infectious disease expert Dr. Anna Banerji said the number of new cases in schools will likely continue to increase in the coming days and weeks.
“I think kids are getting infected and getting exposed to the virus and there will be an escalation of the virus in the next little while but at a certain point in time it will stop,” she said.
“At a certain point in time a lot of the kids in school will either have had it with symptoms or minimal symptoms or hopefully not major symptoms, and there will be enough immunity within the schools that we can just go on with the school year and you just hope that this hasn’t led to too much community spread.”
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On Tuesday, Ontario reported 821 new cases of the novel coronavirus, bringing the provincial total to 65,896.
It marked the second highest case count ever recorded, with the highest on Oct. 9 with 939 cases.
According to Tuesday’s provincial report, 327 new cases were recorded in Toronto, 136 in Peel Region, 79 in Ottawa, 64 in York Region, 46 in Halton Region and 36 in Hamilton.
All other public health units in Ontario reported under 35 new cases.
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