Toronto school asks entire kindergarten class to self-isolate after COVID-19 diagnosis

Twenty-four children at a Toronto elementary school are self-isolating this week after a staff member was found to have tested positive for COVID-19.

Swansea Junior and Senior Public School, located just south of Bloor Street and west of High Park, has about 650 students in total.

All of the kids in one of the school's seven kindergarten classes have been in quarantine since Sept. 18, according to Cp24, under the direction of Toronto Public Health.

The Toronto District School Board (TDSB) says that no students have yet tested positive for the highly-contagious coronavirus, and that the kindergarten classroom has been disinfected.

According to TDSB's website, the school remains open.

A total of 210 cases of COVID-19 have now been reported at publicly-funded schools in Ontario (115 in the GTA), 31 of them on Thursday alone. Of those cases, 101 are students, 40 are staff and 69 are listed as "not identified."

Two schools of the 178 affected to date are currently closed. Of the 178 schools with cases of COVID-19, 107 are in the GTA.

While the provincial government maintains that its back-to-school plans are among the best in the country,  parents and teachers are understandably nervous as new cases of COVID-19 begin to surge again.

Ontario saw its highest number of new cases since early May on Tuesday with 478 more infections confirmed. On Wednesday, the number of new patients dropped to 335, with the majority of all infections still coming from people under the age of 40.

The province's Ministry of Health recently launched a school and childcare centre-specific coronavirus tracking website to provide "a summary of COVID-19 activity in publicly-funded Ontario schools" for those who want to keep tabs on how fast the virus is spreading among kids attending classes in person.

by Lauren O'Neil via blogTO