Positive Cases of COVID-19 at St. Patrick's Catholic Elementary School

Friday, 19 March 2021 at 09:42

Seven cases of COVID-19 have been reported at St. Patrick's Catholic Elementary School in Woodstock.

WOODSTOCK - Another Catholic school in Woodstock is feeling the impacts of COVID-19.

The London District Catholic School Board is reporting seven cases of COVID-19 at St. Patrick's Catholic Elementary. The school remains open at this time.

The school board is also reporting four cases of the virus at St. Michael's Catholic Elementary School. An outbreak has been declared and the school has been closed for a week now.

Officials have confirmed two variants of concern within the St. Michael's school community and all students and staff members have been told to quarantine for two weeks.

Communications Intern with the LDCSB Laura Lefaize explains why St. Michaels has been closed and St. Patrick's is not.

"With St. Michaels we found that the amount of close contacts was greater, so the best decision in the end was to just close the school because after we reviewed all the close contacts with the Health Unit, it didn't leave any classes left at the school. So for safety reasons it was in the best interest to have the school closed and the Health Unit determined that for us."

The first case at St. Pats was discovered on March 12th and the last one was on March 18th and 7 positive cases have been identified in that time.

Communications Manager with Southwestern Public Health Megan Cornwell explains how a case is determined in a school community.

"In order for a case to be considered a school case the individual needs to have been in attendance at school during their period of infectiousness. While it is possible that a visitor could be deemed a school case because they were in the school while infectious this would be relatively unlikely as schools are restricting the number of visitors. So if a parents was in the school while infectious, this would be the case. But generally school community means students, teachers, staff or contractors who might be in the building while infectious."

You can find a list of all COVID-19 cases within the LDCSB online here.