TORONTO – Covid-19 infections in Ontario schools have skyrocketed to over 8000 – 8,095 to be precise. As well as in the whole community, even in schools the cases of the dreaded virus are constantly increasing: according to the latest data reported on the website of the Ontario government last Friday, within the last twenty-four years the new infections have stood at 172 of which 152 have affected students while the schools with at least one case of Covid-19 have been 792, those closed since last week’s peak of 16 have dropped to 9.

And tomorrow to open its doors will also be the French school of Etobicoke Micheline Saint-Cyr Elementary that on November 24 due to an outbreak of Covid transferred all its students to distance learning and the McMurrich Junior Public School which is located near St. Clair and Oakwood Avenue and which is closed from November 29. Micheline-Saint-Cyr elementary school students are asked to continue screening for Covid-19 symptoms, and rapid antigen tests are offered as an “additional protective factor”.

But while for some schools it is time to welcome children back into the classrooms for face-to-face lessons, for others it is time to close due to the presence of Covid outbreaks: from today, on the advice of Toronto Public Health, students attending St. Pius X Catholic School, Our Lady of Sorrow and Blessed Pier Giorgio Frassati Catholic School will remain at home in which at least two have been identified cases of viruses.

“We are investigating carefully and following the usual process in the school community to notify close contacts,” TPH said.

And tomorrow the online lessons will also be followed by the children who attend the Eitz Chaim – Viewmount Branch, located just south of Bathurst Street and Glencairn Avenue.

To advise, following an investigation regarding the presence of cases of Covid-19, to close the school is the Toronto Public Health. Without any scaremongering but also without taking the situation lightly – especially at a time when the highly contagious South African variant Omicron is spreading – the Toronto health unit calls for maximum caution. “We recommend that the entire school stay at home as a precautionary measure to protect staff, students and the community from further transmission of Covid-19 within the institution,” the TPH tweeted.

Meanwhile, the effort to vaccinate school-age children continues across the board with the hope that this will eventually help ensure that we can continue with face-to-face study in the coming months.

On Friday, the city of Toronto announced that it had administered the first doses to more than 32,000 children between the ages of five and 11, meaning it was able to vaccinate about 16 percent of the 200,000 children now eligible to be immunized after Health Canada’s green light.

There are also thousands of bookings for the coming weeks at the city’s five mass vaccination clinics.