Toronto private school suspends in-class learning after reporting 12 COVID-19 cases

A Toronto private school has suspended in-class learning until next week after 12 COVID-19 cases were confirmed in the last month.

On Tuesday, Upper Canada College said in a statement to Daily Hive that they continue “to carefully follow the advice and guidance of government agencies and public health officials to mitigate the spread of COVID-19 and protect the health and the wellbeing of our students, employees and broader community.”

The school is working with Toronto Public Health (TPH) to investigate positive COVID-19 cases at UCC — there have been 12 cases detected since February 25, and have six reported in the last six days.

However, the all-male private school says there have been no confirmed cases of COVID-19 within the school as a result of transmission at UCC, “nor has TPH recommended closing UCC for [an] outbreak or any other reason.”

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“As a precautionary measure to safeguard students, employees and the broader community, UCC has taken the voluntary decision to move to a remote learning schedule until next week. The school has also encouraged students, families and employees to consider participating in a voluntary testing program facilitated by the Hospital for Sick Children,” the statement said.

The school has implemented various measures which include: daily screening, masking compliance, physical distancing in class and on campus, community reporting of COVID-19 cases, contact tracing, scheduling of all parts of the school day, enhanced ventilation and sanitization, reduced class sizes, a hybrid model of in-person and remote learning for upper school students, and offered full at-home learning with their continuous learning plan.

Because UCC is a private school, it is not included in the province’s daily school COVID-19 cases count.

As of March 15, 17.8% of schools are reporting a case of the virus, meaning 840 out of 4,828 public schools.

Since schools reopened in September 2020, there have been a total of 10,052 reported COVID-19 cases out of over two million public school students.