A COVID-19 outbreak has been declared at Ursuline College Chatham Catholic Secondary School.
The health unit in Chatham-Kent declared the outbreak on Thursday and reported it on Friday morning. There are two student cases at the school and one class has been sent home. Chatham-Kent Medical Officer of Health Dr. David Colby said the second case is in the same cohort as the previous case, but no additional students or staff are required to isolate as a result of this second case. Currently, there's one classroom in isolation.
This is the fifth school outbreak reported in Chatham-Kent during the 13 month pandemic. They have all been small and lasted a short amount of time.
On Friday, Chatham-Kent Public Health also reported the outbreak at Meadow Park Nursing Home in Chatham has been declared over. The outbreak at Hudson Manor Retirement Home in Tilbury continues with three cases, as do the three workplace outbreaks. The workplace outbreaks have a total of four cases.
There were 15 new cases reported and five cases resolved to bring the total number of active cases up to 66. The number of people who have had a variant of concern has also jumped to 85, five with the U.K. variant and 80 with a related mutation that are under genomic analysis to identify the variant. The number of deaths linked to the virus remains at 12 and the number of local residents in the Chatham hospital stayed at two.
As of Friday morning, St. Ursula Catholic School had a new student case and a classroom closed. Wallaceburg District Secondary School also had two new student cases and A. A. Wright Public School in Wallaceburg had one new student case.
Meantime, Jeff Moco of Chatham-Kent Public Health reported just over 2,000 vaccination appointments were booked on Wednesday during the first day of the new COVID-19 vaccine online registration portal called Get Your Shot CK.ca.