Eight Richmond schools have been flagged for COVID-19 exposures since students returned from spring break.
District superintendent Scott Robinson said exposures have been up in Richmond since the two-week break like in other school districts.
“That’s obviously a reflection of what’s happening in the community around Metro Vancouver,” Robinson told the Richmond Community COVID-19 Task Force on Tuesday.
The number of COVID-19 cases, including new variants, has been rising in the province over the past couple weeks.
According to Vancouver Coastal Health’s online list of school exposures – updated Tuesday – there were exposures on March 29 at Henry Anderson elementary, James McKinney elementary and Sea Island elementary.
Meanwhile, there were exposures on March 29 to 30 at McMath secondary, McRoberts secondary, Steveston-London secondary and Whiteside elementary.
There was also an exposure at Hugh Boyd secondary on March 29 to 31 and on April 1.
An exposure occurs when someone with COVID-19 is present in the school during their infectious period, according to VCH, which states that “in the vast majority of cases, there is no transmission in the school setting.”
Robinson once again reiterated that there have been no known transmissions of COVID-19 in Richmond schools since September.
Richmond reported 208 new cases for the week of March 24 to 30.
Meanwhile, on Monday, B.C. health officials reported that there were 4,040 new cases of the virus over the Easter long weekend, including 1,018 cases from April 1 to 2, 1,072 cases from April 2 to 3, 999 cases from April 3 to 4 and 890 cases from April 4 to 5.
In B.C., 588 of the total 8,490 active COVID-19 cases are variants of concern.
According to the B.C. School COVID Tracker, there have been 4,448 exposures in 1,103 B.C. schools, as of Monday. Of those exposures, 65 have been variants of concern.
- With files from Maria Rantanen
