Last week, a total of 2,384 students and staff underwent testing for Covid-19 at 147 schools around the country. Through the testing, 31 people, or 1.3% of the total were found to have the Covid-19.
‘Covid-19 schools mass testing report’ has published these data on the website of the Health Protection Surveillance Centre.
According to the Health Service Executive, the reports with detail on numbers in schools will now be published on a weekly basis.
21,130 is the latest figure. After the reopening of schools, tests were done in 789 schools. The test was carried out to all students and staffs.
As a result of school testing, the total number of cases detected became 501. Which is an overall positivity rate of 2.4%.
Last week almost 625 children who tested positive for the virus were under the age of 18. Out of these, 116 were under the age of four, 241 were aged between four and 12, whereas 268 were between the ages of 13 and 18.
The public health authorities detected that majority of the virus clusters were seen in private homes.
The overwhelming majority of clusters of the virus being detected by public health authorities are linked to private homes.
A cluster is where two or more cases are discovered in a setting. So a child is far more likely to be deemed a close contact and require testing as a result of connections at home rather than school.
Since the reopening of the schools, 8,439 children have tested positive for the virus and this brought the total number of recorded positive cases among children to 9,670.
Also last week, 658 children and workers were tested in 38 childcare facilities, and nine cases were detected.