For the week of March 8th, students at St. John Paul II Catholic School will be learning from home.
In an email sent to parents on Thursday, Principal Julia Corcoran says the transition is to help stop the spread of Covid-19 in the school. The email states that all classes will be online for every student, and will follow the process put in place by their teachers.
According to the latest data from Alberta Health, SPJII remains under COVID-19 outbreak status, with more than 10 positive cases of the virus confirmed in people associated with the school. Last weekend, the school reported as many as 170 people linked to the school were isolating following four confirmed cases.
A COVID-19 outbreak has also been issued for Swanavon School in Grande Prairie. The school, which was placed under COVID-19 alert designation on February 26th, was moved up into the outbreak category on Thursday.
There has been some other COVID-19 related movement in other Grande Prairie area schools over the last 24 hours. Aspen Grove School has moved into the 10+ case outbreak category, up from the 5 to 9 confirmed case category. Meanwhile, Hillcrest Christian School, which had instituted in-home learning in February after a 10+ case outbreak declaration, has been removed from the alert list entirely.
In total, there are seven Grande Prairie area schools with COVID-19 outbreaks and 10 with alerts, meaning between two and four cases.