COVID-19 outbreak declared in Cambridge elementary school cohort

Grade one teacher Heidi Dimou arranges the desks in line with physical distancing policy in her class in preparation for the new school year at the Willingdon Elementary School in Montreal, on Wednesday, August 26, 2020. THE CANADIAN PRESS/Paul Chiasson

KITCHENER — A COVID-19 outbreak has been declared in a cohort at Hillcrest Public School in Cambridge.

The Waterloo Region District School Board announced the outbreak on Thursday after a staff member there had tested positive for the disease.

According to a news release, the staff member was in the same cohort as a student case that was reported on Dec. 13. That student was last in the building on Dec. 7, the school board said.

Two other staff members have been identified and asked to self-isolate, but so far no other Hillcrest Public School students have had to do so.

Since Sunday, there have been 21 cases of COVID-19 reported in the region's public school board. You can track every local case in publicly funded schools using our online COVID-19 tracker.

According to the region's online COVID-19 dashboard, the region has seen 175 cases in kids under 10 and 400 cases in people between the ages of 10 and 19.

There have been more than 4,600 cases of COVID-19 in the region since the pandemic began.