Quebec says 70 schools now have cases of COVID-19, 50 others pending validation

COVID-19 infections at Quebec schools soaring Two weeks after schools began to reopen, there are at least 70 government-confirmed cases among them.

MONTREAL — After updating its running list, Quebec is reporting 118 cases of COVID-19 at 70 of its schools across the province.

Quebec Education Minister Jean-Francois Roberge said during a press conference late Tuesday morning that Quebec has confirmed cases at 70 schools and that 50 others are in "the process of being validated."

The first public tally published on Friday counted 47 educational institutions that reported cases among employees or students up until Sept. 3. The new total of 70, which appears to have been made public on Tuesday, includes schools that submitted reports on Sept. 4.

Two schools added to the list in Quebec’s latest update are in the Monteregie region, one of which is a high school and the other, an elementary. Another two have been added in the Laval region, both of which are elementary schools (see the list below).

Quebec decided to make its list of schools with COVID-19 cases publicly available following criticism from parents who said they deserved to know, one of which went so far as to create his own informal list in the interim.

Measured up against his own data, the father who made the list, Olivier Drouin, claimed on Friday that Quebec's first tally lacked dozens of schools.

“As of now we've tallied over 80 cases,” he said at the time. “That's 80 schools that have at least one case of COVID.”

Quebec's count on Tuesday inched toward that number, but Drouin's list counted 114 schools at the time. On Wednesday, the number of institutions on Drouin's list reached 192.

Drouin said parents across the province have sent him official letters from their children's schools confirming at least one case of COVID-19 at the institution -- many of which are not on the government list.

The discrepancy may be due to a lag in data.

Quebec Health Minister Christian Dube said on Friday that the number of schools with confirmed cases needs to be contextualized alongside the thousands of institutions across the province.

See the government list below: