Wishaw school has highest Covid case rate

A Wishaw school registered the highest Covid-19 outbreak numbers across schools in Scotland according to official records.

St Aidan’s High School recorded 110 pupils infected in August of last year according to Public Health Scotland.

Two other Lanarkshire schools were named in the top 10. St Maurice’s High in Cumbernauld had the fifth highest outbreak with 91 infections in August last year while Uddingston Grammar was ninth in the table with 81 infections in September 2021.The Freedom of Information request by the Daily Record found that almost 300,000 school children tested positive for COVID since the virus outbreak.

The top 100 outbreaks were included in the FOI which featured 18 outbreaks at high schools in both North and South Lanarkshire .

Several schools featured on the list twice including St Aidan’s in Wishaw, St Maurice’s in

Cumbernauld, Uddingston Grammar and Duncanrigg High in East Kilbride.

Other schools included in the top 100 were Calderglen High and St Andrew’s and St Bride’s in East Kilbride, Stonelaw High in Rutherglen, Coatbridge High, Trinity High in Rutherglen, St Ambrose High in Coatbridge and Cardinal Newman High School in Bellshill. Public Health Scotland said there were 825,420 pupils registered in Scotland across these past two years, meaning over one in three children in Scotland has been infected. The data up to April 6, 2022, does not specify where the infection was acquired, or whether pupils were present in school at any point in their illness.

The FOI also revealed that there were a whopping 6491 occasions when a school in Scotland had a COVID outbreak, involving more than 10 pupils. These 6491 outbreaks occurred in 1308 individual schools in the country.