Three-quarters of schools have no cases in past three weeks

THREE quarters of schools in Wales have had no coronavirus cases in the past three weeks.

Most of those affected have seen only single cases.

Education Minister Kirsty Williams said that children are more likely to have their schooling disrupted in areas of Wales with higher transmission rates.

“Over the last three weeks, 1,152 of our schools had no cases. That’s 74% of our schools with no cases at all during October,” she said.

“Where there have been cases – the vast majority of those have been a single case. And we have around 10% where there’s been two or more cases.”

Separate data given to the Evening Post from Public Health show that since schools reopened fulltime to all pupils last month 36% have reported coronavirus cases.

The figures from Public Health Wales show that from September 1 to October 21 there were 1,281 reports of new Covid-19 cases across 572 schools; 588 cases in staff and 693 in pupils. From a total of 1,580 schools across Wales, this represents 36.2 % of schools that have had a Covid-19 case.

Of those affected since September 1,305 schools have had only one case. And in the past week there have been 277 cases of coronavirus in staff or pupils.

Public Health Wales data for colleges show that from September 1 to October 21 there were 200 reports of new Covid-19 cases across 17 colleges and 42 campuses.

Pupils and students are more likely to be sent home and have their learning disrupted in areas of higher transmission, warned the Education Minister as Wales prepared to begin the national “firebreak” lockdown to coincide with half-term.