VANCOUVER -- Three more schools on Vancouver Island have had exposures to COVID-19.
Island Health posted notifications about the exposures on its website Saturday.
The latest additions to the list are Colquitz Middle School and Frank Hobbs Elementary School in Saanich and Drinkwater Elementary School in Duncan.
The exposure at Colquitz happened on Tuesday, April 6, while the exposure at Frank Hobbs happened on Wednesday, April 7.
Drinkwater's exposures happened on April 6, 7 and 8, according to the health authority.
Island health says that in a school setting, an "exposure" is defined as "the presence of lab-confirmed COVID-19 case(s) in the school during the period of communicability."
There are currently 15 schools listed on the health authority's website that have seen cases of COVID-19 in the last 14 days.
Two of the schools listed - Dunsmuir Middle School in Colwood and Cedar Hill Middle School in Saanich - had clusters, rather than exposures.
Island Health says a cluster is defined as "two or more confirmed cases within a 14-day period, with evidence of transmission occurring within the school."
Before students returned from spring break on March 29, the health authority warned parents and teachers that "significant numbers" of exposures were likely in Island schools as coronavirus cases in the community surge.
The growing prevalence of variants of concern and the higher-than-ever daily case counts B.C. has been seeing in recent weeks have prompted teachers to renew their calls for more remote-learning options.
