VANCOUVER -- Island Health has added five schools to its list of COVID-19 exposures since Thursday.
There are now six recent exposures listed on the health authority's website, all of them occurring since schools returned from spring break on Monday, March 29.
The most recent exposures happened at Wellington Secondary and Nanaimo District Secondary schools in Nanaimo, Kwalikum Secondary School in Qualicum, Dunsmuir Middle School in Colwood and Cedar Hill Middle School in Saanich.
The Cedar Hill exposure happened on March 29, the Wellington Secondary exposure happened on March 29 and 30, and the exposures in the other three schools happened on March 29, 30 and 31.
An exposure at Oak Bay High School on March 30 was added to the list earlier in the week.
In a school setting in B.C., an "exposure" to COVID-19 is defined as the presence of a lab-confirmed case of the coronavirus in a school during the infected person's period of communicability.
Ahead of the return from spring break, Island Health sent a letter to school districts saying health officials expected "significant numbers" of exposures in schools, mirroring the recent rise in cases on Vancouver Island and across B.C.
