VANCOUVER -- A day after adding three schools to its list of COVID-19 exposures, Island Health added three more on Sunday.
The latest additions to the list are Glanford Middle School in Saanich, Edward Milne Community School in Sooke and Fairview Elementary School in Nanaimo.
The exposures at Glanford and Edward Milne happened on April 7, while the exposure at Fairview happened on April 9.
As of Sunday, there have been COVID-19 exposures at 18 different schools on Vancouver Island in the last two weeks.
Before schools returned from spring break, Island Health warned that rising numbers of infections in the community would likely lead to "significant numbers" of exposures in the region.
An exposure is defined as "the presence of lab confirmed COVID-19 case(s) in the school during the period of communicability," according to Island Health.
B.C.'s recent surge in COVID-19 cases, coupled with the growing number of exposures on Vancouver Island, have led teachers to call for more remote learning, rather than in-classroom instruction.
Concerned parents have also taken matters into their own hands, keeping children home from schools that have had multiple exposures.
At Colwood's Dunsmuir Middle School, where a "cluster" of cases has been detected, one-third of the school stayed home Tuesday and Wednesday.
Similarly, at Saanich’s Cedar Hill Middle School, which has also seen a cluster of cases in recent days, 40 per cent of the students weren’t at school Tuesday and 38 per cent were absent Wednesday.
