ONTARIO – Premier Doug Ford has announced that students across the province will remain at home with online learning after they finish their Spring Break this week due to the COVID-19 pandemic.
“I can’t stress this enough. We’re at a critical point right now. Many of our health indicators continue to surpass the worst case scenario,” said Premier Ford.
Ford stressed that spread of the virus was primarily in communities, and not in schools.
“The problem is not in our schools, it is in our community, and bringing our kids back to a congregate setting in schools, after a week off in our community, is not a risk I am willing to take, because we know the more COVID spreads in our community, the more likely it will spread in our schools and that will create massive problems down the road,” he explained.
Ford stated that he hoped that this measure, as well as the province wide lockdown and stay-at-home order would give the government more time to distribute the COVID-19 vaccine to a larger percentage of the populace.
The Premier did not give a specific timeline for a return to the classroom.
“We will keep a constant eye on the data to determine when we can get kids back in the classrooms,” he said.
The province of Ontario saw more than 4,000 new cases of COVID-19 on Monday, April 12, and over the previous seven days, the province had added more new COVID-19 cases than Quebec, Alberta, and BC combined.
