Coronavirus cases in schools and FE colleges are falling in every health board area across Wales.
Latest Public Health Wales figures out on Friday show that 2,687 new Covid cases were reported in schools in the six days to November 24 compared with 3,605 the week before and 3,363 the week before that.
A further 190 cases were reported in FE colleges, 28 fewer than the week before. As with last week most of the schools cases were in primaries.
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Just two of Wales' 22 councils, Torfaen and Anglesey , reported a rise in Covid cases in their schools - all other 20 saw cases fall.
Cardiff , Wales' largest education authority, reported the most schools cases with 255, a fall on 399 the previous week.
Rhondda Cynon Taf was second highest with 226 but that was 96 fewer than the week before.
Ceredigion had the least schools cases reporting just 28.
In the six days to November 24 1,660 Covid cases were reported in primary schools down on 2,255 the previous week.
In the same period secondaries reported 770 cases, down from 1,026.
A total 257 Covid cases were reported in “other schools”, which includes independent, special and middle schools and pupil referral units. That was a fall of 67 on the previous before.
Reporting the figures, PHW said cases were highest among those aged five to 11.
At the same time there has been a slight fall in attendance. According to separate Welsh Government figures:
- An average of 88.2% of pupils attended school in the week to November 19, down slightly from 89.1% the week before.
- 1.6% of pupils were absent due to a known Covid-related reason between November 15 and 19.
- An average of 1.8% of all primary pupils and 1.4% of all secondary pupils were absent due to a known Covid-related reason in the same period.
- Amongst statutory school age pupils the percentage attending was highest for pupils in Year 7 (90%) and lowest for pupils in key GCSE Year 11 (87%).
- The most common reason for sessions missed was illness. Covid is included in this category but not separated out.
Since September 2020 there have been 59,720 reports of new Covid cases across 1,519 schools in Wales; 12,844 cases in staff and 46,876 in pupils. From a total of 1,573 schools this represents 96.6 % of schools that have had a Covid-19 case. A total 37 schools have only had one case since the pandemic began.
Releasing the data, PHW repeated that there may be a lag in results and that cases reported in schools and colleges don’t mean infection necessarily happened there.
“Linkage between a case and a school does not mean that the cases were in school at the date of the test, nor that transmission occurred in school,” the report said.
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