There are 70 people with COVID-19 in Lambton schools as two thirds of the schools in the region deal with the virus.

Statistics from Lambton Public Health, the Lambton-Kent District and the St. Clair District Catholic School Boards show there are now 24 of the county’s 36 elementary and secondary schools dealing with cases of COVID-19 – including now six schools in outbreak.

Confederation Central School in the rural part of Sarnia is the latest school outbreak declared by Lambton Public Health. Officials say five students there have tested positive.

There are five other schools in outbreak.

Brooke Central has seven people ill and the school has moved to online learning.

North Lambton Secondary School has also been declared an outbreak with the public board reporting 15 student cases and one teacher. That school is also closed for the week with students learning online. It was initially closed because the board couldn’t find enough substitute teachers to staff it.

Sarnia’s Holy Trinity is in outbreak with three people ill while both King George and Sacred Heart have two cases in their outbreaks.

Aside from the 70 students and teachers who have already tested positive, scores of students are home self isolating after exposure to the virus in the classroom. In many cases, entire classrooms are being sent home for two weeks after a student tests positive.

All those cases and people isolating has led to a surge in testing in Lambton County. Officials with the Rural Lambton COVID-19 Testing Centre says 191 people were tested in Wyoming, 141 people also received tests at a special clinic in Forest Wednesday on the heals of the outbreak at the high school there.

It was the busiest day ever for the rural testing unit, says Sarah Milner, executive director of the Central Lambton Family Health Team which runs the clinics with the North Lambton Family Health Team.

In all, Lambton Public Health reported another 28 people testing positive in the community Wednesday. There are 186 people actively ill. Twenty one more have recovered.

In Ontario today, the province recorded 1,554 new cases of COVID-19. The province has about 69 cases of the virus per 100,000 people. Lambton has 119 cases per 100,000 people with 3.3 per cent of the tests completed as positive. The province has an average positivity of 3.1 per cent today.