Five new Covid-19 outbreaks linked to schools, data shows 

In the three weeks prior to these changes, 199 outbreaks in schools involving more than 900 cases were recorded by public health teams. File photo: Larry Cummins

Five new Covid-19 outbreaks were recorded in schools last week, involving 32 confirmed linked cases, new figures from the HSE's Health Protection Surveillance Centre (HPSC) show.

This compares to 11 the week prior, involving 90 confirmed linked cases, and 15 the week before, involving 80 linked cases. Towards the end of September, changes to the contact tracing policy stopped the testing and tracing of asymptomatic close contacts in children under the age of 12.