The province has launched a COVID-19 school status map that will show outbreaks in K-12 schools.

During a press conference on Wednesday, Dr. Deena Hinshaw says to date, Alberta Health Services has confirmed 16 cases of COVID-19 that were present at 16 different schools while infectious.

Hinshaw acknowledges that other sites are reporting higher numbers, but that they are striving to help parents best understand the risk of exposure that their children face.

"In a school context, there is risk for students and staff only when an infectious person has been present that they may have come in contact with," says Hinshaw. "The best way to assess the safety of schools is to track and monitor the number of cases in schools where an infectious case was present, as well as schools where transmission has happened on that site. Other numbers are not relevant to school transmission risk and simply cause confusion and anxiety."

Hinshaw says mandatory notification is in place for all school cases.

"All parents, students, and staff who are part of a school community where an infectious case is identified have been receiving, and will continue to receive an alert directly from the school whenever one of these situations is identified," she says. "There are times when a school sends out an alert before the public health investigation is complete, and so some of these alerts may in fact go out before we understand that there was no infectious case in the school. This can cause a discrepancy in our numbers."

The new interactive map, which can be found HERE, will help parents track where there may be a risk in schools.

"The map will list every school where there have been two or more cases in a school setting within a 14 day period where disease could have been acquired or transmitted in the school. So far, none of the 16 schools that AHS has reported to us have met that threshold," Hinshaw says.

According to the online map, there are no school outbreaks reported in the Grande Prairie Region.