1) More evidence is emerging that Quebec’s latest #pandemic restrictions may be failing to break the second wave of #COVID19 cases. In this thread, I will return to the subject of the growing number of workplace outbreaks and transmission of the virus in reopened schools.
2) Nearly three weeks after Quebec ordered the closing of non-essential businesses — but not manufacturing — the number of #COVID19 outbreaks in the workplace jumped by 55 in the past two days to 633. One would have expected such outbreaks to start declining by now.
3) Meanwhile, elementary schools reopened on Monday. Yet already, schools are shuttering classrooms due to #COVID19 exposure, up by 19 Thursday for a total of 33 across the province. What’s more, 134 more students and staff have tested positive for the #coronavirus. See below. 
4) For two days in a row, the number of #COVID19 cases has risen in Montreal, with 811 more infections confirmed on Thursday. The city’s #pandemic positivity rate stands at 13.7%, and its seven-day rolling average is still an alarmingly high at 43.85 cases per 100,000 residents.
5) At the neighborhood level, the borough of Saint-Léonard — which has posted the highest #COVID19 positivity rate in the city at 23.1% — reported the greatest number of cases in the past two days: 177. But there are also many new cases in the former hot spot of Montreal North.
6) All these cases are sadly generating more and more #COVID19 hospitalizations, at least 744 in Montreal. Across the province, 1,523 people have been hospitalized. Quebec has set another grim record in both the first or second waves, with 230 intensive-care stays. See below.
7) As you can glimpse from the chart below by the Institut nationale de santé publique du Québec, it’s not just people in their 80s who are being hospitalized. Seventy-one people under the age of 40 who are being treated for #COVID19, including as many as a dozen children.
8) Despite these high numbers, Quebec’s Education Minister, Jean-François Roberge, has refused to allow air purifiers in overcrowded classrooms. Belatedly, Quebec reversed course on Thursday, agreeing to use the rapid #COVID19 tests that have been sitting in a warehouse.
9) However, the government will not be using these rapid tests widely, but rather in isolated regions that include Indigenous communities. The Health Ministry has not decided whether to use them in schools beyond two Montreal high schools in a pilot project.
10) Finally, Montreal added nearly two dozen #COVID19 fatalities Thursday to a death toll that has reached 4,023. Again, for context only, the city of Paris counted 12 more fatalities for a death toll of 2,782. End of thread. Please everyone, limit your social contacts.
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