More than 100 cases of coronavirus have now been confirmed in Leicester schools since they returned for the new term earlier this month.
Latest figures from Leicester City Council have revealed 65 students and 42 members of school staff have tested positive for Covid-19.
Those cases were identified in 46 of the 112 schools across the city.
The city council’s strategic director of education and social care Martin Samuels said most of the schools affected had experienced isolated cases but he told councillors ‘a couple of schools’ has seen local outbreaks of ten or more cases though he did not name them.
He also said one school had had to close but he did not say which one.
Mr Samuels said: “What we are spotting are cases that are picked up in the community and our arrangements in schools are spotting those individuals before there is transmission within the school.
““That is credit to the amazing work that is being done by schools so the systems are working well so we are not, other than a couple of unusual incidents, essentially we are not seeing outbreaks in schools.
“The systems are working very well but it is a lot of pressure on schools to keep it that way.”
More than 1,000 pupils across the city have been told to go home and self isolate for a period of two weeks after contact with someone who tested positive in a school but Mr Samuels said work was being done with Public Health England to try to keep that number to a minimum.
He added: “Again it’s a very vigorous process to try to protect the wider setting and it is putting pressure on schools.”
He said children were less likely than adults to contract and spread the virus and pointed out that only 17 of them had been admitted to hospital with Covid-19 in Leicester since the start of the pandemic.
No under 18 with the virus has died in the city so far.
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Mr Samuels said attendance in the city had fallen from 91 per cent, of the 57,000 school-age pupils in Leicester at the end of the first week of term to 79 per cent now.
He said that fall off had been replicated across the country but had been slightly steeper here which he believed was because of the local restrictions imposed on the city.
