Day-care center Kovid-19 transmission, very low risk for study

The research has broad implications for the US economy, with parents who depend on daycare centers and childcare workers. More than a third of child-care centers in the country closed between March and July, according to the advocacy group Child Care Aware.

A June survey by the National Association for the Education of Young Children found that child-care center enrollment fell 33% nationwide and 70% of providers reported that parents told them they were comfortable sending children back to daycare Were not.

“For parents, it can be a little cold rest, because they are worried about their special child,” Dr. Walter Gilliam, a child psychologist at Yale and lead author of the study, published Wednesday in Pediatrics. “But it is clear that child care is not a threat to communities.”

The risk of infection for child care professionals appears to be comparable to the broader population. The Yale study sought to control for factors such as the level of infection of the community at each center, as well as the gender, age, and ethnicity of the providers.

“It does not appear that working in child care spreads Kovid-19,” Dr. Gilliam said. “It is true that many child care providers became ill. Many of them also went to the hospital. But it was not the contact with the children in childcare that seems to be the source of that infection. ”

The research progresses by stating that Kovid-19 transmissions to young children are not key vectors in a broadcast, a physician at Boston Hospital, Dr. Kristin Moffitt and is a professor of pediatrics at Harvard Medical School.

Scientists are not sure that children under 10 are less likely to spread the virus, but some theories include a small viral load in their airways, small fluid droplets being expelled when they cough or sneeze. , Or simply young children become closer on the ground and thus adults are less likely to transmit particles into the airways. Most day-care centers visit by the age of 5 or 6 years.

The outbreak was higher among high-school and college students, scientists believe, because they are more independent than younger children and interact more with peers.

Dr. Moffitt said, “You think Dinkar will be hot, but they are not and this study is consistent with that.” “The younger the population age, the more they contribute to transmission.”

The Yale study “provides a very important window into an important subject” and was conducted with a concrete methodology, Renee Boynton-Jarrett, Professor of Pediatrics at Boston University School of Medicine. Both are dr. Moffitt and Boynton-Jarrett read previously published copies of the study, although neither were involved in its peer-reviewed process.

Dr. Boynton-Jarrett warned that the Yale study does not indicate that children in daydream are immune to the disease, although most research suggests that adults suffer from more intense bouts of Kovid-19 than most children. According to the US Center for Disease Control and Prevention, 296 children under 14 died of infection on October 7, or 0.14% of total US deaths.

Survey responses to the study indicated that it was rigorously observed in most professional childcare centers such as wearing masks, washing hands, and contact tracing, the author noted. The study noted that all daycare programs have lower transmission rates, but fewer adults in home-care child care programs.

The Olive Treehouse Group, a network of three private preschools in Brooklyn, NY with a total capacity of 90 children, closed its doors between March 13 and July 22. During that time, parents permanently pulled 25 students from schools and the group lost 40% of the year’s revenue, its executive director Ashlee Sobel said.

Ms Sobel said that many parents used to send their children to school, who were concerned about the uncertainty caused by various state and local orders and to reopen and modify the service in schools and childcare centers Ordered. Many of these parents pulled their children from childcare.

Last week, the New York government declared Andrew Kyomo essential services to child care centers and said he would not be ordered to close again. The move has prompted parents to return, Ms. Sobel said, and the Yale report will come as good news for them.

“Some families wanted to return to normalcy as quickly as possible, but many of them feared a second wave and a second shutdown,” Ms. Sobel said.

Some parents, such as Tzur Frenkel, an engineer who lives in Pittsburgh, have already adjusted to the new normal and are unlikely to be swayed by new research.

In March, the daycare at a nearby synagogue served as Mr. Two of Frenkel’s children attended, then children aged 5 and 3 closed their doors. The children are still at home, even though most of the city’s child-care centers have reopened, and the family has struggled to re-organize their schedules around child-care needs.

Mr. Frenell’s wife, who is a pharmaceutical researcher, is pregnant – considered a high-risk case by public health officials for Kovid-19 – and she worries that a child of hers could bring the infection home from daycare.

“We didn’t want to take any chances,” Mr. Frenkel said. “We decided it’s not worth the risk, even though the daycare has a lot of benefits.”

Write Robbie Wrestler at [email protected]