Covid rise - when to withdraw from day care?

[Anonymous]

It is a personal choice. There is no right or wrong answer. Sometimes that is just the way it is...

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:Now. Outbreaks galore in this area's preschools.

Have there been? Seeing the numbers aren’t great . .

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:We have three kids, one in preschool/daycare, and the older two in a distance learning hub in their school building. All three will keep going to these places until they’re forced to shut down. DH and I don’t go anywhere aside from occasional trips to the grocery store, we both work FT, and our kids need childcare.

Daycares don’t drive COVID transmission. Neither do small groups of older kids, wearing masks, and spaced apart appropriately.

I'm sure they don't drive in large numbers, but I know two people who got covid from their kids in day care earlier this year, so I would like to see local numbers. I'm not alarmist, I'm a parent who needs my day care open, but I want to have a clear and informed view of risk in December, not July.

My child was positive but asymptomatic. DH and I caught it from him. We were positive with mild symptoms (now fully recovered). We're both working from home and had no outside contact other than through DS in daycare.

I’m sorry but when parents say “ no outside contact other than through DS in daycare” as a way to say to say it’s not the family fault, I immediately become skeptical. You have met been just in your house for the past eight months. There are grocery store visits, gas station stops, a friend of yours or cousin or relative has stopped over, a contractor to do plumbing maybe, even a large package delivery. It doesn’t have to just be daycare. BTW how many other kids in his class got it? I just don’t believe parents who say they literally have stayed in their homes for the past eight months and never left. Hard to do that with kids and holidays.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote: It doesn’t have to just be daycare. BTW how many other kids in his class got it? I just don’t believe parents who say they literally have stayed in their homes for the past eight months and never left. Hard to do that with kids and holidays.

We regularly go 2+ weeks literally not stepping foot inside a building other than the daycare drop off. We do not have people inside our house. You can be careful / wear gloves at the gas station. Outdoor transmission is unlikely - we stay away from strangers. We obviously have deliveries (packages & grocery) but if we get COVID, it will almost surely be from daycare. (At least until I get to a phase of my job where I occasionally will have to go in to meet my responsibilities.) The way I see it, daycare is my one thing, and since we are taking that risk, we minimize all others. Daycare is more essential than having a contractor in my home or shopping in person for my grocery.

To the point of this thread: We pulled our kid from daycare when the daily new cases went above 25 per 100k, on a steep upward trajectory. This was also because they will close for the holidays soon anyway, so keeping the kid home an extra 1.5 weeks before closure seemed worth it. I would possibly send him back when cases are something like 30 per 100k if they trajectory seems to be confidently downward. Or, if numbers are still pretty high after the holidays with no signs of dropping, we'll likely re-evaluate our risk position. We can take some extra vacation around the holidays and juggle WFH without childcare for a stint, but it is just not possible to do indefinitely

[Anonymous]

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Anonymous wrote:I just wanted to say that if you are sending your child to daycare (and no judgment from me if you are -- I get it), you need to behave as though there could be an outbreak at your daycare any day.

I say this because I know a family that contracted Covid from their daycare right before Thanksgiving and almost certainly gave it to their family on Thanksgiving before realizing they had it. Their daycare followed every safety protocol you can imagine -- masks, temp checks, no one allowed in with any symptoms at all, etc. But a teacher tested positive the day before Thanksgiving and by the time people were contacted, multiple families already had symptoms and now there are more than 10 positives, plus more people who have symptoms but have not yet tested positive.

I don't know if daycares are a major source of spread in general. But if Covid gets into a daycare, there is every possibility that it will spread. Who knows -- maybe the teacher who got it was a super spreader, or maybe she got it from an asymptomatic child who was a super spreader. Maybe there is some lapse in their safety measures that hasn't occurred to anyone yet. Who knows? But the point is, if your kid is in daycare (or private school), your family is exposed to many other families and you need to behave accordingly. Act as you would if you were working in an ER or going to work in a grocery store every day. Don't visit elderly relatives, don't take other risks.

Just be smart about it.

Right. I know of a daycare where a class is currently shut down while awaiting test results for one family with Covid symptoms- which has now taken over a week with still no results! So I guess the bright spot is that if it does come back positive they'll already be over halfway through a 14-day quarantine, but it puts a lot of families in a bind because one family was careless. With the testing so slow right now, the results are almost meaningless.

Wow, you’re judgmental.
On another note...our daycare doesn’t quarantine a class until AFTER a positive is confirmed (i.e., not while awaiting results). Supposedly, they follow the advice of the health department (VA). Is this not standard practice?
We have had 4 confirmed cases in 7 months...all teachers, no kids.

That’s what I was about to ask- obviously the child who has taken a test needs to quarantine until they get a test result (family members too). But why would a class quarantine without a confirmed positive case?

Yeah it's weird to close while you are awaiting results, unless they were experiencing couch, fever, and shortness of breath. Like it was obviously covid. But if we closed every time we were waiting for results, we would never be open. My daughters friends mom works at NIH and it tested every week....because she can.

Our center (in MD) also doesn't close while awaiting results, although I suppose if they had a child or staff member with very specific symptoms (loss of sense of smell/taste, cough, fever) they might. But for a kid with a runny nose awaiting test results? No. They follow MSDE health department guidelines and communicate promptly any changes in policy based on those.

We're pretty strict otherwise because we can be: WFH, only other indoor place is groceries once/week, didn't see local family for Thanksgiving. I'd be... not happy if other parents at our center were regularly going out to eat or to the gym or other risky places.

I think it depends on the center's interpretation of the guidance and who they get on the line from the health dept when they ask questions. There was a class at our daycare that was quarantined for a week while a kid awaited test results- turns out that the child was negative. They had classic cold symptoms- sore throat and runny nose, but that met the two symptom criteria in the MSDE's decision tree to warrant testing. That guidance also recommends that any close contacts isolate until the person gets test results- so the class was interpreted as "close contacts" and sent home. Most of those kids were tested too and had (negative) results before the child in question got theirs back.

It's tricky because I think the delayed turnaround in results around Thanksgiving is having a chilling effect on testing and notification- the family did the right thing in notifying the center, but no one wants to get a class shut down for a week over a cold!