What Parents Should Know About Coronavirus as Kids Return to Babysitters, Day Cares and Camps
You never planned on raising kids during a pandemic, and there are no easy decisions. ProPublica scoured the latest research and talked to seven infectious disease and public health experts to help think through the issues facing parents.
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Reopening states after the COVID-19 lockdown raises unnerving questions for working parents who depend on some form of child care, from nannies to day camp.
Instead of coming home with a snotty nose, is your child going to bring back the coronavirus? And how do you know your in-home babysitter or nanny, even your child’s teacher, isn’t a symptom-free spreader?
The short answer is that there are no easy answers. Every family’s budget and needs and risk tolerance are going to be different. ProPublica scoured the latest research and talked to seven infectious disease and public health experts to help think through the issues facing parents.
We were surprised to find the experts were reassuring. In fact, with the proper precautions and monitoring in place, most of them thought parents could safely rely on caregivers, day care centers and perhaps even counselors at sleep-away camp.
There’s also a hopeful nugget of information out of New Jersey. We called the state’s Department of Health to see if COVID-19 had been spreading within the child care centers that had opened April 1 to serve children of essential workers. There have been no reports of outbreaks of two or more cases, an official said.
“That’s more than interesting, it’s absolutely entrancing!” said Dr. William Schaffner, a professor and infectious disease specialist at the Vanderbilt University CONTINUE READING: What Parents Should Know About Coronavirus as Kids Return to Babysitters, Day Cares and Camps — ProPublica