Growing calls to make COVID-19 testing available to child-care settings

There are growing calls to make COVID-19 tests available to daycare children and staff. Parents say the lack of access is creating heighten worry and anxiety at home.

Christie Cowan is a mother of three and she says it was a tough decision to send her three-year-old son back to daycare. “I wouldn’t say that (daycares) are unsafe, but I don’t foresee them being open for very long.”

Cowan says, with staffing shortages and kids required to isolate for five days, daycares may not have enough staff to remain open and may need to close temporarily.

The province announced last week that PCR testing for COVID-19 would be limited to high-risk groups- meaning if a child or staff member is showing symptoms, they won’t be able to book a test. The Ministry of Education has also made the decision to stop reporting cases in schools and child-care settings due to "changes to case and contact management."

Cowan says, “They have really ignored daycare in all this. They have been focusing on schools, and staffing, but they have forgotten about daycares. We weren’t given rapid tests for the kids over the holidays; they don’t have the PCR tests like the schools were going to have for us to be able to test them, so I feel like they are a population that has been left out.”

She says, “Now I have no idea if it is a cold or COVID. I worry about the staff getting sick because that also means they have to isolate for five days, and there is only so much staff in these daycare centres.”

Cowan and her husband can’t work from home and says with three kids, the potential to isolate often will be a burden on their family. Not knowing if her child has COVID-19 means outside support like grandparents or relatives may not be able to come help with childcare needs.

“Now that we don’t have testing, meaning I am not sure if he has COVID or not, I have to assume that it is and it wouldn’t be responsible for me to bring my older parents into my home. I foresee a lot of sick calls or emergency leave days because I will have to be the sole provider for my son because when he is sick I can’t ask anyone for help.”

Tiny Hoppers Daycare in Findlay Creek says the lack of access to testing is creating challenges.

Chantal Thomas runs the daycare and says there is a drop in attendance this week. “We have had multiple parents who didn’t bring their child in just to see how the week plays out. (They are a) little bit scared with the unknown.”

Thomas says the biggest impact on daycares have been lack of testing available. “We are no longer able to have testing available to our children or staff members, therefore this is the reason behind parents not bringing in their children, because they are scared of what could potentially happen with no testing.”

She says many kids will have to be sent home often if they show any symptoms. “Basically, sending kids home if they are showing any symptoms of COVID and having to isolate for five days is also frustrating. As parents, we know children have running noses throughout the winter and they can also have a cough with that, so a lot of parents are like ‘what is this going to look like in the coming weeks?’”

Also adding to the impact is staff members needing to stay home to isolate. “We have some staff that have children at home that can’t go to school as well.”

Thomas says the centre is also waiting for N95 masks from the province as well as HEPA filters.

Speaking to reporters Tuesday, Ottawa's medical officer of health Dr. Vera Etches said Omicron has changed the pandemic.

"Omicron has really changed how we approach this. We're no longer looking to find every person who's positive with a test and count and contain," she said. "Child care, right now, they're not in the provincial list of priorities for testing and so the limited supply of rapid antigen tests that we have is not there to be distributed to child care settings." 

Etches encourages daily monitoring for symptoms and staying home when sick to reduce transmission of the virus.

A statement to CTV News attributed to the Minster of Education says, “To support frontline workers and their families, our government is once again providing them with free emergency child care for school-aged children to allow these workers to continue performing these critical jobs. Our government has elevated our safety protocols in child care, including stricter screening and deploying unfitted N95 masks to support frontline workers as we take action to protect families from COVID-19. The Chief Medical Officer of Health believes that these measures will ensure child care remains as safe as possible for children and staff.”