Child-care advocates warning 3rd wave daycare closures inevitable

Parents of school-aged children have already learned, they’ll be juggling working from home, and supervising online learning next week as schools are ordered closed amid the third wave of COVID-19 infections in Ontario.

But pre-schools and daycare centres still remain open, prompting concerns for the safety of both children and staff with community spread at a pandemic high.

Advocates are warning it is just a matter of time before all daycares and child-care settings are forced to shut down. They say that staff in child-care setting need to prioritized in the vaccine rollout in order for daycares of safely operate.

Amy O’Neil, the director of Treetop Children’s Centre in Toronto, tells the CBC that the rate of spread will force centres to close. She says her daycare was already shut down by Toronto Public Health (TPH) and they have decided not to reopen until staff can be vaccinated and schools reopen for in-person learning.

Child-care centres in the province reopened last June after closing during the first wave. According to the CBC, 510 centres and homes in Ontario have been forced to close since then and about a quarter of the closures have occurred in the past 14 days.

According to provincial data there have been nearly 4,300 COVID-19 cases from child-care settings since the start of the pandemic and over 900 new cases in the last two weeks.

Nearly 8 per cent of child-care centres in the province have reported at least one case of the virus.

 

Premier Doug Ford announced on Monday that the province is keeping all schools closed to in-person learning indefinitely following the current spring break. Elementary and secondary schools in the province are to move to teacher-led remote learning when students return from the break on April 19.

The government had previously maintained that schools would reopen next week but unions had called for schools to close in the absence of stronger safety measures.

Ford argued that schools are safe but said the province must “do everything possible” to bring infections down during the “critical” next few weeks.

The government’s decision to shut down schools for in-person learning comes after multiple public health units, most notably in Toronto and Peel, issued a Section 22 order to  close all schools for two weeks and move to remote learning only.

The announcement came days after a provincewide shutdown took effect in light of the rapid growth of new infections and hospitalization numbers.

Ontario reported 4,401 new COVID-19 cases on Monday and pandemic high of 4,456 cases on Sunday.

There are now 1,646 people hospitalized in the province due to COVID-19 with 619 in the ICU. It is the highest number of hospitalizations since Jan. 15 and another record-high for ICU patients.