COVID-19 Transmission in US Child Care Programs

OBJECTIVES: Central to the debate over school and child care reopening is whether children are efficient coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19) transmitters and are likely to increase community spread when programs reopen. We compared COVID-19 outcomes in child care providers who continued to provide direct in-person child care during the first 3 months of the US COVID-19 pandemic with outcomes in those who did not. METHODS: Data were obtained from US child care providers (N = 57 335) reporting whether they had ever tested positive or been hospitalized for COVID-19 (n = 427 cases) along with their degree of exposure to child care. Background transmission rates were controlled statistically, and other demographic, programmatic, and community variables were explored as potential confounders. Logistic regression analysis was used in both unmatched and propensity score-matched case-control analyses. RESULTS: No association was found between exposure to child care and COVID-19 in both unmatched (odds ratio [OR], 1.06; 95% confidence interval [CI], 0.82-1.38) and matched (OR, 0.94; 95% CI, 0.73-1.21) analyses. In matched analysis, being a home-based provider (as opposed to a center-based provider) was associated with COVID-19 (OR, 1.59; 95% CI, 1.14-2.23) but revealed no interaction with exposure. CONCLUSIONS: Within the context of considerable infection mitigation efforts in US child care programs, exposure to child care during the early months of the US pandemic was not associated with an elevated risk for COVID-19 transmission to providers. These findings must be interpreted only within the context of background transmission rates and the considerable infection mitigation efforts implemented in child care programs.

Automated summary

The study found that exposure to child care in the US during the early months of the pandemic did not increase the risk of COVID-19 transmission to providers. The findings emphasize the importance of infection mitigation efforts in child care programs.