South Windsor child care centre temporarily closed following COVID-19 outbreak

A south Windsor child care centre has temporarily closed its doors following a COVID-19 outbreak.

Delta Chi Early Childhood Centreconfirmed that it has positive COVID-19 cases at its Curry Avenue location, according to the centre's executive director Cheryl Sprague. The learning centre is for newborns to 12-year-old children.

Sprague wouldn't confirm the number of confirmed positive cases, but said all but one are toddlers and everyone is asymptomatic. She also said the Windsor-Essex County Health Unit confirmed the presence ofthe delta variant within cases.

At this time, Sprague said they've asked all parents to get their children tested.

Pediatricinfectious disease specialist AnnaBanerjisays children can spread the disease but it's very rare that a child will get extremely sick from the variant.

"Most kids, especially younger kids, get very mild symptoms of COVID, they may have no symptoms or may have runny nose or fever just for a day," she said.

The location is closed until Monday to be sanitized, Sprague said.

"I made the decision [to] justclose the school, get it deep cleaned, deep sanitizedso that we wouldn't have further spread in the centre," she told CBC News Tuesday.

Sprague said she was notified either Friday or Saturday about the first case and decided to close the school on Sunday.

Some staff at the location are not vaccinated Sprague said, adding that they do require testing twice a week if they are not fully vaccinated.

The centre itself has 142 children and approximately 100 staff members.

All those infected are "doing well," Sprague said.

As for Delta Chi's 10 other locations, she said there's no risk of cross contamination as other staff are not going between locations at this time.

Outbreaks expected in schools

This news comes just before the start of the school year and Banerji told CBC News she expects that there will be outbreaks in schools as kids will pass the disease to one another.

Vaccination for eligible kids and school staff, as well as proper ventilation, small class sizes and personal protective equipmentwill be crucial in curbing the spread, she said.

"Last year the common narrative was that children didn't really get COVID, it was really mild, which the mild part is true, [but also] schools are really safe and they don't transmit COVID and I think that we're finding that that narrative is not really true," she said, adding kids getting COVID can lead to further community spread.