Child care centers are permitted to reopen without a waiver in counties that moved to the yellow phase of Gov. Tom Wolf’s coronavirus recovery plan, and state officials are urging providers to closely follow safety guidelines from the Center for Disease Control.
“The CDC has put out very good, very good specific recommendations,” said Teresa D. Miller, secretary of the Pennsylvania Department of Human Services.
Miller said on a video conference with reporters Monday that the state is offering webinars to child care providers that outline the CDC guidelines.
The recommendations include keeping children in the same small groups throughout the day, limiting the objects kids bring from home and screening children and staffers for fever when possible. Directions for disinfecting a center and serving food are also included in the CDC guidelines, which are listed in detail at this link.
All staffers should wear face masks throughout the day and children 2 or older should also wear masks while at a child care facility, Miller said. Those younger than 2 should not wear masks because of the risks of suffocation.
While it can be difficult to keep a covering on the face of an active child, deputy secretary for Pennsylvania’s Office of Child Development and Early Learning Tracey Campanini said the CDC’s guidelines say kids should wear masks “whenever feasible.”
Wolf’s office ordered most child care providers to shut down during the early stages of the coronavirus crisis but created a program in which centers could apply for waivers to care for children of essential workers. Providers in the counties that remain in the red phase of recovery still need waivers if they want to open, but obtaining one through the state should not be challenging, according to Miller.
As of Tuesday, 1,529 child care centers across the state remained operational, Miller said.
Miller said Pennsylvania’s Department of Human Services has not presented its own guidelines for how child centers should reopen because the department agrees with all of the CDC recommendations.
As a reminder, these are the Pa. counties that moved last week from the red to yellow phase of Wolf’s recovery plan:
- Bradford
- Cameron
- Centre
- Clarion
- Clearfield
- Clinton
- Crawford
- Elk
- Erie
- Forest
- Jefferson
- Lawrence
- Lycoming
- McKean
- Mercer
- Montour
- Northumberland
- Potter
- Snyder
- Sullivan
- Tioga
- Union
- Venango
- Warren
And Wolf announced these 13 counties will also enter the yellow phase Friday:
- Allegheny
- Armstrong
- Bedford
- Blair
- Butler
- Cambria
- Fayette
- Fulton
- Greene
- Indiana
- Somerset
- Washington
- Westmoreland
Thanks for visiting PennLive. Quality local journalism has never been more important. We need your support. Not a subscriber yet? Please consider supporting our work.