Survey reveals the impact of COVID-19 on Manitoba childcare facilities

A survey to gauge the impact of COVID-19 on early learning and childcare facilities in Manitoba has released preliminary results showing the virus is hitting staff at the facilities hard.

Aleeza Gerstein, an assistant professor of microbiology and statistics, and Lauren Kelly, an assistant professor of pharmacology and therapeutics at the University of Manitoba, launched the survey a week ago and received responses from 332 facilities in Manitoba in 72 hours.

The professors, who are also mothers, asked about vaccination rates, positive cases and about staff who are forced to isolate, and grouped the results by facility size.

“Of those facilities, three out of four of those facilities have at least one positive staff member, and 80 per cent of those have at least one staff member who is sick or is isolating due to a close contact,” Gerstein said during an interview with CTV News Winnipeg on Wednesday.

She said the positivity rate at the centres mirrored what was being seen throughout Manitoba, and said the responses they got back from childcare centre operators and employees were “heartbreaking.”

“They show a sector that has received almost no assistance from the government at any point in the past two years,” she said. “This is people who go to work every day with our most vulnerable Manitobans, who are generally under five and cannot be vaccinated. They cannot physically distance properly, and yet they’ve been provided almost no resources to make their jobs or the places we send our children to safer.”

Gerstein said she is hoping the survey results will alert people to the COVID-19 supports needed for the early learning and childcare sector.

-With files from CTV’s Maralee Caruso