Early Childhood Educators are often first responders who have to play the role of nurses and doctors. As anyone who has parented, taught, worked with, or spent time around young children knows, young children are germ factories. As much as care givers try to teach young children how to stop the spread of germs, they are still learning concepts like covering your mouth when your cough or sneeze, washing hands, and not licking things. This leads to virus and bacteria having outbreaks in early education settings frequently despite early educators’ best efforts to sanitize everything. Some of the most common illnesses in early education settings are Roseola, hand/foot/mouth, stomach bugs, colds, flu, fifth virus, pink eye, pinworms and more. The above illnesses, most early educators have experiences with and know what the best practices are. However, there is a new threat sweeping the globe in a strain of Coronavirus (COVID-19). The World Health Organization has already been warning that it looks like the spread will keep going and the CDC said today that it expects it to spread to the United States.   

Early Childhood Educators and Administrators all across the world will need support on how best to deal with this new virus especially given that the symptoms are often similar to more common colds and flu. Organizations like the aforementioned World Health Organization and Center for Disease Control need to have specific guidelines, recommendations, and supports for early childhood education providers.