Over 50 children and 130 employees have had COVID at Tarrant County child care centers
At least 59 children and 138 employees have been infected with the novel coronavirus at child care centers in Tarrant County since March, according to data posted Thursday by Texas Health and Human Services.
For the first time, the agency posted a spreadsheet detailing the names and locations of licensed child care centers and similar programs that supervise kids, like summer camps or after-school programs, that have reported COVID-19 cases. Across the state, there have been at least 1,120 COVID-19 cases among children and 2,200 among employees at those facilities since March.
As of Wednesday, 13 active infections were reported among children and eight among employees statewide. In Tarrant County, The Children’s Courtyard of South Fort Worth at 8701 S. Hulen St. had one COVID-19 case in an enrolled child and the Spanish Schoolhouse at 480 Johnson Road in Keller had one in an employee, according to state data.
Data will be updated on HHSC’s website weekdays by 3 p.m. All data from the facilities is self-reported, provisional and subject to change, according to the agency. If a facility fails to report a positive diagnosis, it will be investigated and “deficiencies cited accordingly.”
HHSC did not release specific locations of home child care programs that had COVID-19 cases “due to confidentiality issues,” but did release statewide totals.
Since March, 79 registered and licensed child care programs run out of homes have reported cases to HHSC, resulting in 32 cases among children and 53 among caregivers and household members, according to the data.
In late June, there had been over 570 reported positive cases of COVID-19 across more than 400 child care operations, an HHSC spokeswoman had said at the time.
Citing a rise in cases of the novel coronavirus at child care centers, on June 23 Gov. Greg Abbott directed HHSC to enact health and safety standards at the facilities after it had repealed its earlier requirements less than two weeks before.
First implemented in April, those requirements mandated that child care centers take the temperature of children, parents and staff, alter pick-up and drop-off operations and more.
While experts are still studying how the novel coronavirus affects kids, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention notes that children can still contract and spread the virus. While most cases in kids under 18 years old appear to be mild or asymptomatic, children under two years old have the highest rate of needing hospitalization for COVID-19. Overall, Hispanic and Black children were more likely to be hospitalized than their white peers, according to a CDC study.
Some children who have contracted COVID-19 have developed multisystem inflammatory syndrome, which can be potentially fatal.
