16 children at 1 Vaughan daycare test positive for COVID-19

Thestar.com
Aug. 18, 2021
Dina Al-Shibeeb

At one Vaughan daycare, there are now 16 children infected with COVID-19, Ontario data shows.

Ontario's online portal shows as of Aug. 15, Tiny Treasures Learning and Child Care Centre Inc. saw an increase of six from the 10 children who had tested positive with the virus Aug. 10.

Vaughan Holy Family daycare has one child who tested positive, which is unchanged from Aug. 10

Newmarket’s Cuties & Patooties also has one case.

Recently, a Vaughan parent was charged $770 plus a victim surcharge fee totalling $880 after allegedly sending his child who had COVID-19 symptoms to daycare on Aug. 3.

York Region Public Health didn’t give the name of the daycare attended by the child whose parent was charged.

"In this situation, the individual sent their child to a child care centre while the child was experiencing symptoms and would not have passed the daily COVID-19 Screening Tool," Patrick Casey, York Region director of corporate communications, said.

As of Aug. 13, Vaughan had five open COVID-19 outbreaks, and 22,199 confirmed cases overall -- the most in York Region. Markham came second at 12,628 cases and no open outbreaks. Richmond Hill had 7,616 cases and one outbreak.

"There is currently one open COVID-19 child-care outbreak and 123 closed COVID-19 child-care outbreaks," Casey added.

"An outbreak is declared in child-care settings with two or more laboratory-confirmed COVID-19 cases within a 14-day period among children, staff/providers or other visitors with an epidemiological link, where at least one case could have reasonably acquired their infection in the child care setting."

With the Delta variant being 50-to-60-per-cent more transmissible, and associated with more hospitalizations, Casey urged those who aren’t vaccinated to get the jab.

"The higher the immunization rate, the lower the transmission rate, then the virus doesn’t have the opportunity to mutate," he said.

Indeed, York Region data shows the majority of hospitalizations and infections are among the unvaccinated or partially vaccinated.

As of Aug. 12, 82.1 per cent of York Region's eligible residents (12 and older) had one dose, and 75.1 per cent are fully vaccinated.