Comprehensive COVID-19 Testing Program Launched For Early Education and Care Providers Across Massachusetts
Non-Profit Neighborhood Villages and Department of Early Education and Care Partner To Launch Free Weekly Testing Program To Protect Providers, Children, Families
BOSTON, MA (June 3, 2021) - In an effort to protect early educators, children, and their families, a new weekly COVID-19 pooled testing program is being offered statewide at no cost to early education and care programs across Massachusetts. This is the first comprehensive pooled testing program for the early education sector to be administered in Massachusetts and is one of the only of its kind in the country.
The program is created and administered by Neighborhood Villages, a Boston-based nonprofit that advocates for solutions to the greatest challenges faced by the early education sector. Neighborhood Villages is operating the program in partnership with Veritas, an industry leader in providing pooled testing and founded by leaders from Harvard Medical School and MIT. Neighborhood Villages’ program, which began in December 2020 as a pilot protocol administered to early education and after-school programs in the Greater Boston area, now will be offered to thousands of early educators, staff, and young children statewide at group centers, family child care, and after school programs as a result of a partnership with the Massachusetts Department of Early Education and Care.
Since February, state-funded pooled testing has been offered at K-12 schools across the Commonwealth, with low positivity rates among students and staff. This past week K-12 schools tested 97,000 individuals with an overall pool positivity rate of 0.36 percent. . This program for early education and care is a critical addition to that effort, with the CDC identifying providers in childcare settings as one of the groups that should be prioritized for COVID-19 screening. Nationally, the early education and childcare workforce is 92% female and 41% people of color.
The registration process has begun, and the testing program will commence by mid-June and throughout the summer months. Early education and care providers who would like more information on the testing program or to begin the registration process can visit maearlyedtesting.com
“Pooled testing has proved to be a critical mitigation strategy in detecting positive cases among asymptomatic individuals that might have otherwise been undetected. Bringing this testing strategy to child care programs and after school programs will be another important step in our fight against COVID-19, and we are very pleased to partner with Neighborhood Villages to make it possible across the Commonwealth,” said Commissioner Samantha Aigner-Treworgy.
“Having access to free weekly surveillance testing has been a total game-changer,” said Dr. Michelle Sanchez, principal of the Epiphany Early Learning Center in Dorchester, which has been a participant in Neighborhood Villages’ pilot testing program since December 2020. “It’s kept our teachers and families safe, and it’s allowed us to stay open for our kids. This service from Neighborhood Villages has made all the difference.”
A recent study by American Academy of Pediatrics shows that children represented 24% of new COVID-19 cases as of May 13th, 2021. That means that even as adults and adolescents continue to get vaccinated, COVID-19 can still spread. Establishing a regular testing protocol for the early education and care sector, , is key to keeping children and educators safe. Routine screening can help (1) identify and isolate positive cases, (2) curb transmission, and (3) reassure and protect the health and wellbeing of childcare providers and parents.
Enrolled early education and care providers in the new testing program can test all staff, educators, and children (2 years and older) in their program weekly at no cost.
This pooled testing program builds upon six months of Neighborhood Village’s implementation of a successful pilot COVID-19 testing protocol designed specifically to meet the needs of the early education and care sector. During the pilot program, participants were able to reduce the rate of positive tests among participants from over 3% to less than 0.5% – well below the community transmission rates at the time.
In pooled testing, samples are gathered from multiple people in one early education and care program and mixed into pools. This process tests the pool of samples. If the pool tests negative, then all the individuals in the pool are negative. If the pool tests positive, then individual samples from that pool are re-tested to see which person tested positive. The provider can then implement contact tracing and other protocols to address immediately the individual case or cases, which can help avoid their needing to close down an entire facility. The whole process, start to finish, takes about 36 hours.
Neighborhood Villages, founded in 2017 by Lauren Kennedy and Sarah Muncey, is a Boston-based systems-change non-profit that advocates for early education and care policy reform and implements scalable solutions that address the biggest challenges facing providers and the families who rely on them. Neighborhood Villages is also part of the Common Start Coalition that has filed Massachusetts legislation (H.605 and S.362) that would establish a system of affordable, high-quality early education and child care for all Massachusetts families, over a 5-year timeline. For more information, visit https://www.neighborhoodvillages.org/our-work.
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