Over 40,000 COVID-19 Tests Administered at Massachusetts Early Education and Care Facilities Since Expansion of New Testing Program

Non-Profit Neighborhood Villages and MA Department of Early Education and Care Partnering to Provide COVID-19 Tests for Early Education and Care Programs; Positivity rate is .077% for teachers, staff, and students

BOSTON, MA (November 22, 2021) - Following the dramatic expansion of a first-of-its-kind, free COVID-19 pooled testing program for early education and care programs, more than 40,000 COVID-19 tests have been administered to teachers, staff, and children at Massachusetts child care facilities since September 2021.

Since the September expansion, the program has tested 42,431 teachers, staff, and students, with 33 positive results, a .077% positivity rate.

The program—which is administered by Neighborhood Villages, a Boston-based nonprofit that advocates for solutions to the greatest challenges faced by the early education sector, with funding and support from the Massachusetts Department of Early Education and Care (EEC)—was expanded statewide this fall after a highly successful, targeted program in the Greater Boston area during the summer. 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 weekly number of tests administered has increased each week, and the number of early education and care programs participating in the program has also increased, with 230 facilities currently testing. The program has the capacity to conduct up to 13,000 tests of children and staff at child care facilities each week across Massachusetts.

“Consistent, comprehensive testing of our early education and care sector—particularly without a vaccine available for these young children—is a key to ensuring our teachers, staff, and children remain safe while keeping these programs open and operating for families,” said Neighborhood Villages co-president and chief innovation officer Sarah Muncey. “We are thrilled with the immediate and growing success of this groundbreaking testing program in which Massachusetts is leading the nation in offering free, comprehensive COVID testing in the child care sector. Numbers have steadily increased, with thousands of children and staff being tested each week. We thank the Department of Early Education and Care for their partnership on this important program.”

“We are pleased to continue working in partnership with Neighborhood Villages to offer pooled testing to EEC-licensed programs,” said Commissioner Samantha Aigner-Treworgy. “We are committed to supporting every effort to ensure children are safe and continue to learn.”
The expansion of this testing program came after Neighborhood Villages and EEC partnered together this summer to launch a pilot testing program that administered more than 27,000 free tests at child care facilities.

Testing is administered by Affinity Empowering, Inc. on behalf of Eurofins Clinical, as part of Operation Expanded Testing (OET), a federally funded program that offers no-cost, “click and go” COVID-19 surveillance testing to schools and community organizations. OET uses PCR tests, the gold standard for COVID-19 detection, and a pooled testing system that allows for results to be typically returned within 24 hours.

Since February 2021, state-funded pooled testing has been offered at K-12 schools across the Commonwealth. 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.

 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 well-being of childcare providers and parents. 

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 immediately address the individual case or cases, which can help avoid the need to close an entire facility. The whole process, start to finish, takes about 36 hours.

Early education programs across the state can now test all staff, educators, and children (2 years and older) weekly. For more information, visit the website: https://www.maearlyedtesting.com/

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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. For more information, visit https://www.neighborhoodvillages.org/our-work.