Is it safe for day care centers to be open right now?

Children under 5 are not known for respecting personal space or keeping germs to themselves — even in the best of circumstances. And when you get lots of these little drooling, hugging, shouting humans together in one space, such as day care, illnesses tend to spread rapidly, bouncing among children, their families, and back again.

While some child care centers around the country have remained open in the Covid-19 pandemic, many US states and localities have required them to close or limit services to health care worker parents only. According to an April poll, about half of child care centers across the country were entirely closed, the Wall Street Journal reported.

An estimated 12.5 million children younger than 6 attend some sort of child care each year in the US, according to the Center for the Study of Child Care Employment (CSCCE) at the University of California Berkeley. So the closures have created a crisis for millions of families who have previously depended on care outside of the home.

Now, the question of how to restore child care is critical for helping millions of families get back to work, because “as states rush to reopen, child care is expected to be available,” Lea Austin, director of the CSCCE, told Vox.