Broward educators need access to vaccine
As COVID-19 caused shutdowns across Broward County, not everyone closed their doors. In order for parents to continue to work and in many cases provide an essential service to our community, child care became even more of a necessity.
Preschools across the county dramatically shifted their procedures to be open and safe. Masks, gloves, temperature checks and dropping kids at the front door became the new normal for our preschools. A pre-COVID morning included dropping a child off directly in the classroom and each child being greeted with hugs, kisses and smiles by teachers and staff. But times have drastically changed. Parents no longer enter the classrooms, let alone the school building. Greetings now have become a temperature check, sometimes even a change of shoes and a conversation on what type of mask is being worn today by the teacher and some children asking, “Are you smiling under that mask?”
Broward’s early childhood community remains committed to providing care as they adhere to CDC guidelines and despite the additional cost they incur to be stocked with the appropriate cleaning supplies, PPE, toilet paper and other provisions they feel are essential during the pandemic. Teachers arrive to work maybe unsettled wondering and worrying if COVID would spread at their school, but despite their fears, many endure each and every day to care, support and teach our youngest community members day in and day out.
Attendance at preschools continues to be lower than pre-COVID numbers. Keeping to smaller classrooms has been beneficial for health and safety reasons. However, keeping classrooms smaller is also a result of the need to find new staff when others have chosen to not work during this time. The field of early childhood is majority staffed by women and largely women of color. In a 2018 American Community Survey data, before COVID-19, nearly half of all working women — 46% or 28 million — worked in jobs paying low wages, with median earnings of only $10.93 per hour. The share of workers earning low wages is higher among Black women (54%) and Hispanic or Latina women (64%) than among white women (40%). Many educators have decided to not return to the classroom because of the health risk due to COVID-19 or have decided that they can work somewhere else with less stress for the same if not more money.
As Governor DeSantis’ executive orders throughout the pandemic included child care centers as essential, it is time we treat the staff who work in these centers that way. Now that vaccinations have started to ramp up, we are advocating for child care educators to be part of the priority to receive the vaccine. According to the child care advocacy group Child Care Aware, 39 states have prioritized child care educators to receive vaccines along with K-12 teachers, however Florida is not one of those states.
Early educators continue to work despite the fear and threat of the spread of COVID-19. The Early Learning Coalition of Broward County works with over 600 preschools and provides funding for over 19,000 low-income children to attend school.
We are looking for a return to a new normal so educators can return to the classroom and continue to care, love and educate our youngest children in a safe environment without fear for their health.
Florida on Sunday reported slightly fewer new cases and deaths than the previous day.
Florida reported 5,065 new coronavirus cases on Sunday and another 93 new resident deaths linked to COVID-19. The state has now reported 1,868,772 cases since the pandemic began.
South Florida
South Florida reported 2,164 new cases and 26 deaths on Sunday.
Palm Beach County: 328 additional cases and 0 deaths. The county now has 117,559 confirmed cases and 2,437 deaths, including 43 non-residents.
Broward County: 708 additional cases and 16 more deaths. Broward has a known total of 189,833 cases and 2,380 deaths since the beginning of the pandemic. The death tally includes 40 non-residents.
Miami-Dade County: 1,128 additional cases and 10 new deaths. The county now has 402,265 confirmed cases and 5,326 deaths, including 36 non-residents.
Testing and positivity
Public health experts say the virus is considered under control when the COVID-19 test positivity rate is under 5%. But since Oct. 29, Florida has exceeded 5% in its widely publicized calculation for assessing the rate for testing of residents.
The state reported a daily positivity rate of 6.32% on Sunday, up from 5.74% the day before. This method of calculating positivity counts new infections only, but also counts repeat negative tests, which skews the figure downward.
According to the state, the new reported case numbers reflect the results of 78,853 COVID-19 tests of Florida residents received from labs in the past day, down from 124,466 results reported the day before.
Palm Beach County: Test results for 5,405 residents were reported Sunday, leading to a daily positivity rate of 5.85%.
That’s up from 5.67% the previous day.
Broward County: Test results for 9,419 residents were reported Sunday, leading to a daily positivity rate of 7.44%. That’s up from 6.22% the previous day.
Miami-Dade County: Test results for 17,907 residents were reported Sunday, leading to a daily positivity rate of 6.32%. That’s up from 5.84% the previous day.
Deaths
The state’s pandemic data report shows a total of 29,906 Floridians have died from COVID-19. In addition, 528 non-residents have died after contracting the virus. Most of the fatalities reported Sunday happened over several weeks but were just confirmed in the past day.
Out of all 50 states and the District of Columbia, Florida ranks No. 25 for deaths per 100,000 residents and No. 23 for cases per 100,000 residents, according to the latest data from the health department and the COVID Tracking Project.
Hospitalizations
As of Sunday, there were 4,156 people hospitalized in Florida with a primary diagnosis of COVID-19, according to the state Agency for Health Care Administration.
In South Florida, Broward County reported 573, Palm Beach County had 322 and Miami-Dade had 690.
Hospitalizations hit a peak in late July of about 9,500 patients statewide, then dipped as low as 2,011 on Oct. 19. The numbers steadily increased throughout November and December.
Vaccines
In Florida, 1,314,176 people have received their first dose of the vaccine, or about 6.12% of the population.
So far, 1,353,925 people have completed the series of doses required to be vaccinated. That represents about 6.30% of the population.