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Parents were often not allowed to enter daycare centers during the pandemic (here in May 2020 in Schwerin)
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Jens Buttner / DPA
One of the big questions of the corona pandemic seems to have been answered: Kita children are not and were not drivers of the pandemic - a research team from the German Youth Institute (DJI), which has completed the largest scientific study on the corona pandemic in daycare centers to date, has come to this and many other conclusions, the so-called Corona daycare study.
"The course of the reported cases of infection showed that children always followed what was happening rather than preceding it," says the 148-page final report.
"The incidence remained consistently below that of older children and adolescents." However, the scientists write, restrictively, the susceptibility of children to Sars-CoV-2, but also the tendency of children to infect other people, "with everyone change to new variant«.
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The research team, which carried out the study on behalf of the Federal Ministries for Family and Health, considered different dimensions of the pandemic for the living and working area of the day care center: How restricted was the operation in the different phases of the pandemic?
How did the virus spread in the facilities, what courses did the infections take?
What psychological consequences do parents, staff and daycare management observe?
How has cooperation in the day-care center communities changed?
Lauterbach: Closures of day-care centers "didn't have been necessary"
Between August 2020 and June 2022, scientists evaluated health data and pandemic reports from the Robert Koch Institute, looked at data on childcare and closing times, and interviewed daycare management, staff and parents.
The researchers looked at facilities in which major corona outbreaks had occurred separately.
The research team did not draw a conclusion in the final report on how to assess the whole thing.
The political clients preferred to take over that.
Federal Minister of Health Karl Lauterbach (SPD), who presented the study together with Federal Minister for Family Affairs Lisa Paus (Greens), came to a clear conclusion: "According to current knowledge, it was not necessary to keep the daycare centers closed," he said.
Other key results of the study:
Children developed increased language, motor and emotional difficulties - especially when they were predisposed.
43 percent of the daycare managers surveyed stated that the children in their facilities had an increased need for language support.
46 percent observed increased deficits in motor development - and almost six out of ten daycare center managers stated that there were more difficulties in the social-emotional development of the children they looked after.
Parents report severe restrictions on the well-being of their children.
If children were not able to attend their day care center during the second and third phase of the pandemic, the parents assessed their well-being as lower.
At the same time, the mothers and fathers observed a higher level of stress in themselves.
According to the study, single parents and families in which both parents work were particularly affected.
Tensions between daycare staff and parents when implementing the corona measures.
In their survey, day-care center managers repeatedly reported that the relationship with parents had "changed fundamentally".
Mask requirements, corona test regulations for children and entry bans have caused increasing difficulties in working together in some facilities.
Kita managers also reported fears of infection among employees and increased stress.
Facilities with many children from stressed families recorded more cases of infection.
The scientists also looked at how often and for how long facilities had to close.
The lowest value with only 45 percent of children looked after nationwide was measured in January 2021.
During the fifth wave in 2022, at least one group was temporarily closed due to infection in more than 18 percent of all participating facilities - albeit very unevenly distributed: "Facilities with a high proportion of children who were disadvantaged due to their origin (and therefore those in particular need of support) showed an increased risk of infections in the facility and were closed more frequently.«
Measures to prevent infection were effective, but sometimes conflicted with pedagogical interests.
The researchers write that wearing masks proved beneficial in the fourth and fifth waves of the pandemic.
However, they warn of "possible difficulties in everyday pedagogical work".
Contact reduction and group separations became less important in the course of the pandemic because the staff was increasingly vaccinated and boosted.
The risk of infecting others is almost the same for daycare children and daycare staff.
In the case of a corona case in a daycare group, around ten percent of the contact persons in a daycare group would have been infected in the examined facilities.
The transmission rate in the households of infected children and employees, on the other hand, was 53 percent.
"Significantly more people were infected in the households than in the day-care centers."
Infected daycare children hardly have any symptoms and are usually only mildly ill.
The most common symptom was a runny nose.
In the follow-up survey seven to twelve months after the outbreak investigations, daycare children who had previously had a corona infection did not have long-term symptoms more often than children without a corona infection.
However, the finding needs to be further investigated.
Federal Family Minister Paus said that children had already suffered significantly during the pandemic - often less from the virus itself than from the consequences of the containment measures.
It is particularly frightening "that socially disadvantaged children and young people are particularly badly affected and that so many children and young people show mental stress".
It is precisely the children who most urgently need access to early education and support who are often subject to the greatest restrictions.
"In the future, the well-being of the child must be the top priority." This is about the development opportunities for children and young people and about equal opportunities.
With material from the dpa