I think the problem is right there - people are waiting on Government guidance- the same Government that’s now refusing to go into lockdown even though there’s more confirmed cases than ever now.
I personally believe that the nursery should have informed all parents of this positive case on the Monday morning when it was first brought to their attention, regardless of whether they’d been in contact with Public Health as of that point, in order to allow parents to make an informed decision as to whether they want their child to eventually return. I definitely would have collected my child immediately no matter how inconvenient the timing may have been. I feel the nursery should have closed on the Monday there and then, instructed that parents and carers pick their children up immediately, and start letting staff members go home as appropriate according to ratios as the children are departing. Once everyone’s gone, owner/manager should have organised a deep clean and contacted public health for further advice on how to proceed the following day. Telling parents to collect their kids from 11am onwards would have been inconvenient for everyone, but in times like these, (where everyone in the world is experiencing the same dilemma, there should be some leeway for working parents to drop what they’re doing and collect their children - it’s in the interest of everyone’s safety not just that one family who may be affected).
I’m currently experiencing a similar situation with my DD’s nursery. They did everything ‘by the book’ in terms of managing a confirmed positive test among the children in DD’s class. HOWEVER, whilst it’s not the nursery’s fault, I feel the public should be questioning the Government’s guidelines and the extremely delayed responses to COVID overall, from refusing to go into lockdown, the contradictive rules they’ve given to pubs, right down to how long we all have to wait for a covid test result to come back. I had to wait 4 days to know whether my child had COVID, she stayed off of nursery for that week just in case. But when it has the potential to kill thousands upon thousands of people from simply being in the same room as someone else, and the government only worry about the economy (agreed its important and comes with its own detrimental consequences), that’s where the problem lies. We’re still putting the economy (MONEY) before the lives of our own children, parents, siblings, grandparents, neighbours, and ourselves, to name a few. It’s lovely for those those that display no symptoms and go about their day blissfully ignorant, spreading a deadly virus to someone else’s child, mum, dad, nan or grandad. Why not? After all, we feel fine and have a life to live, plus we’ll never find out if we’ve indirectly killed someone.
That, too, is following Government guidance. So I agree, everyone should be using their initiative in the interim when awaiting public health advice.