Lol, I guess I should have phrased the question as this: "can I buy COVID tests?" Any Canadians know? I would imagine they'd mess with contact tracing so might not be available. Have never heard of them being available over the counter but also my DD hasn't had a cold in months so I haven't bothered to investigate.
You have options. If your kid has symptoms you can go for a free test at the testing centres and have a PCR test done. Turnaround was less than 18 hours for us since kid tests go through first. If you want to pay you could also go to a private testing site that will run either a rapid test or PCR. They’ve popped up everywhere for people who need negative tests for work and travel. I do not think there are any over the counter mail in options as of yet.
We are actually doing more activities now than we did last spring. But we’ve cut back from summer activities. Precautions we are doing again:
- Masking at school. We didn’t do this at daycare this summer due to low cases in the area. There is no mask mandate at school so I have feelings about making DD be essentially the only one, but at least we are trying to keep her healthy. - Cutting indoor, unmasked play dates. We had one family we were doing this with and we will be back outdoors again. - Avoiding busy playgrounds. Which, they are all busy. Ugh. - We will not be taking the kids into a store unless there is a very good reason to do so. Which sucks, because we just started taking them in July and they looove it. - Avoiding known unvaccinated adults. Basically, my entire family. - No indoor sports. I really wanted DD to pick up swim lessons again, but 1,000 kids pass through our swim school on a weekend. It’s just too much.
Dh and I are still working from home and we never stopped masking in stores, so those things are no change for us. We are using daycare, which we didn’t last winter.
Recent changes: -Masking at school for my third grader (it's required for all students, staff, school visitors etc regardless of vax status) -Masking when indoors at stores etc and continuing to minimize taking the kids with me in stores as much as possible. -avoiding adults we know are not vaccinated. Thankfully all the adults and older (12 and up) kids we're around often are vaccinated. -avoiding most indoor play dates, especially if we're not sure of vax status. -not signing AJ up for indoor rec basketball again is unfortunately on the table depending on how things go. Signups don't close until closer to Thanksgiving and a lot can happen so we'll see.
Things we will still do: -outdoor sports and activities (soccer, baseball, golf, outdoor swimming). This is huge for both kids' mental health (#1 especially) and ours as well. -kids will still go to their respective babysitters' houses. They're at two different ones now which is a bit of a pain but both sitters are vaccinated as are any family members living in their homes that are old enough to get their shots. I know the parent of the other boys #1's sitter watches is vaccinated and I'm almost certain the parents of the kids #2's sitter watches are as well. -spending time with grandparents, aunts/uncles etc as all adults are vaccinated (we are so darn lucky in that regard). -#1 and I have tickets to an outdoor sporting event here on Friday (MLS soccer). As of right now we are still going but will be masking unless eating/drinking and sanitizing a ton. If I'd known how things were going to go with Delta when I bought the tickets I wouldn't have done it and this will likely be the last in person event we go to until things get better or #1 can be vaccinated. -no gym childcare until #2 is better at keeping a mask on, and I will be wearing a mask for workouts.
Lol, I guess I should have phrased the question as this: "can I buy COVID tests?" Any Canadians know? I would imagine they'd mess with contact tracing so might not be available. Have never heard of them being available over the counter but also my DD hasn't had a cold in months so I haven't bothered to investigate.
The local hospital here let’s us pick up tests and take them home to be done when we need and then dropped off at the hospital to get processed. It’s the cheek swabs for the kids. I’m not sure if they have take home tests for adults though. Some schools have them on site as well now but they too need to be dropped off at the hospital to be processed. Most testing sites here also give you your results back same days (although they say 24 hours they are almost always posted at the end of the night same day).
All of the cases I've heard of are from outdoor, unmasked activities such as camps or playdates.
My kids are now wearing masks if they are around large groups outdoors.
Always had them wear masks indoors.
I've been hearing more about getting it outdoors and I think that's what scares me the most right now. Everyone here is great about masking indoors but nobody wants to outdoors. I'm nervous DS will pick it up at recess. His whole grade, three classes, are out on the playground unmasked at once like it's old times. They only have one playset which I'm sure gets super crowded.
We are doing more now than before because DS is back in full time school. We decided against soccer this fall which I have a lot of guilt about since it seems like everyone we talk to has their kids signed up. DH thought him wearing a mask would be too hard with all the running and I let him kind of take the lead since he's the one who has actually played before. We've also done a couple of indoor masked playdates which were a first, but they are with kids in his class so not really increasing exposure much. DS was suffering socially and it was just too hot to be outside so we gave in.
Otherwise we have been pretty cautious this whole time and will continue to be with who we see and where we go. No indoor dining, rarely even outdoor dining.