Reply To: Herpes and Newborn

[hope]

I want to use my two more questions as a follow-up to a different scenario that has occurred.

We put my child in a day care center when he was 3 months old. Last week, after he had been attending for about a month, we noticed one of his teachers had a bright red blemish by her mouth. At first, I could not tell if it was a cold sore or another type of blemish such as acne. He continued to go to daycare for three more days. During this time, i contacted the director of the center and expressed my concerns about a possible cold sore on one of the teachers and asked to know what precautions were being taken. I did not find out until the third day that is was probably a cold sore (and at this point, I saw it again and it definitely looked like a healing cold sore) and that they were washing hands, using gloves when diapering, etc. However, this teacher was still allowed to hold, feed, diaper the babies and did not cover the sore on her face. I’ve kept him home the last few days, but I can’t continue to keep him home every time this teacher happens to get a cold sore.

My questions are:
1) How likely is it that my child contracts oral herpes from a provider who has an active sore? She was told not to kiss our child, but I’m not there all day, and he is in the squirming phase so there is a high probability that he touched her face with his head or his hand at some point. I also don’t know how careful she is being about washing hands.
2) As a healthcare professional, what precautions would you ask a parent with an active cold sore to take to protect a child?