Over the past few years, it’s been every parent’s worst nightmare. You get that phone call, email, or text, and you read those dreaded words:

Your child has been in close contact with someone known to have tested positive for Covid-19.

To make that nightmare worse, your kid wakes up the next morning with a sore throat and a runny nose. Is it Covid? Good luck finding a test. And even if she is not sick or symptomatic, you churn over the possibility over and over in your head until you do find a test.

This is exactly the situation the Discovery Village Child Care Center (DVCC) experienced in Waltham, Massachusetts when two students who were positive with Covid attended school for several days without knowing they had the virus. But miraculously, despite extended periods of contact with other students and staff, nobody else contracted the virus.

Except it wasn’t a miracle that prevented the outbreak. It was an enhanced virus mitigation strategy that included ultraviolet air purification.

To protect her students and staff, the owner and director of the DVCC, Laura Harrington, implemented mitigation strategies that included masking, hand washing, and surface sanitization. In addition, they installed a Bluezone air purification system, proven to eliminate 99.9995 percent of particles and pathogens, which includes the coronavirus that causes Covid-19.

“The health and safety of my children is the most important aspect of running a successful childcare center,” Harrington said. “I owe it to my children and their parents to do everything I can to keep them safe.”

The Bluezone Model 450 used at the DVCC employs germicidal ultraviolet-C light to kill airborne viruses, keeping the viral load low within the school and classrooms, mitigating transmission from person to person. It’s the same technology certified by the Israeli Ministry of Health, a global leader in Covid mitigation, as one of four air cleaning systems safe and effective at combatting the SARS-CoV-2 virus that causes Covid.

“Since I installed Bluezone air cleaners throughout my facility,” Harrington said, “we haven’t seen an outbreak here. It transfers the burden of safety from my children protecting themselves to me protecting my children which I prefer.”