Skip to Content
August, 12 2025

Hand, Foot, & Mouth Disease: Protecting Daycares with Disinfection

Products Used: SteraMist® Surface Unit
Summary: St. Mary Medical Center suffered an outbreak of Hand, Foot, & Mouth disease within their daycare.

Daycare facilities are a bright center of activity and interaction for children of all ages. However, classroom tables, toys, and other surfaces is where bacteria and virus can contaminate and multiply between children. Bright Horizons, St. Mary Medical Center’s daycare operations in Langhorne, Pennsylvania, experienced how relentless cross-contamination can be when they encountered an unexpected outbreak of Hand, Foot, and Mouth Disease (HFMD).

For weeks after the initial infection, the daycare experienced case after case of infection with no sign of slowing down. While Hand, Foot, and Mouth Disease is undesirable in any setting, the close proximity of the Bright Horizons daycare facility to the main healthcare facility added considerable risk to patients with underlying conditions if left unchecked.

Disinfection Against Hand, Foot & Mouth Disease

To prevent further cases of Hand, Foot, and Mouth Disease (HFMD) contamination, the solution would have to be fast to work around the weekly schedule, safe for use around childcare surfaces, and easy to deploy for daycare staff. With a tight schedule to maintain and traditional cleaning methods having fallen short, Bright Horizons reached out to St. Mary Medical Center for a solution to the surprising and stubborn outbreak. St. Mary Medical Center turned to an advanced disinfection solution – SteraMist® ionized Hydrogen Peroxide (iHP®).

Handling HFMD with SteraMist®

To effectively eliminate the Hand, Foot, and Mouth Disease within the facility, St. Mary  Medical Center opted for the handheld spray of the SteraMist® Surface Unit, allowing staff to target specific high-touch surfaces and high-traffic areas with consistent coverage. These surfaces include activity tables, countertops, chairs, sinks, racks, and cubbies – surfaces children often interact with daily. High-traffic areas included hallways, stairways, staff areas, and more. The proximity of these surfaces to children meant that harmful toxic residues needed to be avoided, as well as long-term damage that could pose a risk.

The facility opted to make use of scheduled downtime on a Saturday to deploy SteraMist® iHP®, allowing for the work to be done without interrupting daycare operations. In the space of a single day, the entire facility and targeted surfaces were quickly and effectively disinfected. After the initial SteraMist® surface spray treatment, there were no observed cases of Hand, Foot, and Mouth Disease (HFMD) on the premises from that point forward.

“Several weeks ago, our daycare operations, Bright Horizons, called to inform us they had an outbreak of Hand, Foot and Mouth disease among several children. They had been trying for several weeks to control it but it seemed to still be spreading. They asked for our help in controlling this situation and we proposed using SteraMist during the weekend when they are closed.

We applied SteraMist to the entire building on a Saturday and since that time they have not had a reoccurrence of the disease. SteraMist is a very versatile product useful in many different situations. We hope your company continues to innovate in this critical area of infection prevention.”

– Assistant Director, St. Mary Medical Center