This article was last updated on March 19, and is no longer being updated. This is a fast-moving situation, so some information may be outdated. For the latest updates, read The New York Times’s live coronavirus coverage here.

Schools and day care centers are closing, and the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention is telling us to limit close contact with others if the coronavirus is known to be spreading within our community. But what does close contact mean, exactly? Should we stop letting our kids have play dates? Is it OK to go to the museum or playground or indoor trampoline park? And what about birthday parties?

We know that kids tend to be at low risk for serious symptoms associated with Covid-19, the disease caused by the coronavirus, and may have a fever, a dry cough or sometimes a runny nose. In other words, most kids don’t end up really sick — although those with compromised immune systems, heart or lung problems or diabetes may be more at risk.

Still, kids are likely to be able to spread the infection, and one key priority right now is to slow the virus’s spread through communities so we don’t overwhelm our health care system and end up with more serious cases at once than doctors can handle. We also want to protect our older family and community members, who are at much higher risk for serious symptoms. Even some younger adults get quite sick: In a report released on March 18, the C.D.C. found that 40 percent of patients hospitalized for Covid-19 in the United States were between the ages of 20 and 54.

Given all these complexities, it’s hard to know what to do about play dates. No one knows how long this pandemic will last, but what is certain is that we’ll all lose our minds if the characters from “Frozen” become our kids’ only social companions for the next four weeks.