- Pediatrics releases a study looking at incidence of secondary transmission in schools and found: “Over 9 weeks, 11 participating school districts had more than 90,000 students and staff attend school in-person; of these, there were 773 community-acquired SARS-CoV-2 infections documented by molecular testing. Through contact tracing, NC health department staff determined an additional 32 infections were acquired within schools. No instances of child-to-adult transmission of SARS-CoV-2 were reported within schools.”
- The NEJM published a report from Sweden that looked at 1,951,905 children age 1-16 from March 1–June 30 during which Swedish schools were open for these age groups full time with no mask mandates during unsuppressed community spread. During that time there were only 15 ICU visits and 0 deaths from COVID among children. Teachers had no higher ICU visit than other professions.
- Iceland has been the gold standard of contact tracing using genomic analysis. A recent “40,000-person study found that children under 15 were about half as likely as adults to be infected, and only half as likely as adults to transmit the virus to others. Almost all the coronavirus transmissions to children came from adults.”
- UNICEF released a report on November 20, 2020 making the case very clearly by stating that “there is strong evidence that, with basic safety measures in place, the net benefits of keeping schools open outweigh the costs of closing them.” They also clarified that “schools are not a main driver of community transmission, and children are more likely to get the virus outside of school settings.”
- November 2020 study on the effect of schools on SARS-CoV-2 transmission in Germany. School closures were not associated with reduced transmission and reopening after the summer coincided with reduced transmission.
- Brown’s School of Public Health makes The Case for Open Schools in a Pandemic by concluding “it is clear from the data and experiences of individual school districts that opening schools in a pandemic with infection control measures in place does not lead to increased transmission of the virus. In many ways, schools can be the safest place to be for children during a pandemic.”
- According to NJ Coronavirus Dashboard Monmouth County has 6 outbreaks in all its schools linked to a total of 19 cases since September.
- The mainstream media is finally catching up with the data from around the world:
Are we seriously taking about closing schools again? – Carroll, NYT
Schoolchildren Seem Unlikely to Fuel Coronavirus Surges, Scientist Say – NYT
When Trump was right and many democrats wrong – Kristof – NYT
We’ve figured out it’s safe to have schools open. Keep them that way.
- If you still think children and schools are a risk, Emily Oyster attempts to explain how the risks from schools have been misrepresented in School Rankings: Framing (Slightly) Differently .
- Peer reviewed evidence continues to mount in favor of school openings. I will reference a few studies below but there are many more. Luckily this organization tracks all the COVID-19 Pediatric Literature .
“This decision analytical model found that missed instruction during 2020 could be associated with an estimated 5.53 million years of life lost. This loss in life expectancy was likely to be greater than would have been observed if leaving primary schools open had led to an expansion of the first wave of the pandemic.
These findings suggest that the decision to close US public primary schools in the early months of 2020 may be associated with a decrease in life expectancy for US children.”
2. Effect of school closures on mortality from coronavirus disease 2019: old and new predictions
“The model used for Report 9 was independently validated and verified, and predicts that, in the absence of an effective vaccine for covid-19, school closures would result in more overall deaths than no school closure
Mitigating a covid-19 epidemic requires a different strategy from an influenza epidemic, with more focus on shielding elderly and vulnerable people.”
“Minimizing the impact of COVID-19 and saving lives requires weighing the trade-offs. In some scenarios, closing schools is likely to be sensible. However, policy makers and advisers need to understand that closing schools might have serious unintended downstream effects on the health-care system, and substantial uncertainty exists about the effectiveness of school closures for preventing infection beyond schoolchildren.
The effect of reducing the health-care workforce on patient survival is an important unknown. Our estimates suggest that in the USA, the health-care system appears disproportionately exposed to labour shortages induced by school closures, and the segment of that system that provides infection control in nursing homes even more so.
Such potential shortages in the health-care workforce should be a first-order consideration when assessing the potential benefits and costs of school closures.”
“For adults living with children there is no evidence of an increased risk of severe COVID-19 outcomes. These findings have implications for determining the benefit-harm balance of children attending school in the COVID-19 pandemic.”