No abstract

We aim at clarifying the controversy about the effects of school openings or closures on the course of the Covid-19 pandemic.The mathematical analysis of compartmental models with subpopulations shows that the in-school contact rates affects the overall course of the pandemic only above a certain threshold that separates an influence phase from a non-influence one. The threshold, that we calculate via linear approximation in several cases, seems to appear in all contexts, including outbreaks or new strains upsurge, lockdowns, and vaccination campaigns excluding children, albeit with different values. Our theoretical findings are then confirmed by several data driven studies that have previously identified the phase transition in specific cases.Specific outcomes of this study are:• opposite conclusions reached by studies of the same or similar situations might depend on, possibly small, differences in modeling or in parameter estimation from the very noisy Covid-19 data, that result in identifying different phases;