COVID-19 Infections Following Physical School Reopening

Miron, Oren; Yu, Kun‐Hsing; Wilf‐Miron, Rachel; Kohane, Isaac S.; Davidovitch, Nadav

doi:10.1101/2020.10.24.20218321

Cited by 2 publications

(2 citation statements)

References 4 publications

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“…2 is universal, but retain the freedom to rescale these values by the relative transmissibility

for different age groups and viral strains. It is well established that children have considerably lower hospitalization and death rates ( 86 – 88 ), but there is growing evidence that they also have lower transmissibility ( 89 – 91 , 100 , 101 ). A recent study of household clusters suggests that children are rarely index cases or involved in secondary transmissions ( 89 ).…”

Section: Application To Covid-19mentioning

confidence: 99%

A guideline to limit indoor airborne transmission of COVID-19

Bazant

Bush

2021

Proc. Natl. Acad. Sci. U.S.A.

377

320

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The current revival of the American economy is being predicated on social distancing, specifically the Six-Foot Rule, a guideline that offers little protection from pathogen-bearing aerosol droplets sufficiently small to be continuously mixed through an indoor space. The importance of airborne transmission of COVID-19 is now widely recognized. While tools for risk assessment have recently been developed, no safety guideline has been proposed to protect against it. We here build on models of airborne disease transmission in order to derive an indoor safety guideline that would impose an upper bound on the “cumulative exposure time,” the product of the number of occupants and their time in an enclosed space. We demonstrate how this bound depends on the rates of ventilation and air filtration, dimensions of the room, breathing rate, respiratory activity and face mask use of its occupants, and infectiousness of the respiratory aerosols. By synthesizing available data from the best-characterized indoor spreading events with respiratory drop size distributions, we estimate an infectious dose on the order of 10 aerosol-borne virions. The new virus (severe acute respiratory syndrome coronavirus 2 [SARS-CoV-2]) is thus inferred to be an order of magnitude more infectious than its forerunner (SARS-CoV), consistent with the pandemic status achieved by COVID-19. Case studies are presented for classrooms and nursing homes, and a spreadsheet and online app are provided to facilitate use of our guideline. Implications for contact tracing and quarantining are considered, and appropriate caveats enumerated. Particular consideration is given to respiratory jets, which may substantially elevate risk when face masks are not worn.

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“…2 is universal, but retain the freedom to rescale these values by the relative transmissibility

Section: Application To Covid-19mentioning

confidence: 99%

A guideline to limit indoor airborne transmission of COVID-19

Bazant

Bush

2021

Proc. Natl. Acad. Sci. U.S.A.

377

320

View full text Add to dashboard Cite

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“…In more details, it is noted that hardly ever do students of any age group can fulfill their educational needs in remote learning modes the same way they do under in–person set-ups. In addition, remote learning can have adverse effects on young people in terms of their future social abilities 3 , promote inequalities and reduce the effectiveness of interventions against the risks of suicidality 4 . From a broader perspective, keeping the school open has generally a positive impact on parents’ working life, beyond educating children.…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Impact estimation on COVID-19 infections following school reopening in September 2020 in Italy

Fenga

Galli

2021

Preprint

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Background Since its outbreak, CoViD-19 (formally known as 2019-nCoV) has been triggering many questions among public authorities, social organisms and school officials, as to when students should be allowed to return to school. Such a decision is critical and must take into account, other than its beneficial effects, also those associated with an increased exposition of the students to the virus, which, as a result, might spread at a faster rate. To date, in Italy, a few studies have rigorously investigated the correlation between school reopening and number of people tested positive to CoViD-19. Therefore, this paper aims to provide an assessment of such an impact as well as to illustrate the methodology followed. Methods Official daily data on the cumulative number of people tested positive to CoViD-19, in conjunction with external information accounting for the different points in time schools reopened in the various Italian regions, have been employed to build a stochastic model of the type Seasonal Autoregressive Moving Average embodying external information. Results There was a statistically significant increase in the number of positive cases in all the Italian regions related to schools reopening. Such an increase occurred, in average, about 18.9 days after the schools have been reopened. Schools reopening have been significantly contributed to the diffusion of the pandemic, with an overall estimated impact of about 228,724 positive cases. Conclusions The results suggest the need for strict control of all in-school activities. This could be done by using, to a variable extent, all the non-pharmaceutical interventions available, such as limited access to school spaces, no overlapping practices between different sports in the same space, universal masking, bubble-size classroom. However, in many cases, such measures might not be a viable option, at least in the short run, nor be reasonably applicable. Therefore, whenever the established safety criteria could not be met, school buildings should remain closed.

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COVID-19 Infections Following Physical School Reopening

Cited by 2 publications

References 4 publications

A guideline to limit indoor airborne transmission of COVID-19

A guideline to limit indoor airborne transmission of COVID-19

Impact estimation on COVID-19 infections following school reopening in September 2020 in Italy

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