The effects of school closures on SARS-CoV-2 among parents and teachers

Abstract

To reduce the transmission of severe acute respiratory syndrome coronavirus 2 (SARS-CoV-2), most countries closed schools, despite uncertainty if school closures are an effective containment measure. At the onset of the pandemic, Swedish upper-secondary schools moved to online instruction, while lower-secondary schools remained open. This allows for a comparison of parents and teachers differently exposed to open and closed schools, but otherwise facing similar conditions. Leveraging rich Swedish register data, we connect all students and teachers in Sweden to their families and study the impact of moving to online instruction on the incidence of SARS-CoV-2 and COVID-19. We find that, among parents, exposure to open rather than closed schools resulted in a small increase in PCR-confirmed infections (odds ratio [OR] 1.17; 95% CI [CI95] 1.03 to 1.32). Among lower-secondary teachers, the infection rate doubled relative to upper-secondary teachers (OR 2.01; CI95 1.52 to 2.67). This spilled over to the partners of lower-secondary teachers, who had a higher infection rate than their upper-secondary counterparts (OR 1.29; CI95 1.00 to 1.67). When analyzing COVID-19 diagnoses from healthcare visits and the incidence of severe health outcomes, results are similar for teachers, but weaker for parents and teachers’ partners. The results for parents indicate that keeping lower-secondary schools open had minor consequences for the overall transmission of SARS-CoV-2 in society. The results for teachers suggest that measures to protect teachers could be considered.

School closures reduced social mixing of children during COVID-19 with implications for transmission risk and school reopening policies

“…If susceptibility increases with age, as some evidence suggests [21,39,64], we estimated that high school teachers may experience as much as 5-10 times greater risk of symptomatic infection than elementary school teachers, depending on the level of community transmission. These findings agree with empirical data from Sweden, which found that risk to teachers increased with student age [59].…”

Household COVID-19 risk and in-person schooling

“…This means that one of the main reasons for a focus on schools is not the risk to students, but the risk that in-person schooling poses to teachers and family members, as well as its impact on the trajectory of the overall epidemic. Yet, few studies have focused on the risk in-person school poses to household members ( 15 ).…”

Closing schools is not evidence based and harms children

“…In-person learning increases teachers’ exposure and might be expected to increase their risk of becoming infected,13 but accumulating evidence shows that teachers and school staff are not at higher risk of hospital admission or death from covid-19 compared with other workers 1415. Teacher absence because of confirmed covid-19 in England was similar in primary and secondary schools in the autumn term,16 despite secondary schoolchildren having much higher rates of SARS-CoV-2 infection 17.…”