The impact of school reopening on the spread of COVID-19 in England

Abstract

By mid-May 2020, cases of COVID-19 in the UK had been declining for over a month; a multi-phase emergence from lockdown was planned, including a scheduled partial reopening of schools on 1 June 2020. Although evidence suggests that children generally display mild symptoms, the size of the school-age population means the total impact of reopening schools is unclear. Here, we present work from mid-May 2020 that focused on the imminent opening of schools and consider what these results imply for future policy. We compared eight strategies for reopening primary and secondary schools in England. Modifying a transmission model fitted to UK SARS-CoV-2 data, we assessed how reopening schools affects contact patterns, anticipated secondary infections and the relative change in the reproduction number, R . We determined the associated public health impact and its sensitivity to changes in social distancing within the wider community. We predicted that reopening schools with half-sized classes or focused on younger children was unlikely to push R above one. Older children generally have more social contacts, so reopening secondary schools results in more cases than reopening primary schools, while reopening both could have pushed R above one in some regions. Reductions in community social distancing were found to outweigh and exacerbate any impacts of reopening. In particular, opening schools when the reproduction number R is already above one generates the largest increase in cases. Our work indicates that while any school reopening will result in increased mixing and infection amongst children and the wider population, reopening schools alone in June 2020 was unlikely to push R above one. Ultimately, reopening decisions are a difficult trade-off between epidemiological consequences and the emotional, educational and developmental needs of children. Into the future, there are difficult questions about what controls can be instigated such that schools can remain open if cases increase. This article is part of the theme issue ‘Modelling that shaped the early COVID-19 pandemic response in the UK’.

Fitting to the UK COVID-19 outbreak, short-term forecasts and estimating the reproductive number

“…Throughout much of our work with this model, the values of α and τ are key in determining behaviour -in particular the role of school children in transmission [16]. We argue that a low τ and a low α are the only combination that are consistent with the growing body of data suggesting that levels of seroprevalence show only moderate variation across age-ranges [17], yet children do not appear to play a major role in transmission [18,19].…”

Modelling that shaped the early COVID-19 pandemic response in the UK

“…It includes models that are used in the ongoing overview of the epidemic with weekly consensus estimates of the Reproduction number [19,20], short term and medium-term projections [36] and real-time data stream monitoring [37] all playing a part. There are time-sensitive, changing policy questions, such as the impact of mass gatherings [38], reopening schools in May 2020 [39][40][41], the introduction of support bubbles [42] or the impact of contact tracing and lockdown [43]. We have evidence that drove the understanding of nosocomial and care home transmission [44,45], the importance of segmenting and shielding [46] as well as the possible impact of waning immunity [47].…”

Assessing the Role of Daily Activities and Mobility in the Spread of COVID-19 in Montreal With an Agent-Based Approach

“…At the time of writing this paper, the role played by schools and school-aged children in community transmission is still controversial [see European Center for Disease Prevention and Control (ECDC) (2020) for an exhaustive review on the subject]. Studies suggest that where transmission levels are low, school openings do not significantly increase the risk of community transmission (Falk et al, 2021;Zimmerman et al, 2021), and where transmission levels are high, schools can significantly contribute to community transmission (European Center for Disease Prevention and Control (ECDC), 2020; Keeling et al, 2021). Furthermore, empirical data shows that the presence of school-aged children increases the risk of infection in households (Bravata et al, 2021;Gold et al, 2021).…”