The impact of unplanned school closure on children’s social contact: Rapid evidence review

Abstract

BackgroundEmergency school closures are often used as public health interventions during infectious disease outbreaks in an attempt to minimise the spread of infection. However, if children continue to mix with others outside the home during the closures, these measures are unlikely to be effective. ObjectivesThis review aimed to summarise existing literature on children's activities and contacts made outside the home during unplanned school closures. MethodsWe searched four databases from inception to February 2020 for relevant literature. Main findings were extracted.

The impact of believing you have had COVID-19 on behaviour: Cross-sectional survey

“…Those who have a child were more likely to report having had coronavirus perhaps linked to greater exposure, or perceived exposure, among this group. (12,13) However, schools in the UK have been closed since 23 rd March 2020 except for children of key workers (14) reducing contacts between children (15) and these results pertaining to having children should be taken with caution as there was no longer any evidence for an association when analysing only those who had not been tested for COVID-19. Those who were employed (full-time, part-time or self-employed) were also more likely to think that they had had COVID-19, as were those working in key sectors.…”

Letter to the editor: Evidence on school closure and children’s social contact: useful for coronavirus disease (COVID-19)?

“…Therefore, findings based on geographically and temporally limited school closures may be poorly informative for a pandemic at the scale of COVID-19 and consequent temporally extended school closures. This is the case because risk perception of children and also of their parents (other factors that Brooks and colleagues found related to the respect of social isolation [1]) is clearly different in the two scenarios and therefore also adherence to social isolation is probably different [5]. In this perspective, one of the main conclusions of the review, i.e.…”

“…We read with interest the recent rapid evidence review by Brooks and colleagues about the impact of unplanned school closure on children's social contact [1]. This review substantially aimed at investigating if children adhere to social isolation or continue to mix with others, limiting the effects of school closure and of quarantine.…”

“…Brooks and colleagues [1] clearly reviewed literature on unplanned school closure to extract potential clues in relation to the management of the current COVID-19 pandemic, but generalisability of findings for this aim is questionable, as acknowledged by authors in the discussion. Two intertwined main obstacles for the generalisability of findings relate to the geographic expansion of the pandemic and to the temporal duration of school closures.…”

SARS-CoV2 infection and primary school closure

“…To the editor: The recent review of Brooks et al on the impact of unplanned school closure on children's social contact [1] for controlling outbreaks brings interesting information that could apply to coronavirus disease . In addition, a recent case in France of a 9-year-old child infected by SARS-CoV-2 [2] raises the issue of risk assessment for other children at a same school and/or in a same classroom.…”