A global assessment of the impact of school closure in reducing COVID-19 spread.
Philos Trans A Math Phys Eng Sci
; 380(2214): 20210124, 2022 Jan 10.
Article
in English
| MEDLINE | ID: covidwho-1528261
ABSTRACT
Prolonged school closure has been adopted worldwide to control COVID-19. Indeed, UN Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization figures show that two-thirds of an academic year was lost on average worldwide due to COVID-19 school closures. Such pre-emptive implementation was predicated on the premise that school children are a core group for COVID-19 transmission. Using surveillance data from the Chinese cities of Shenzhen and Anqing together, we inferred that compared with the elderly aged 60 and over, children aged 18 and under and adults aged 19-59 were 75% and 32% less susceptible to infection, respectively. Using transmission models parametrized with synthetic contact matrices for 177 jurisdictions around the world, we showed that the lower susceptibility of school children substantially limited the effectiveness of school closure in reducing COVID-19 transmissibility. Our results, together with recent findings that clinical severity of COVID-19 in children is lower, suggest that school closure may not be ideal as a sustained, primary intervention for controlling COVID-19. This article is part of the theme issue 'Data science approach to infectious disease surveillance'.
Keywords
Full text:
Available
Collection:
International databases
Database:
MEDLINE
Main subject:
COVID-19
Type of study:
Experimental Studies
/
Prognostic study
Limits:
Aged
/
Child
/
Humans
/
Middle aged
Language:
English
Journal:
Philos Trans A Math Phys Eng Sci
Journal subject:
Biophysics
/
Biomedical Engineering
Year:
2022
Document Type:
Article
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