Manuel Heitor, Portuguese Minister for Science, Technology and Higher Education eudebates with EU Ministers the closed schools. [ Ссылка ] As U.S. authorities debate whether to keep schools open, a consensus is emerging in Europe that children are a considerable factor in the spread of Covid-19—and more countries are shutting schools for the first time since the spring.
Closures have been announced recently in the U.K., Germany, Ireland, Austria, Denmark and the Netherlands on concerns about a more infectious variant of the virus first detected in the U.K. and rising case counts despite lockdowns.
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While the debate continues, recent studies and outbreaks show that schoolchildren, even younger ones, can play a significant role in spreading infections.
“In the second wave we acquired much more evidence that schoolchildren are almost equally, if not more infected by SARS-CoV-2 than others,“ said Antoine Flahault, director of the University of Geneva’s Institute of Global Health.
Schools have represented one of the most contentious issues of the pandemic given the possible long-term impact of closures on children and the economic fallout from parents being forced to stay home.
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European researchers suggest school closure during pandemic will reduce transmission
In the case of an infectious disease pandemic, closing schools could cut down transmission rates by up to 21%.
In the case of an infectious disease pandemic, closing schools could cut down transmission rates by up to 21%. This is the result of a mathematical modelling study by EU-funded researchers now published in the journal BioMed Central (BMC) Infectious Diseases.
Part of the funding for this research came out of the POLYMOD ('Improving public health policy in Europe through modelling and economic evaluation of interventions for the control of infectious diseases') project, which received financial support from the European Commission under the 'Research for policy support' Theme of the Sixth Framework Programme (FP6).
'If we can assume that school closure in a pandemic situation resembles school closure during holiday periods, then our results show that such a strategy would have significant impact on disease transmission, of about 21%,' the authors say. 'Of course, this is a conservative estimate as, during a pandemic, typical weekend activities with a strong social component such as team sports and cultural outings may not take place. On the other hand, the expected large macroeconomic costs of school closures would have to be balanced against these benefits.'
'Mathematical models of how infectious diseases spread from person to person through those close contacts rely on assumptions regarding the underlying transmission process,' adds the lead author of the study, Dr Niel Hens of the universities of Hasselt and Antwerp in Belgium. 'One of these assumptions is that school closure will result in reduced exposure for children. Until now, however, the exact impact of this measure has not been proven.'
Frequently, scientists tend to summarise the assumptions made on the underlying transmission processes in a so-called 'Who acquires infection from whom' (WAIFW) matrix. Dr Hens and colleagues, however, based their analysis on a large-scale social contact survey in eight European countries (Belgium, England and Wales, Finland, Germany, Italy, Luxemburg, Poland and the Netherlands) to reveal how basic reproduction numbers of an infection change from weekdays to weekend and holiday periods.
Their study indicates that social contacts go down by about 10% when schools are closed. Also, social mixing patterns are different on weekdays versus weekends: during the week, same-age mixing is obviously more frequent, while between-generation mixing is prevalent on weekends.
'Children are important spreaders of many close-contact pathogens due to their frequent and intimate social contacts, their general hygiene, and perhaps their increased shedding,' explains Dr Hens. 'The reduced opportunity for contact we describe here would be a great benefit in a pandemic situation.'
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