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1/ Is it safe to open schools during COVID? Yes - more evidence from a new article in Clinical Infectious Diseases. https://academic.oup.com/cid/advance-article/doi/10.1093/cid/ciab306/6224418
2/ Background: The argument for opening schools is pretty straightforward. COVID is very low risk for young people (esp K-12), education is greatly beneficial, and we can make accommodations for at risk students. BUT - what is opening schools increases COVID in surrounding areas?
3/ Well, evidence is piling up that letting kids go to school does not increase COVID in the community in a noticeable way. This study in Clinical Infectious Diseases looks at the correlation between school attendance and county case counts in Indiana. https://academic.oup.com/cid/advance-article/doi/10.1093/cid/ciab306/6224418
4/ The evidence is simple: Indiana early on had a random sample test program for COVID and attendance is pretty easy to get. So what is the correlation between school opening and COVID? Drumroll, please....
5/ From the abstract: "a 10 percentage point increase in K-12 students attending school in-person is associated with a daily increase in SARS-CoV-2 cases in the county equal to 0.336 cases/100,000 residents of all ages."
6/ Let me emphasize that point. In Indiana, the data suggests that going from no school to 100% attendance roughly gives you 3.336 extra COVID per 100k people of all ages.
7/ Just to put that number in context, the city of Indianapolis has about 900,000 people and would have created about 10 extra infections by going from no school to completely open school.
8/ Bosslet et al. just report on estimated case increase for the whole population. If we note that COVID is dangerous in a fraction of cases, then most locales would not see any extra increase in mortality or hospitalizations. Small counties probably won't see any diff at all.
9/ Bottom line: Closing schools was likely a very big mistake. Kids are low risk and transmission to community is microscopic in relative size. Instead, COVID policy should not worry about K-12 and focus on protecting older folks and other high risk groups.
