Coronavirus in schools, more than a thousand institutions with at least one infection and a hundred outbreaks

There are at least 1,120 Italian schools in which at least one case of coronavirus has been found, especially widespread among students. And 99 are those in which an outbreak broke out between schools, with at least two cases linked to each other. This is the partial budget, set at the time of publication but constantly evolving minute by minute, for the dissemination of Covid in schools that, pending the official report of the Ministry of Education that was to be published at the beginning of the Last week, they were written by an Italian student and PhD student: Lorenzo Ruffino, enrolled in Economics at the University of Turin, and Vittorio Nicoletta, PhD in Decision-making Systems in Canada.

The empirical monitoring of the impact of Covid after six months of “school closure” is based on news published in the media and on reports sent by students, parents or teachers as of September 14, the start day of most of The schools, net of Delay of any Region due to referendum and administrative or unique complexes that on the date established for the restart still did not have desks or teachers.

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Looking at the tables, it turns out that 1243 news items appeared on the subject. But there are 1,120 schools involved. A small minority, only 17, had already confirmed positive results before September 14: therefore, it is the nurseries that started first. On the other hand, 429 are those in which the infection occurred between September 14 and 23; and 673 those in which the diffusion took place as of September 24, the date on which the institutes reopened in all the Regions.

“In absolute numbers, there seem to be few schools affected by the infection for which we could find information compared to the total of Italian institutions, which are almost 67 thousand,” explains Lorenzo Ruffino, “but we must also assess the impact in real life ”. In at least 139 of these cases the entire school was closed. And in the rest, entire classes have been quarantined.

The school, however, would not be the engine of the epidemic for now. In Lazio, for example, “the majority are infections with extracurricular links, therefore, in situations of aggregation or family, contexts brought from outside to school”, states the regional health advisor Alessio D’Amato.

Returning to the dossier of the two scholarship recipients, a total of 1,418 students and teachers would be infected. “Supposing that each class has about twenty thousand students, we calculate that just three weeks after the first bell, 25 thousand children could already be in quarantine : a problem for parents who have to stay with them because perhaps it is better not to leave them with the ninth and a problem for institutions that have to guarantee distance education for at least fourteen days ”, adds Ruffino.

Ruffino and Nicoletta chart

The graphs show that students are the most affected with 78.4% of cases, followed by teachers (10.5%) and staff (4%). In 7% of the cases, however, it was not possible to determine the infected person.

Those most affected are secondary schools and technical or professional higher education institutes that generally welcome, except for advances or failures, adolescents between 14 and 18 years old, who alone occupy a third of the pie. Then there are the children and the elementary and kindergarten teachers and teachers.

Ruffino and Nicoletta chart

The geography of contagion in schools still says that the virus has spread the most in Lombardy, followed by Veneto, Emilia Romagna and Tuscany. A map that only partially coincides with that of total infections but in which the greater or lesser distribution of news by Regions and ASL and the departure date of the lessons weighs.

All charts and maps of the epidemic.