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The doubt came to many. Did the reopening of schools help spread the virus? Of course, the doubt should not be understood in the sense that the school environment is particularly conducive to contagion, despite the average of more than 20 students per class and despite promiscuity, bad defenses, carelessness, deficiencies structural of school complexes.
The role of transportation
In fact, it can be assumed, after the efforts made last summer by the ministry, teaching principals and all staff, that the school environment is no longer riskier than others. The doubt about the school worries above all the scheme of contacts and mobility that school activity in attendance inevitably involves: crowded transportation, meetings before and after school hours, movements of parents and grandparents.
7.8 million children involved
Excluding university students, the pupils of all public schools (from kindergartens to secondary schools) are just under 7.8 million, almost 13% of the Italian population. Therefore, a mass of people (plus the induced) potentially capable of creating very important effects on viral spread. But if we look at the numbers, none of this seems to emerge. The “proof”, however crude, comes from a simple comparison.
Let’s take the incidence of students in the population of the different regions and take the positive part of the period from mid-September to mid-November 2020.If there is any relationship between the reopening of schools and the spread of the virus, there must be a positive relationship between these two numbers: where more students return to school they should see, within a few weeks, more infected at home or in the hospital What you see is the opposite. The relationship between these two quantities is very weak and, in any case, contrary to what was imagined: with the exception of Valle d’Aosta, the proportion of students and viral spread tend to be negatively correlated (v. Figure). The data seems to tell us that the driver of the second wave is not in the school.
* The author of the article is a professor at the University of Bologna and a member of the Ivass Council
