These older children are often as big as adults, yet they may have some of the same unhygienic habits as young children. They may also have been more likely than younger children to socialize with their peers within high-rise complexes in South Korea.
“We can speculate all day about this, but we just don’t know,” said Dr. Osterholm. “The final message is: there will be transmission.”
He and other experts said schools will need to prepare for infections to appear. In addition to implementing physical distance, hand hygiene, and masks, schools should also decide when and how to screen students and staff, including, for example, bus drivers, when and how long to require people to get in quarantine, and when to decide to close and reopen schools.
But they face a monumental challenge because the evidence on transmission within schools has so far been inconclusive, experts said. Some countries like Denmark and Finland have successfully reopened schools, but others, like China, Israel and South Korea, have had to close them again.
“People, depending on their ideology of opening the school, are choosing what evidence to present, and that should be avoided,” said Jeffrey Shaman, an epidemiologist at the Mailman School of Public Health at Columbia University in New York.
Although the new study does not offer definitive answers, he said, it does indicate that schools can increase virus levels within a community.
“As long as children aren’t just a complete dead end, unable to transmit the virus, which doesn’t seem to be the case, putting them together in schools, mixing them with teachers and other students will provide additional opportunities for the virus to move from person to person. “, said.
