Other countries, such as Israel, opened schools at the same time as restrictions were lifted in May in surrounding communities, leading to Covid-19 outbreaks that had infected 1,335 Israeli students and 691 employees as of July 15. In Israel, schools reopened without masking or social distancing rules, according to The Wall Street Journal, and allowed up to 40 students per class, unlike the Scandinavian nations, which had a limited class size. Since May, Israel has closed 125 schools and 258 kindergartens due to outbreaks.
Despite the Israeli numbers, there are other epidemiological case studies indicating that the spread of the coronavirus may be limited in schools. In the German state of Saxony, doctors at the University of Dresden analyzed blood samples from 1,500 students and 500 teachers after the schools reopened in May. Only 12 tested positive for antibodies against the coronavirus, indicating a low level of community infection. Their preliminary study, which was published on a prepress server and was not reviewed by a scientific journal, also reported that, although coronavirus cases were detected in three of the 13 schools surveyed, the infection did not spread through schools or surroundings. community.
Among the 24 households in which at least one family member had previously tested positive for Covid-19, there was only one transmission of the virus to another family member. The study authors say that means the schoolchildren were not infected despite living with an infected family member, and they also did not pass the virus on to other schoolchildren. “Our study finds that students play a less crucial role in virus transmission than originally thought,” Jakob Armann, author of the study and pediatric infectious disease specialist at the Children’s Hospital of the University of Dresden, wrote in an email. .
“We were unable to identify any hidden groups, even in schools that had identified cases before the end of March,” Arman continued. “There is a way to reopen schools safely while maintaining certain measures (for example, wearing a universal mask on public transportation, in stores, without sporting events) to keep case numbers in the general population so low that can keep students in school at the same time. “
While the German study could be considered good news for parents who want their children to return to classes in person, there is one big caveat. Unlike the United States, which has been plagued by a chaotic federal response and disparate measures by individual governors, German health officials followed public health guidelines and handled the coronavirus outbreak quickly once it emerged in March. Germany instituted widespread and early testing and treatment protocols, and established many intensive care beds. German citizens also relied on their government’s instructions to take precautions and the widely observed patterns of social distancing.
Since then, Germany has reopened its schools, economy and sports leagues without losing control of the virus. Germany has had 206,667 cases and 9,124 deaths as of July 26, according to the Johns Hopkins University Coronavirus Resource Center, compared to more than 4.2 million confirmed cases and 146,831 deaths in the United States, more than in any another country.
With 2,000 participants, the German study was relatively small. In epidemiology, a larger sample size can provide the kind of statistical power to drive a conclusion about the spread of the disease among a population. So it’s also worth looking at that study of nearly 5,700 South Korean coronavirus patients that was released this month on a preprint server by researchers from the Korean Centers for Disease Control. Through extensive contract monitoring, the authors were able to trace the viral spread of so-called “index patients,” which are the first confirmed cases in a community group of infections, to the additional 59,000 people they infected. They found that children younger than 10 years who were positive for Covid-19 had the lowest transmission rates of any age group, while children between 10 and 19 had transmission rates similar to adults.
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