The Science Behind Keeping Schools Open. Part 2.

It is now mid November 2020. Our schools have been open, to some degree, since late mid August. As I mentioned, I believe the science says schools should be open, at this point. The question is, what does the data say about schools and the community now. In Part 3, I will discuss US data.

Data from England

There is robust data from England. So lets talk about what they have been doing there first. Since they went back to school in the UK, they have been doing school as normal. No mitigation, no masks, no social distancing, normal class sizes, the whole lot. Only recently have they had high school students use masks during passing periods. I believe that the UK is likely the best source of comparison to the US, it is a large and diverse population.

The first data set is from Public Health England, their weekly influenza and COVID-19 surveillance graphs. Data regarding school infection numbers starts at page 17. What stands out is rates in high school or secondary school aged children is flattening out after rising sharply after school started. Since this data is collected from symptomatic children it may be missing cases from asymptomatic children.

Survey data being collected by England’s Office of National Statistics shows a similar picture to the PHE data. School year age two to school year 6 has the lowest rates of school aged children. The updated data shows a slight increase in age 2-6th grade and 7th to 11th grade children but a continued decline in 12th grad to 24 year old range. With the weekly updated data the overall picture remains, transmission in school does not drive transmission in the community, transmission in the community drives transmission at school. Still low at primary school.