How to safely reopen school in the fall

Masks, Social Distance, Push-ups Tests: These unpleasant coronavirus protections are not yet over for K-12 children returning to school from summer vacation.

It is unlikely that the COVID-19 vaccine will be available to children under the age of 12 before classes resume in the fall. However, a new study shows that on average, one infected child is less likely to infect another student if elementary school students wear masks and keep a certain distance throughout the day. .. Turned out to be expensive. 30 day course.

However, if schools abolish masks, abandon efforts to reduce child-to-child mixing, and fail to detect and isolate potentially infected people, outbreaks will certainly occur. Modeling exercises show that there is.

However, these outbreaks do not always occur on a large scale, forcing local boards of education and mayors to make difficult choices.

If you do not want to admit infection to a relatively small number of students, take measures that may be unpopular, such as hybrid attendance / online learning, strict isolation of infected students from their classmates, and continued use of face covers. You should consider hiring. ..

One infected child could spread the coronavirus to an average of 1.7 other children in 30 days during 2,000 runs of a model elementary school with mitigation measures such as masks, social distance, and quarantine. Yes. Discovered by researchers.

This may sound like a strong reason to withdraw the most troublesome public health measures in primary school. However, it does not take into account the essential elements of randomness revealed by the model. There is an approximately 8% chance that more than 5 children will be infected with one infected student in 30 days.

This is still a small outbreak and is relatively unlikely. However, it can be very realistic for the family involved.

Also, in high schools returning to in-class instruction, the risk is even greater if measures are inadequate to reduce coronavirus infection. This is mainly because older adolescents are more likely to get the coronavirus than younger children.

Students stay on campus five days a week to ease social distance and masking, so when one high school student sows, another student, employee, or classmate can stay for a month. 23 to 75 infections can spread to families. Weekly testing can reduce the number of downstream infections to five over the same period.

Importantly, this model does not consider the efficacy of vaccines between the ages of 12 and 17.COVID-19 vaccine created by Pfizer and BioNTech Allow use December-16 and 17 years old, 12-15 years old From may..

new discovery Published Monday of Annals of Internal Medicine. They come from a detailed “agent-based” computer model in which students, school staff, and virtual individuals within a group of student families interact under defined rules that determine their behavior and infectivity. I am. was born.

Such a model captures the range of results that occur when different people interact under different rule sets. Therefore, it is especially useful for comparing the relative effectiveness of policy measures that change people’s interactions.

Researchers at the University of Maryland and Harvard School of Public Health have created a model of an elementary school with 638 children and 30 teachers and managers in 432 households.

High school has grown and students have become more complex. In this model, a total of 1,451 students from 1,223 families rotated eight classrooms a day. About 63 teachers supervised these students and gathered in the staff room. In addition, 60 school staff interacted with the students both inside and outside the classroom.

Various classroom arrangements have been attempted. Everyone will participate full-time face-to-face. Organize students into a “cohort” within the school and engage in limited interaction beyond that. Cut the class size in half (double the number of teachers). And half of the students come to campus two days a week, the other half attend directly for another two days, and everyone works online three days a week.

Researchers have simulated these scenarios thousands of times in a variety of scenarios, positive with or without testing for asymptomatic infections with high, medium, and low “mitigation” measures. Corresponding students and infected classmates are provided with different levels of quarantine.

The findings emphasize that the risk of returning students to campus is small, but the benefits are great. Dr. Ted Long, The Executive Director of COVID-19 Test & Trace Corps in New York City wrote: editorial It is a research accessory.

“The evidence is now compelling. Our school has been safely reopened,” said Long, who has seen about 40% of children in US schools in the classroom since the pandemic closed schools across the country. I pointed out that I wasn’t invited to.

“If schools can be reopened for face-to-face learning, we need to avoid the mental health and educational crisis in front of us,” he added.

This study was conducted in a situation where COVID-19 is a concern among school-aged children.

New arrival report According to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, COVID-19 hospitalization rates for young people are about three times higher than those hospitalized for influenza during the typical influenza season. In addition, more than 31% of adolescents aged 12 to 17 years who were hospitalized for COVID-19 this spring needed to be admitted to the intensive care unit, and nearly 5% needed a ventilator.

CDC Director Dr. Rochelle Warrensky Call a number of deep concerns.

The report’s findings “strengthen the importance of ongoing COVID-19 precautions among young people, such as vaccination and wearing correct and consistent masks,” the authors write.

Meanwhile, COVID-19 illness and death have skyrocketed among Brazilian children and adolescents. Concerns raised The gamma variant, the first detected and now widespread version of the coronavirus in Brazil, has been shown to have more serious effects on children than other strains.

Gamma variants make up 7% of coronavirus samples sequenced in the United States during the two weeks leading up to May 8, have a high infection rate, and have some ability to avoid the effects of COVID-19 treatment. It is related. ..