TY - JOUR
AU - Munday, James D.
AU - Sherratt, Katharine
AU - Meakin, Sophie
AU - Endo, Akira
AU - Pearson, Carl A.B.
AU - Hellewell, Joel
AU - Abbott, Sam
AU - Bosse, Nikos I.
AU - CMMID COVID-19 Working Group
AU - Atkins, Katherine E.
AU - Wallinga, Jacco
AU - Edmunds, W. John
AU - van Hoek, Albert Jan
AU - Funk, Sebastian
PY - 2021
DA - March
TI - Implications of the school-household network structure on SARS-CoV-2 transmission under school reopening strategies in England
JO - Nature Communications
VL - 12
DO - https://doi.org/10.1038/s41467-021-22213-0
AB - In early 2020 many countries closed schools to mitigate the spread of SARS-CoV-2. Since then, governments have sought to relax the closures, engendering a need to understand associated risks. Using address records, we construct a network of schools in England connected through pupils who share households. We evaluate the risk of transmission between schools under different reopening scenarios. We show that whilst reopening select year-groups causes low risk of large-scale transmission, reopening secondary schools could result in outbreaks affecting up to 2.5 million households if unmitigated, highlighting the importance of careful monitoring and within-school infection control to avoid further school closures or other restrictions.
PB - Springer Nature
UR - https://www.research.ed.ac.uk/en/publications/d9503f40-fd2a-44c2-8ef1-047c59c52c40
KW - Coronavirus (COVID-19)
KW - Children, young people and families
KW - Education
KW - Service recovery and remobilisation
ER