Reopening elementary schools carries less COVID-19 risk than high schools – but that doesn’t guarantee safety
While only a fraction of the country’s 50 million public school kids headed back to school in-person this month, many have already found themselves back at home.
Within two weeks of opening, multiple states reported school-based COVID-19 outbreaks, and thousands of students and school staff have been quarantined following possible exposure to SARS-CoV-2, the coronavirus that causes COVID-19.
Many of these districts are in areas with high community spread of COVID-19, and some didn’t enforce social distancing or require face masks.
Our team of infectious disease epidemiologists collected data in the San Francisco Bay Area and ran computer simulations to examine how school closures and reopenings can affect the spread of COVID-19.
What we learned points to three key strategies for minimi...
