Seroprevalence and immunity of SARS-CoV-2 infection in children and adolescents in schools in Switzerland: design for a longitudinal, school-based prospective cohort study

  1. Agne Ulyte
  2. Thomas Radtke
  3. Irène A. Abela
  4. Sarah R. Haile
  5. Julia Braun
  6. Ruedi Jung
  7. Christoph Berger
  8. Alexandra Trkola
  9. Jan Fehr
  10. Milo A. Puhan
  11. Susi Kriemler

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Abstract

Objectives

This longitudinal cohort study aims to assess the extent and patterns of seroprevalence of severe acute respiratory syndrome coronavirus 2 (SARS-CoV-2) antibodies in school-attending children, and their parents and school personnel. It will examine risk factors for infection, the relationship between seropositivity and symptoms, and temporal persistence of antibodies.

Methods

The study ( Ciao Corona ) will enroll a regionally representative, random sample of schools in the canton of Zurich, where 18% of the Swiss population live. Children aged 5–16 years, attending primary and secondary schools, and their parents and school personnel are invited. Venous blood and saliva samples are collected for serological testing in June/July 2020, in October/November 2020, and in March/April 2021. Bi-monthly questionnaires will cover SARS-CoV-2 symptoms and tests, health, preventive behavior, and lifestyle information. Hierarchical Bayesian logistic regression models will account for sensitivity and specificity of the serological tests in the analyses and complex sampling structure, i.e., clustering within classes and schools.

Results and conclusions

This unique school-based study will allow describing temporal trends of immunity, evaluate effects of preventive measures and will inform goal-oriented policy decisions during subsequent outbreaks.

Trial registration ClinicalTrials.gov Identifier: NCT04448717, registered June 26, 2020. https://clinicaltrials.gov/ct2/show/NCT04448717 .

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  1. ScreenIT

    SciScore for 10.1101/2020.08.30.20184671: (What is this?)

    Please note, not all rigor criteria are appropriate for all manuscripts.

    Table 1: Rigor

    Institutional Review Board StatementIRB: Ethical aspects: The study was approved by the Cantonal Ethics Committee Zurich (
    Consent: Written informed consent is obtained from parents or legal guardians (referred to as parents further on) of participating children
    RandomizationStudy overview, design and population: Study design: This is a longitudinal, population-based observational study in a regionally-representative cohort of children and adolescents from randomly selected schools and classes in the canton of Zurich, Switzerland.
    Blindingnot detected.
    Power Analysisnot detected.
    Sex as a biological variablenot detected.

    Table 2: Resources

    Antibodies
    SentencesResources
    The ABCORA test (version 2.0) provides a highly differentiated picture of the immune response: immunoglobulins G (IgG), M (IgM) and A (IgA) antibodies against four SARS-CoV-2 targets (receptor binding domain (RBD), spike proteins S1 and S2), and the nucleocapsid protein (N) of SARS-CoV-2) are analyzed, resulting in twelve analyzed parameters.
    IgA) antibodies against four SARS-CoV-2 targets (receptor binding domain (RBD)
    suggested: None
    S2
    suggested: None

    Results from OddPub: We did not detect open data. We also did not detect open code. Researchers are encouraged to share open data when possible (see Nature blog).

    Results from LimitationRecognizer: An explicit section about the limitations of the techniques employed in this study was not found. We encourage authors to address study limitations.

    Results from TrialIdentifier: We found the following clinical trial numbers in your paper:

    IdentifierStatusTitle
    NCT04448717RecruitingLongitudinal Study of Seroprevalence of SARS-CoV-2 Antibodie…

    Results from Barzooka: We did not find any issues relating to the usage of bar graphs.

    Results from JetFighter: We did not find any issues relating to colormaps.

    Results from rtransparent:
    • Thank you for including a conflict of interest statement. Authors are encouraged to include this statement when submitting to a journal.
    • No funding statement was detected.
    • No protocol registration statement was detected.

    About SciScore

    SciScore is an automated tool that is designed to assist expert reviewers by finding and presenting formulaic information scattered throughout a paper in a standard, easy to digest format. SciScore checks for the presence and correctness of RRIDs (research resource identifiers), and for rigor criteria such as sex and investigator blinding. For details on the theoretical underpinning of rigor criteria and the tools shown here, including references cited, please follow this link.

  2. Version published to 10.1007/s00038-020-01495-z
  3. Version published to 10.1101/2020.08.30.20184671 on medRxiv