Rotation-based schedules in elementary schools to prevent COVID-19 spread: a simulation study

  1. Cyril Brom
  2. Tomáš Diviák
  3. Jakub Drbohlav
  4. Václav Korbel
  5. René Levínský
  6. Roman Neruda
  7. Gabriela Kadlecová
  8. Josef Šlerka
  9. Martin Šmíd
  10. Jan Trnka
  11. Petra Vidnerová

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Abstract

Rotations of schoolchildren were considered as a non-pharmacological intervention in the COVID-19 pandemic. This study investigates the impact of different rotation and testing schedules.We built an agent-based model of interactions among pupils and teachers based on a survey in an elementary school in Prague, Czechia. This model contains 624 schoolchildren and 55 teachers and about 27 thousands social contacts in 10 layers. The layers reflect different types of contacts (classroom, cafeteria, etc.) in the survey. On this multi-graph structure we run a modified SEIR model of covid-19 infection. The parameters of the model are calibrated on data from the outbreak in the Czech Republic in spring 2020. Weekly rotations of in-class and distance learning are an effective preventative measure in schools reducing the spread of covid-19 by 75–81% . Antigen testing twice a week or PCR once a week significantly reduces infections even when using tests with a lower sensitivity. The structure of social contacts between pupils and teachers strongly influences the transmission. While the density of contact graphs for older pupils is 1.5 times higher than for younger pupils, the teachers’ network is an order of magnitude denser. Teachers moreover act as bridges between groups of children, responsible for 14–18% of infections in the secondary school compared to 8–11% in the primary school. Weekly rotations with regular testing are a highly effective non-pharmacological intervention for the prevention of covid-19 spread in schools and a way to keep schools open during an epidemic.

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  1. Version published to 10.1038/s41598-023-45788-8
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    SciScore for 10.1101/2021.06.28.21259628: (What is this?)

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    Results from LimitationRecognizer: We detected the following sentences addressing limitations in the study:
    Other limitations of our study relate to the virological properties of the virus. Specifically, we are not considering different variants of SARS-CoV-2 and their effect in the epidemiological component of our SEIR model. The model was calibrated based on the Czech epidemiological situation from March to June 2020. However, different epidemic levels in our simulations, spanning an order of magnitude in infected imports, indicate the robustness of our results. Additionally, the model may be extended by calibrating its parameters to different variants of the SARS-CoV-2 virus or even to different viruses altogether provided that the relevant transmission pathways are interpersonal contact networks such as with other respiratory diseases. Our results indicate the roles of specific components of elementary school operation in the spread of covid-19 and the effectiveness of selected measures and school regimes on the spread of covid-19 within schools. They do not pertain in any way to the role of schools themselves in the spread of covid-19 in the entire population. To our knowledge, this is the first agent-based model assessing the effectiveness of individual measures on covid-19 spread in a school setting based on real contact networks derived from empirical data. Our contact network data align with previous research based on both simulated data (McGee et al., 2021) or contact networks obtained using wearable sensors (Gemmetto et al., 2014; Stehlé et al., 2011) in showing densely ...

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  3. Version published to 10.1101/2021.06.28.21259628v1 on medRxiv