School closures reduced social mixing of children during COVID-19 with implications for transmission risk and school reopening policies
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Abstract
School closures may reduce the size of social networks among children, potentially limiting infectious disease transmission. To estimate the impact of K–12 closures and reopening policies on children's social interactions and COVID-19 incidence in California's Bay Area, we collected data on children's social contacts and assessed implications for transmission using an individual-based model. Elementary and Hispanic children had more contacts during closures than high school and non-Hispanic children, respectively. We estimated that spring 2020 closures of elementary schools averted 2167 cases in the Bay Area (95% CI: −985, 5572), fewer than middle (5884; 95% CI: 1478, 11.550), high school (8650; 95% CI: 3054, 15 940) and workplace (15 813; 95% CI: 9963, 22 617) closures. Under assumptions of moderate community transmission, we estimated that reopening for a four-month semester without any precautions will increase symptomatic illness among high school teachers (an additional 40.7% expected to experience symptomatic infection, 95% CI: 1.9, 61.1), middle school teachers (37.2%, 95% CI: 4.6, 58.1) and elementary school teachers (4.1%, 95% CI: −1.7, 12.0). However, we found that reopening policies for elementary schools that combine universal masking with classroom cohorts could result in few within-school transmissions, while high schools may require masking plus a staggered hybrid schedule. Stronger community interventions (e.g. remote work, social distancing) decreased the risk of within-school transmission across all measures studied, with the influence of community transmission minimized as the effectiveness of the within-school measures increased.
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SciScore for 10.1101/2020.08.06.20169797: (What is this?)
Please note, not all rigor criteria are appropriate for all manuscripts.
Table 1: Rigor
NIH rigor criteria are not applicable to paper type.Table 2: Resources
No key resources detected.
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: We detected the following sentences addressing limitations in the study:Another limitation relates to the social contact survey sample, which provided incomplete representation of the racial and economic diversity of the Bay Area. Selection bias likely arose from its administration in English, and because survey respondents were less likely to be essential workers. Discrepancies observed in the number of …
SciScore for 10.1101/2020.08.06.20169797: (What is this?)
Please note, not all rigor criteria are appropriate for all manuscripts.
Table 1: Rigor
NIH rigor criteria are not applicable to paper type.Table 2: Resources
No key resources detected.
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: We detected the following sentences addressing limitations in the study:Another limitation relates to the social contact survey sample, which provided incomplete representation of the racial and economic diversity of the Bay Area. Selection bias likely arose from its administration in English, and because survey respondents were less likely to be essential workers. Discrepancies observed in the number of contacts by work location (outside vs. inside the home) and ethnicity (Hispanic or Latinx vs. non-Hispanic or Latinx) are thus expected to be biased towards the null. Since the survey was only administered to households with children, our community contact matrix was unable to capture contact patterns among and between households who do not have children, particularly missing those of young adults (18-29) or older adults (65+). However, our results are similar to estimates captured in another contact survey implemented in the Bay Area with a target population of households with and without children.66 Community contacts under modelled school closure scenarios account for increases in daycare contacts only at the rates observed in our community survey, when fewer adults were permitted to have in-person work. Therefore, modelled school closures or staggered weeks during the fall semester may not adequately account for increases in community contacts from daycare settings. In addition to uncertainties in child susceptibility and community transmission, uncertainty in how the per-contact risk of transmission varies across settings (e.g. household env...
Results from TrialIdentifier: No clinical trial numbers were referenced.
Results from Barzooka: We found bar graphs of continuous data. We recommend replacing bar graphs with more informative graphics, as many different datasets can lead to the same bar graph. The actual data may suggest different conclusions from the summary statistics. For more information, please see Weissgerber et al (2015).
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.
- Thank you for including a funding statement. Authors are encouraged to include this statement when submitting to a journal.
- No protocol registration statement was detected.
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