Alternative COVID-19 mitigation measures in school classrooms: analysis using an agent-based model of SARS-CoV-2 transmission
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Abstract
The SARS-CoV-2 epidemic has impacted children's education, with schools required to implement infection control measures that have led to periods of absence and classroom closures. We developed an agent-based epidemiological model of SARS-CoV-2 transmission in a school classroom that allows us to quantify projected infection patterns within primary school classrooms, and related uncertainties. Our approach is based on a contact model constructed using random networks, informed by structured expert judgement. The effectiveness of mitigation strategies in suppressing infection outbreaks and limiting pupil absence are considered. COVID-19 infections in primary schools in England in autumn 2020 were re-examined and the model was then used to estimate infection levels in autumn 2021, as the Delta variant was emerging and it was thought likely that school transmission would play a major role in an incipient new wave of the epidemic. Our results were in good agreement with available data. These findings indicate that testing-based surveillance is more effective than bubble quarantine, both for reducing transmission and avoiding pupil absence, even accounting for insensitivity of self-administered tests. Bubble quarantine entails large numbers of absences, with only modest impact on classroom infections. However, maintaining reduced contact rates within the classroom can have a major benefit for managing COVID-19 in school settings.
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SciScore for 10.1101/2021.08.30.21262826: (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:Caveats, limitations and further developments: Our model makes a number of assumptions and has some limitations. We are considering only close contacts (for clarity, define here as per [1]) as an infection transmission pathway. Unavoidably, the contact pattern data we have used, derived from teacher elicitation [1], are an approximation …
SciScore for 10.1101/2021.08.30.21262826: (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:Caveats, limitations and further developments: Our model makes a number of assumptions and has some limitations. We are considering only close contacts (for clarity, define here as per [1]) as an infection transmission pathway. Unavoidably, the contact pattern data we have used, derived from teacher elicitation [1], are an approximation of complex varying patterns of human interactions. Our model also assumes each classroom is isolated and independent of other classrooms, as far as transmission likelihood is concerned. Clearly there are interactions between pupils and adult staff from different classes and across age groups, but we judge this simplification is justified from evidence of limited cross age mixing, e.g. [6]. Our model does not consider other measures to mitigate transmission (e.g., masks, cleaning and ventilation). Some or all of these might be taken into account in development of a more sophisticated, more complicated model; this said, we doubt there would be much benefit for such additional complexities, given they would all introduce uncertainties and, it can be argued, would only introduce second order factors and effects. One major issue is that the model does not explicitly distinguish between community-related infection transmission outside and inside school. Thus, to a large extent, the current model is predicated intrinsically on community prevalence being dominant. The model is, however, able to identify transmission clusters and larger outbreaks of in...
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.
Results from scite Reference Check: We found no unreliable references.
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