Transmission of SARS-CoV-2 by children and young people in households and schools: A meta-analysis of population-based and contact-tracing studies

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Abstract

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  1. SciScore for 10.1101/2021.12.14.21267713: (What is this?)

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

    Table 1: Rigor

    EthicsIRB: Ethics: Ethics permission not required for these secondary analyses of published data.
    Sex as a biological variablenot detected.
    Randomizationnot detected.
    Blindingnot detected.
    Power Analysisnot detected.

    Table 2: Resources

    Software and Algorithms
    SentencesResources
    The search terms for PubMed were (“COVID-19”
    PubMed
    suggested: (PubMed, RRID:SCR_004846)
    [MeSH Terms] OR “schools”[MeSH Terms]) with terms for other databases shown in Appendix Table 1.
    MeSH
    suggested: (MeSH, RRID:SCR_004750)

    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:
    Limitations: Our data are subject to a number of limitations. Potential biases in school studies have been discussed above. RT-PCR studies may under-estimate infection in children compared with serology,[36] and different seroassays may provide differing results. Many of the included studies, however, combined findings from both PCR and serology,[10, 31, 32, 39, 40, 44, 47, 48, 54, 67] or undertook repeated PCR measures[40, 44, 45, 49-51, 53, 60] Importantly, though, these issues are likely to be similar across both contact-tracing and population studies and, therefore, would not alter the notable differences we found by setting. Contact-tracing studies are open to bias due to missed testing of contacts, although we only included those who planned routine testing of all contacts and who achieved a high proportion of contacts tested. Low numbers of child index cases and their contacts in some studies may also be a source of bias. Population studies may be biased by higher participation by higher socio-economic status groups and also as some studies specifically excluded those with recent contacts or symptoms.[50] We conducted multi-level analyses accounting for the nesting of multiple rounds of data-collection within single studies. Some of the smaller meta-analyses, however, may have been overly influenced by studies with many rounds of testing. Meta-regression analyses are conducted at study rather than individual level and are, therefore, subject to ecological biases and ca...

    Results from TrialIdentifier: No clinical trial numbers were referenced.


    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.
    • 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.


    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.