COVID-19 mitigation measures in primary schools and association with infection and school staff wellbeing: An observational survey linked with routine data in Wales, UK
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Abstract
School-based COVID-19 mitigation strategies have greatly impacted the primary school day (children aged 3–11) including: wearing face coverings, two metre distancing, no mixing of children, and no breakfast clubs or extra-curricular activities. This study examines these mitigation measures and association with COVID-19 infection, respiratory infection, and school staff wellbeing between October to December 2020 in Wales, UK.
Methods
A school staff survey captured self-reported COVID-19 mitigation measures in the school, participant anxiety and depression, and open-text responses regarding experiences of teaching and implementing measures. These survey responses were linked to national-scale COVID-19 test results data to examine association of measures in the school and the likelihood of a positive (staff or pupil) COVID-19 case in the school (clustered by school, adjusted for school size and free school meals using logistic regression). Linkage was conducted through the SAIL ( Secure Anonymised Information Linkage ) Databank.
Results
Responses were obtained from 353 participants from 59 primary schools within 15 of 22 local authorities. Having more direct non-household contacts was associated with a higher likelihood of COVID-19 positive case in the school (1–5 contacts compared to none, OR 2.89 (1.01, 8.31)) and a trend to more self-reported cold symptoms. Staff face covering was not associated with a lower odds of school COVID-19 cases (mask vs. no covering OR 2.82 (1.11, 7.14)) and was associated with higher self-reported cold symptoms. School staff reported the impacts of wearing face coverings on teaching, including having to stand closer to pupils and raise their voices to be heard. 67.1% were not able to implement two metre social distancing from pupils. We did not find evidence that maintaining a two metre distance was associated with lower rates of COVID-19 in the school.
Conclusions
Implementing, adhering to and evaluating COVID-19 mitigation guidelines is challenging in primary school settings. Our findings suggest that reducing non-household direct contacts lowers infection rates. There was no evidence that face coverings, two metre social distancing or stopping children mixing was associated with lower odds of COVID-19 or cold infection rates in the school. Primary school staff found teaching challenging during COVID-19 restrictions, especially for younger learners and those with additional learning needs.
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SciScore for 10.1101/2021.08.20.21262349: (What is this?)
Please note, not all rigor criteria are appropriate for all manuscripts.
Table 1: Rigor
Ethics IRB: Ethics: Ethical approval was granted by the Swansea University Medical School Research Ethics Committee (2017-0033E).
Consent: To participate in the survey, primary school staff were required to provide written informed consent.Sex as a biological variable The lead researcher (EM) who was female and had previous experience in qualitative data analysis read the open-ended responses several times to facilitate immersion in the data [27] and to gain an understanding of ‘what is going on’ [28]. Randomization not detected. Blinding not detected. Power Analysis not detected. Table 2: Resources
No key resources detected.
Results from OddPub: We did not detect open data. We also did not detect open …
SciScore for 10.1101/2021.08.20.21262349: (What is this?)
Please note, not all rigor criteria are appropriate for all manuscripts.
Table 1: Rigor
Ethics IRB: Ethics: Ethical approval was granted by the Swansea University Medical School Research Ethics Committee (2017-0033E).
Consent: To participate in the survey, primary school staff were required to provide written informed consent.Sex as a biological variable The lead researcher (EM) who was female and had previous experience in qualitative data analysis read the open-ended responses several times to facilitate immersion in the data [27] and to gain an understanding of ‘what is going on’ [28]. Randomization not detected. Blinding not detected. Power Analysis not detected. 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: 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: 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.
- No funding statement was detected.
- No protocol registration statement was detected.
Results from scite Reference Check: We found no unreliable references.
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