SARS-CoV-2 Infections in Italian Schools: Preliminary Findings After 1 Month of School Opening During the Second Wave of the Pandemic

  1. Danilo Buonsenso
  2. Cristina De Rose
  3. Rossana Moroni
  4. Piero Valentini

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Abstract

Introduction: The impact of school opening on the severe acute respiratory syndrome coronavirus 2 (SARS-CoV-2) pandemic is still unknown. This study aims to provide preliminary information about the number of SARS-CoV-2 cases among students attending Italian schools.

Methods: Data are extracted and analyzed from an open-access, online dataset that monitor, on a daily basis, media news about SARS-CoV-2 infections of students attending Italian schools.

Results: As of October 5, 2020, a total of 1,350 cases of SARS-CoV-2 infections have been registered in the Italian territory schools (involving 1,059 students, 145 teachers, and 146 other school members), for a total of 1,212 out of 65,104 (1.8%) Italian schools involved. National schools reported only one case of SARS-CoV-2 infection in more than 90% of cases, and only in one high school a cluster of more than 10 cases has been described ( P = 0.015). The detection of one or more SARS-CoV-2 infections led to the closure of 192 (15.8%) entire schools, more frequently nursery/kindergartens ( P < 0.0005).

Discussion: Our preliminary data support low transmission of SARS-CoV-2 within schools, at least among younger students. However, entire schools are frequently closed in the fear of larger outbreaks. Continuous monitoring of school settings, hopefully through daily updated open-access datasets, is needed to better understand the impact of schools on the pandemic and provide guidelines that better consider different risks within different age groups.

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  1. ScreenIT

    SciScore for 10.1101/2020.10.10.20210328: (What is this?)

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

    Table 1: Rigor

    Institutional Review Board Statementnot detected.
    Randomizationnot detected.
    Blindingnot detected.
    Power Analysisnot detected.
    Sex as a biological variablenot 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: We detected the following sentences addressing limitations in the study:
    Our work has limitations. First, since the dataset is based on news available on the website, it is possible that it underestimates the real situation. Second, the cases in the database are as reliable as the newspapers that publish the news. Although the authors carefully assess the news and collect several information (excluding that news with no enough information), they do not perform a formal investigation to verify the truthfulness or reliability of the news with individual schools. Third, news publishing inevitably suffers from some bias. For example, reports of cases in small towns rather than in large cities seem more frequent, possibly because the former are promptly communicated on the municipal web-pages. Data about contact tracing initiated by the health authorities are missing most times, probably because news agencies prefer to focus on putting more emphasis on situations that see the emergence of an outbreak In conclusion, our preliminary data suggest that, so far, a limited number of students have been diagnosed with SARS-CoV-2 infection and that intra-class transmission is rare. Active monitoring of the trend and drivers of infections among school is necessary, hopefully with open access data on international platforms, allowing better analyses and comparisons between different settings. Importantly, understanding how different age groups can spread the infection within schools is a priority, since this would allow the development of guidelines more focused ...

    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.

    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.

  2. Version published to 10.3389/fped.2020.615894
  3. Version published to 10.1101/2020.10.10.20210328v1 on medRxiv