A global assessment of the impact of school closure in reducing COVID-19 spread

Prolonged school closure has been adopted worldwide to control COVID-19. Indeed, UN Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization figures show that two-thirds of an academic year was lost on average worldwide due to COVID-19 school closures. Such pre-emptive implementation was predicated on the premise that school children are a core group for COVID-19 transmission. Using surveillance data from the Chinese cities of Shenzhen and Anqing together, we inferred that compared with the elderly aged 60 and over, children aged 18 and under and adults aged 19-59 were 75% and 32% less susceptible to infection, respectively. Using transmission models parametrized with synthetic contact matrices for 177 jurisdictions around the world, we showed that the lower susceptibility of school children substantially limited the effectiveness of school closure in reducing COVID-19 transmissibility. Our results, together with recent findings that clinical severity of COVID-19 in children is lower, suggest that school closure may not be ideal as a sustained, primary intervention for controlling COVID-19. This article is part of the theme issue 'Data science approach to infectious disease surveillance'.

Automated summary

Prolonged school closure has been widely implemented worldwide to control COVID-19, but research from China suggests that school children have a lower susceptibility to the virus compared to adults and the elderly. Using surveillance data and transmission models, it was found that school closures were less effective in reducing COVID-19 transmission due to the lower infection risk among school children. These findings, along with evidence of milder COVID-19 symptoms in children, suggest that long-term school closure may not be the ideal primary intervention for controlling the pandemic.