Journal
INTERNATIONAL JOURNAL OF ENVIRONMENTAL RESEARCH AND PUBLIC HEALTH
Volume 19, Issue 5, Pages -Publisher
MDPI
DOI: 10.3390/ijerph19052500
Keywords
COVID-19 pandemic; school closure; benefit-risk tradeoff; confirmation bias; precautionary principle
Funding
- European Research Council (ERC) [771678]
- European Research Council (ERC) [771678] Funding Source: European Research Council (ERC)
Ask authors/readers for more resources
This article investigates the costs and benefits of school closures and discusses their impact on the physical and mental well-being of students and society. The authors emphasize the importance of considering both short-term infection control and long-term consequences when deciding on school closures.
School closure has been a common response to COVID-19. Yet, its implementation has hardly ever been based on rigorous analysis of its costs and benefits. We aim to first illustrate the unintended consequences and side effects of school closure, and then discuss the policy and research implications. This commentary frames evidence from the most recent papers on the topic from a public-health epidemiology and disaster risk reduction perspective. In particular, we argue that the benefits of school closure in terms of reduced infection rates should be better compared with its costs in terms of both short- and long-term damage on the physical, mental, and social well-being of children and society at large.
Authors
I am an author on this paper
Click your name to claim this paper and add it to your profile.
Reviews
Recommended
No Data Available