Study: Closing schools might not be worth the disruption

A new study published in The Lancet Child and Adolescent Health journal finds that school closures have little impact on COVID-19 deaths. A new study published in The Lancet Child and Adolescent Health journal finds that school closures have little impact on COVID-19 deaths. Photo: Stella/Getty Images/fStop Photo: Stella/Getty Images/fStop Image 1 of / 51 Caption Close Study: Closing schools might not be worth the disruption 1 / 51 Back to Gallery

Schools around the world have closed in response to the coronavirus pandemic, but a team of British scientists says keeping students home has little impact.

University College London researchers using modeling studies of COVID-19 concluded that shuttering schools would reduce deaths by only 2% to 4%, just a fraction of those prevented by other social distancing interventions.

It described the evidence to support national closures of schools to combat the pandemic as "very weak."

Children can be infected by the virus but rarely experience serious symptoms. Cases of COVID-19 in children made up less than 2% of the 149,760 laboratory-confirmed cases occurring in the U.S. between Feb. 12 and April 2, CNN reported.

But kids with mild or no symptoms can transmit SARS-CoV-2 to vulnerable adults, which is why governments have sent pupils and teachers home.

The research, published in The Lancet Child and Adolescent Health on Monday, looked at 16 studies — some based on the spread of the novel coronavirus, and others on seasonal flu and the 2003 SARS outbreak. The findings suggest:

—School closures help during influenza outbreaks, but their benefit for the current coronavirus pandemic may be minimal.

—Data from the SARS outbreak in mainland China, Hong Kong and Singapore indicate that school closures likely did not contribute to the control of the epidemic.

—“Less disruptive social distancing interventions in schools” should be considered, especially if pandemic restrictions are maintained over a long period.

—Possible intermediate solutions include staggering school start and finish times, temperature checks and other health monitoring of students, and keeping schools open for workers with essential jobs.

But Professor Neil Ferguson of Imperial College London, who consulted with the British government in developing a plan to fight the pandemic, said the Lancet research fails to take into account the impact that school closures can have alongside other lockdown measures.

"While school closure as a measure on its own is predicted to have a limited effectiveness in controlling COVID-19 transmission, when combined with intense social distancing it plays an important role in severing remaining contacts between households, and thus ensuring transmission declines," he told Science Media Centre.

Nicholas Christakis, a social scientist and physician at Yale University, told ScienceMag last month that proactive school closures are “one of the most powerful nonpharmaceutical interventions that we can deploy.”

“Proactive school closures work like reactive school closures not just because they get the children, the little vectors, removed from circulation,” he said. “It’s not just about keeping the kids safe. It’s keeping the whole community safe.”

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Mike Moffitt is an SFGATE Digital Reporter. Email: moffitt@sfgate.com. Twitter: @Mike_at_SFGate