“Our perception of risk and prevalence is driven by stories, events, anecdotes, rather than data” – Steven Pinker

“If you succeed [in school], your life will be good. If you fail, your life is going to be much worse. You’re going to live shorter. You’re going to be poorer. That, of course, is in the back of your head when you start talking about closing schools” – Anders Tegnell

Hoewel niet evidence-based als interventie zijn wereldwijd in de meeste landen de scholen gesloten tijdens de pandemie. In Nederland sloten de scholen voor het eerst sinds de Tweede Wereldoorlog, eerst op 16 maart 2020 en op 15 december van datzelfde jaar opnieuw. Data en onderzoek wijzen vanaf het begin in dezelfde richting: kinderen en scholen spelen een beperkte rol.

Lewis, S.J.J., Munro, A.P.S., Smith, G.D., Pollock, A.M. (2021). Closing schools is not evidence based and harms children. The British Medical Journal, 23 Februari

“School closures have been implemented internationally with insufficient evidence for their role in minimising covid-19 transmission and insufficient consideration of the harms to children. (..) The UN convention on the rights of the child and the duty on the government to respect, protect and fulfil those rights have largely been overlooked.(..) In the absence of strong evidence for benefits of school closures, the precautionary principle would be to keep schools open to prevent catastrophic harms to children”

“accumulating evidence shows that teachers and school staff are not at higher risk of hospital admission or death from covid-19 compared with other workers”

Een overzicht

Inmiddels zijn er wereldwijd vele studies verschenen rond kinderen, scholen en covid-19. Een aantal studies op een rij (update: 7 september):

01. Fenton, L., Gribben, C., Caldwell, D., Colville, S., et al. (2021) Risk of hospital admission with covid-19 among teachers compared with healthcare workers and other adults of working age in Scotland, March 2020 to July 2021: population based case-control study. The British Medical Journal, 2 september

“Conclusion: Compared with adults of working age who are otherwise similar, teachers and their household members were not found to be at increased risk of hospital admission with covid-19 and were found to be at lower risk of severe covid-19. These findings should reassure those who are engaged in face-to-face teaching” .

Commentaar BMJ: “Teachers and their household members were not at increased risk of hospital admission with covid-19 at any time during the 2020-21 academic year compared with similar working age adults, including during periods when schools were fully open, study finds”

02. Galow, L., Haag, L., Kahre, E., et al. (2021) Lower household transmission rates of SARS-CoV-2 from children compared to adults. Journal of Infection, 27 april

“the low rate of underage index cases and their lower SAR compared to adult index cases is consistent with previous studies. This supports existing evidence that children are not only less likely to develop severe disease courses but also are less susceptible and less likely to transmit SARS-CoV-2”

03. Bravata, D., Cantor, J.H., Sood, N., & Whaley, C.M. (2021) Back to School: The Effect of School Visits During COVID-19 on COVID-19 Transmission. National Bureau of Economic Research, april

“We find that increases in county-level in-person visits to schools lead to an increase in COVID-19 diagnoses among households with children relative to households without school-age children. However, the effects are small in magnitude. A move from the 25th to the 75th percentile of county-level school visits translates to a 0.3 per 10,000 household increase in COVID-19 diagnoses. This change translates to a 3.2 percent relative increase”

Voor een toelichting van deze studie: interview met twee van de auteurs Chris Whaley Neeraj Sood – The Trade-off of Schools – New NBER paper

04. Mulligan, C.B. (2021) The Incidence and Magnitude of the Health Costs of In-person Schooling during the COVID-19 Pandemic. National Bureau of Economic Research, maart

“Students and teachers at in-person school during 2020 were about 20 times more likely to be infected outside school than in school. (..) To put it another way, the fatality risk to self and living partners, which may include an elderly person, for one day taught in-person by the average nonelderly teacher is similar to the risk of driving 16 miles alone in a car. For the modal teacher, the equivalent is five miles”

05. Soriano-Arandes, A., Gatell, A.,  Serrano, P., et al. (2021) Household SARS-CoV-2 transmission and children: a network prospective study. Clinical Infectious Diseases, 12 maart

“Children are unlikely to cause household COVID-19 clusters or be major drivers of the pandemic even if attending school. Interventions aimed at children are expected to have a small impact on reducing SARS-CoV-2 transmission”

06. Forbes, H., Morton, C.E., Bacon, S., et al. (2021) Association between living with children and outcomes from covid-19: OpenSAFELY cohort study of 12 million adults in England. The British Medical Journal, 7 maart

“In contrast to wave 1, evidence existed of increased risk of reported SARS-CoV-2 infection and covid-19 outcomes among adults living with children during wave 2. However, this did not translate into a materially increased risk of covid-19 mortality, and absolute increases in risk were small”

(meer…)