One month remains until the start of the new school year, and many today are concerned by the question of whether classes can resume under these conditions. Experts’ opinions on this matter do not coincide.
As reported by Medportal.ru, children rarely become infected with the coronavirus, yet it is not excluded that they can infect adults. “The problem was the lack of research at the start of the pandemic. More detailed epidemiological studies are needed to assess how children participate in the spread of infection,” National Public Radio quoted Judy Guzman-Cottrill, a pediatric infectious disease specialist at Oregon Health and Science University, as saying.
According to Aaron Carroll, a pediatrician at Indiana University School of Medicine, there is still no data on whether children can spread the infection to a large number of people. For that reason, educational bodies around the world need to conduct more testing. The results of research on this topic are contradictory. For example, in Switzerland, scientists followed all children infected with the coronavirus and found that among children, spreaders of the coronavirus were 3 out of 39 cases.
In Australia, researchers analyzed the movements of 9 students and 10 adults infected with the coronavirus, who had contact with more than 700 students and 125 staff members of the educational institution. Only 2 cases of infection were linked to those individuals.
Meanwhile, the results of a larger-scale study conducted in South Korea showed that children’s age is an important factor in the spread of the coronavirus: younger children rarely become a source of infection, unlike children over 10 years of age. In 19% of household contacts, children aged 10-19 were involved, and in 5.3%, children aged 0-9. However, there is an important nuance: during that period, schools in South Korea were closed, so it is unknown how children spread the infection.
A study conducted in Germany, in turn, showed that opening schools can lead to an acceleration of the spread of infection. Moreover, this applies to senior-grade students.
Most experts agree that the decision to open schools should be made based on the level of spread of the coronavirus in a given country. “It is encouraging that in countries where schools have already been opened, no major outbreaks of infection have been recorded. For example, in Japan, South Korea, Finland and France, about 1 case per 100,000 people has been recorded,” National Public Radio quoted Anita Cicero, deputy director of the Johns Hopkins Center for Health Security, as saying.
However, it should be noted that all those countries opened schools while maintaining a low level of spread of the coronavirus.
