Model-based evaluation of school- and non-school-related measures to control the COVID-19 pandemic

Ganna Rozhnova*, Christiaan H. van Dorp, Patricia Bruijning-Verhagen, Martin C.J. Bootsma, Janneke H.H.M. van de Wijgert, Marc J.M. Bonten, Mirjam E. Kretzschmar

*Corresponding author for this work

Research output: Contribution to journalArticleAcademicpeer-review

Abstract

The role of school-based contacts in the epidemiology of SARS-CoV-2 is incompletely understood. We use an age-structured transmission model fitted to age-specific seroprevalence and hospital admission data to assess the effects of school-based measures at different time points during the COVID-19 pandemic in the Netherlands. Our analyses suggest that the impact of measures reducing school-based contacts depends on the remaining opportunities to reduce non-school-based contacts. If opportunities to reduce the effective reproduction number (Re) with non-school-based measures are exhausted or undesired and Re is still close to 1, the additional benefit of school-based measures may be considerable, particularly among older school children. As two examples, we demonstrate that keeping schools closed after the summer holidays in 2020, in the absence of other measures, would not have prevented the second pandemic wave in autumn 2020 but closing schools in November 2020 could have reduced Re below 1, with unchanged non-school-based contacts.

Original languageEnglish
Article number1614
Pages (from-to)1-11
Number of pages11
JournalNature Communications
Volume12
Issue number1
DOIs
Publication statusPublished - 12 Mar 2021

Keywords

  • Adolescent
  • Adult
  • Age Factors
  • Aged
  • Aged, 80 and over
  • Basic Reproduction Number/prevention & control
  • Bayes Theorem
  • COVID-19/epidemiology
  • Child
  • Child, Preschool
  • Cross-Sectional Studies
  • Female
  • Holidays
  • Hospitalization
  • Humans
  • Infant
  • Infant, Newborn
  • Male
  • Middle Aged
  • Models, Biological
  • Models, Statistical
  • Netherlands/epidemiology
  • Pandemics/prevention & control
  • SARS-CoV-2
  • Schools
  • Seroepidemiologic Studies
  • Young Adult

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