Institute for Social Pediatrics and Adolescent Medicine, Paediatric Epidemiology, Ludwig Maximilians University Munich, Munich.
Paediatric Hematology and Oncology, Children's Hospital Medical Center, Homburg, Deutschland.
Klin Padiatr. 2022 Mar;234(2):81-87. doi: 10.1055/a-1594-2818. Epub 2021 Nov 19.
In addition to widely used basic hygiene measures in school, school closures are applied to contain SARS-CoV-2 spread, although the effect on the pandemic is unclear. We proposed a simple approach to disentangle the effect of school closures from other lockdown measures on the pandemic course based on publicly available data in Germany.
We used data on the number of SARS-CoV-2 cases from the onset of the pandemic to 14th April 2021. We compared the proportion of children (5-14 years old) in all cases prior to the lockdown measures, including school closure, to that during a ten-week lockdown in Germany. The total number of paediatric cases occurring during lockdown was compared to the number expected in absence of school closures. The latter was calculated based on the actual weekly number of all cases and the pre-lockdown proportion of paediatric cases.
The proportion of children in all cases was 2.3 percentage points lower at the nadir than the proportion before the lockdown. The estimated total number of paediatric cases prevented by school closures was estimated at 13,246 amounting to 24% of the expected cases in absence of school closures.
School closure during the winter lockdown reduced the number of expected SARS-CoV-2 cases in children in absence of school closures. The contribution of these prevented cases to the total population incidence is small. These data might provide the basis to model the effect of school closures in addition to basic hygiene measures on the course of the COVID-19 pandemic.
除了在学校广泛使用基本卫生措施外，还采取了学校停课措施来控制 SARS-CoV-2 的传播，尽管其对大流行的影响尚不清楚。我们提出了一种简单的方法，根据德国公开数据，从其他封锁措施中分离出学校停课对大流行进程的影响。
我们使用了从大流行开始到 2021 年 4 月 14 日的 SARS-CoV-2 病例数数据。我们比较了封锁措施（包括学校停课）之前和德国为期十周的封锁期间所有病例中儿童（5-14 岁）的比例。将封锁期间发生的儿科病例总数与没有学校停课情况下的预期病例数进行比较。后者是根据实际每周所有病例数和封锁前儿科病例的比例计算得出的。
与封锁前相比，在疫情高峰期，所有病例中儿童的比例低了 2.3 个百分点。估计通过学校停课预防的儿科病例总数为 13246 例，占没有学校停课情况下预期病例数的 24%。
冬季封锁期间的学校停课减少了没有学校停课情况下预期的 SARS-CoV-2 儿童病例数。这些预防病例对总人口发病率的贡献很小。这些数据可能为模型提供依据，除了基本卫生措施外，学校停课对 COVID-19 大流行进程的影响。
