New studies provide more info for in-person school and community spread

New studies provide more info for in-person school and community spread

PROOF POINTS: Two new studies point to virus thresholds for in-person school

Researchers looked at hospitalization and coronavirus case rates

Two new studies on whether to keep schools open during the coronavirus pandemic come to strikingly similar conclusions: it’s not a simple yes or no. Instead, there are public health thresholds that can indicate when in-person classes are safe. 

The similarity in the results is striking considering that the research teams used different data and took different approaches to crunching the numbers.

“The fact that it seems safe [to open schools] in some places but perhaps not in others isn’t surprising,” said Tulane University economist Douglas Harris, a researcher on one of the studies. “Schools should spread the virus less in places where there is less of it to spread.”

Harris’s study, released on Jan. 4, looked at every 2020 school opening in the country through the fall and tracked how many people in each county landed in the hospital because of COVID-19 for the following six weeks. Harris and two Tulane health researchers found that school openings didn’t add to the number of people in the hospital, as long as the COVID-19 hospitalization rate was below 36 to 44 people per 100,000 residents per week CONTINUE READING: New studies provide more info for in-person school and community spread