September 28,2021: School for children in many nations has been going on for more than a month, and fears that the Delta coronavirus variant would derail personal learning have largely proved unfounded.
In a dozen countries with high vaccination rates in Asia, Europe and the United States, case rates, which rose in August, have mostly fallen back, according to local data and officials.
The jury is aware of how much this is due to seasonal factors in the midst of a global decline in cases, and how much it is linked to vaccinations and other preventive measures. Public health experts say they will continue to look for signs of an increase in cases as winter approaches.
“In the United States, school transmission is higher in places with low adult vaccination and no mitigation, but in general, schools have remained open,” said Monica Gandhi, a professor of medicine at the University of California San Francisco Medical School. “It’s going better than expected.”
Cases among children rose nearly seven times in August, but peaked in the week ending Sept. 2, according to data from the American Academy of Pediatrics. But only about 2% of U.S. schools have closed temporarily due to COVID-19 outbreaks, according to research firm Burbio, which tracks school closures.
Children represent the largest shard of the unvaccinated in most affluent countries, either because shots for their age groups have only just begun or have not yet been approved.
August’s summer travel-related infections and boost in test-related cases have faded, say public health experts, and rising vaccinations, mitigation measures in schools and a larger drop in community cases are helping.
There are exceptions. In Singapore, cases among children have been on the rise throughout September, and in Japan, Tokyo schools are changing students in the classroom.
But in Scandinavia, Scotland, Germany, France, South Korea and the United States, cases are falling, despite fears that the more transmissible Delta variant would drive up infections.
Sweden, where schools have been largely open during the whole pandemic, saw an initial increase in COVID -19 infections among children after the summer holidays, but cases are now at a low level – both among children and the wider population.
In Norway, cases rose to a daily record of 1,785 after the first two weeks of school, before falling by 60% from last week.
“We expect the current downward trend to continue for a few weeks and then level off at a low level, at least for a few months. Then there is uncertainty about the winter season,” says Preben Aavitsland, chief physician at the Norwegian Institute of Public Health , told Reuters via email.
Aavitsland said everything from parties to music lessons drove teenage cases up in August.
Britain has seen some increase in cases at schools that opened early, but it has not spread to the wider population, said Neil Ferguson, an epidemiologist at Imperial College London.
In Scotland, schools reopened in mid-August and positive test results rose to record numbers by the end of the month.
In the week ending Sept. 3, about 1 in 20 children ages 3, 8, 13 and 16 were estimated to have COVID-19, compared with 1 in 45 in the wider population, according to government data. But cases among those under 19s have dropped every week since.
While cases began to rise in Scotland before schools opened, there appears to be some level of transfer at schools, Rowland Kao, an epidemiologist at the University of Edinburgh, told Reuters via email.
“It is very difficult to separate societal transfer related to schools for transmission in schools. However, clusters of cases in individual classrooms do not appear to be very high, suggesting that it is at least a mixture of both, ”Kao said.
UNITED STATES
In the United States, the number of child cases has grown as a percentage of total cases, according to the American Academy of Pediatrics.
“Schools simply reflect what is going on in the surrounding community, and in most cases you have less transmission than in the surrounding community due to mitigation measures,” said Dr. Sean O’Leary, a pediatrician at the University of Colorado.
In Kentucky, for example, 45 of the state’s 171 school districts have closed at least once since the school year began in August, according to Joshua Shoulta, a spokesman for the Kentucky School Boards Association.
Cases per 100,000 people in Kentucky are falling, but still among the highest in the country, and just over 50% of the population is fully vaccinated. State school districts were already struggling with staff shortages before COVID-19 cases and quarantines, Shoulta said. State legislators met in a special session last week where lawmakers gave local school staff more autonomy to implement COVID-19 protocols.
“What we know now and the tools we have in relation to where we were at this point last year make it a slightly different ball game,” Shoulta said.
A school district in Texas is struggling with less than half of the substitute teachers it needs. Brent Hawkins, superintendent of the Livingston (TX) Independent School District, said the district was forced to close for Labor Day week after more than 10% of the 600 members received COVID-19.
Hawkins said Texas Gov. Greg Abbott’s decision to prevent school districts from claiming masks drives much of the increase in cases. Livingston recorded more positive cases among students and teachers in the first weeks of school than during last year, he said. Nearly 7% of the district’s approximately 4,000 students or nearly 300 children had been infected by mid-September.
“For a couple of weeks, we had people like myself and other administrators in the classrooms substituting teaching,” Hawkins said.
Meanwhile, California is nearly nine times the size of Kentucky, with a population of about 40 million. With masks, ventilation, and high vaccination rates, school districts in San Francisco and Los Angeles reported zero to few cases in their first few weeks. The state, according to Burbio, has had less than half the number of school or district closures like Kentucky.
Reporting by Alistair Smount in London, Richard Lough in Paris, Ludwig Burger in Germany, Julie Steenhuysen in Chicago, Joseph Ax and Michael Erman in New York, Gwladys Fouche in Oslo, Johan Ahlander in Stockholm, Rocky Swift in Tokyo, Lin Chen in Singapore and Stine Jacobsen in Copenhagen Editing by Michele Gershberg, Caroline Humer and Mark Potter
