Implementing distancing in case of school reopening amid COVID-19 pandemic: Recommendations
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ABSTRACT:
SUBMITTER: Askarian M
PROVIDER: S-EPMC8564904 | biostudies-literature |
REPOSITORIES: biostudies-literature
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Project description:Among over 200 COVID-19 affected countries, some are fighting to "flatten the curve", while some others are considering reopening after lockdown. It remains unclear how different reopening strategies obstruct the local virus containment and impact the economy. We develop a model with travelers across heterogeneous epicenters. A low-risk area attempts to safely reopen utilizing internal policies, such as social distancing and contact tracing, and external policies, including capacity quota, quarantine, and tests. Simulations based on the COVID-19 scenario show that external policies differ in efficacy. They can substitute each other and complement internal policies. Simultaneous relaxation of both channels may lead to a new wave of COVID-19 and large economic costs. This work highlights the importance of quantitative assessment prior to implementing reopening strategies.
| S-EPMC7996987 | biostudies-literature
Project description:ObjectivesSchool closure during the coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19) pandemic resulted in a negative impact on children. Serial testing of severe acute respiratory syndrome coronavirus 2 (SARS-CoV-2) has been proposed as a measure for safety school reopening. We aimed to study the usefulness of SARS-CoV-2 surveillance by saliva testing and performing wastewater surveillance for SARS-CoV-2 in a day school in a resource-limited setting.MethodsWe conducted a cluster randomized study to investigate the potential use of saliva antigen testing compared to saliva pooling for nucleic acid detection in a primary school in Thailand from December 2021 to March 2022. Wastewater surveillance in the school was also performed.ResultsA total of 484 participants attended the study. SARS-CoV-2 was detected in two participants from the tests provided by the study (one in the pool nucleic acid test arm, and another in the quantitative antigen test arm). Additional ten participants reported positive results on an additional rapid antigen test (RAT) performed by nasal swab when they had symptoms or household contact. There was no difference among arms in viral detection by intention-to-treat and per protocol analysis (p = 0.304 and 0.894, respectively). We also investigated the feasibility of wastewater surveillance to detect the virus in this setting. However, wastewater surveillance could not detect the virus.ConclusionsIn a low COVID-19 prevalence, serial saliva testing and wastewater surveillance for SARS-CoV-2 rarely detected the virus in a day school setting. Performing RAT on nasal swabs when students, teachers or staff have symptoms or household contact might be more reasonable.
| S-EPMC10010048 | biostudies-literature
Project description:Objectives This study reports on the readiness of Palestinian dentists to re-open their practices for routine care during the current COVID-19 pandemic. Methods A cross-sectional study targeted dentists in the West Bank area of Palestine using an on-line survey during the first two weeks of May, 2020. Questions mainly asked about dentists’ perception of the risks of COVID-19, readiness to reopen their clinics for routine care, and the level of confidence in dealing with suspected COVID-19 patients. Results Four hundred and forty-eight dentists completed the survey. Almost 60% believed that they were not ready to re-open their practices. Almost 13% had “no confidence” in dealing with COVID-19 patients, while 64% had “little to moderate” confidence. Confidence was correlated negatively with increased fear of getting infected (?=-0.317, p<0.0001) and positively with years of practice (?=1.7, p< 0.0001). Dentists who received updated training on infection control or on COVID-19 reported higher levels of confidence (X2 =53.8,p<0.0001, X2=26.8, p<0.0001 respectively). Although 88% preferred not to treat COVID-19 patients, 40% were willing to provide care to them. Almost 75% reported that they were already facing financial hardships and couldn't survive financially until the end of the current month. Conclusions Ethical and financial reasons were the main drivers for dentists in this sample to re-open their practices for routine care. Data from this study highlights the fragility of private dental practice in emergency situations. Ethical, health and financial challenges that emerged during COVID-19 require dentists to adapt and be better prepared to face future crises.
| S-EPMC7881762 | biostudies-literature
Project description:The COVID-19 situation and school closure has brought intense impact to millions of students and teachers. However, there is a growing pressure from parents, teachers, and children for schools to reopen and the national government has developed guidelines if schools going to reopen. This study is conducted to assess the perspective of teachers and other education personnel regarding the current situation and the outlook when schools reopen in the future. A combination of survey, focus group discussions, and interviews were conducted among school personnel (i.e. teachers, school administrator, and school principals), local education office officials, and representatives from teacher's professional associations in Indonesia. A total of 27,046 school personnel participated in the survey, making it one of the largest surveys ever conducted with school personnel in Indonesia. In addition, 53 participants were involved in the FGDs and interviews in 5 areas. Findings suggest that 76% teachers were concerned if schools reopen due to the health risks and 95% teachers preferred having a blended learning or continue using full distance learning. Nevertheless, if schools reopen, teachers expressed the needs for greater health protection among teachers and children, strengthened coordination and collaboration with local stakeholders, and further capacity strengthening to ensure that the learning process can be safe, comfortable, and effective. Specific analysis on the perspective and needs for teachers working with special needs learners and disadvantaged areas are further analysed.
| S-EPMC8554791 | biostudies-literature
Project description:Operating schools safely during the COVID-19 pandemic requires a balance between health risks and the need for in-person learning. Using demographic and epidemiological data between 31 July and 23 November 2020 from Toronto, Canada, we developed a compartmental transmission model with age, household and setting structure to study the impact of schools reopening in September 2020. The model simulates transmission in the home, community and schools, accounting for differences in infectiousness between adults and children, and accounting for work-from-home and virtual learning. While we found a slight increase in infections among adults (2.2%) and children (4.5%) within the first eight weeks of school reopening, transmission in schools was not the key driver of the virus resurgence in autumn 2020. Rather, it was community spread that determined the outbreak trajectory, primarily due to increases in contact rates among adults in the community after school reopening. Analyses of cross-infection among households, communities and schools revealed that home transmission is crucial for epidemic progression and safely operating schools, while the degree of in-person attendance has a larger impact than other control measures in schools. This study suggests that safe school reopening requires the strict maintenance of public health measures in the community.
| S-EPMC8808096 | biostudies-literature
Project description:BackgroundCOVID-19 pandemic presented an unexpected challenge for the surgical community in general and Minimally Invasive Surgery (MIS) specialists in particular. This document aims to summarize recent evidence and experts' opinion and formulate recommendations to guide the surgical community on how to best organize the recovery plan for surgical activity across different sub-specialities after the COVID-19 pandemic.MethodsRecommendations were developed through a Delphi process for establishment of expert consensus. Domain topics were formulated and subsequently subdivided into questions pertinent to different surgical specialities following the COVID-19 crisis. Sixty-five experts from 24 countries, representing the entire EAES board, were invited. Fifty clinicians and six engineers accepted the invitation and drafted statements based on specific key questions. Anonymous voting on the statements was performed until consensus was achieved, defined by at least 70% agreement.ResultsA total of 92 consensus statements were formulated with regard to safe resumption of surgery across eight domains, addressing general surgery, upper GI, lower GI, bariatrics, endocrine, HPB, abdominal wall and technology/research. The statements addressed elective and emergency services across all subspecialties with specific attention to the role of MIS during the recovery plan. Eighty-four of the statements were approved during the first round of Delphi voting (91.3%) and another 8 during the following round after substantial modification, resulting in a 100% consensus.ConclusionThe recommendations formulated by the EAES board establish a framework for resumption of surgery following COVID-19 pandemic with particular focus on the role of MIS across surgical specialities. The statements have the potential for wide application in the clinical setting, education activities and research work across different healthcare systems.
| S-EPMC7653984 | biostudies-literature
Project description:COVID-19 pandemic has affected over 100 countries in a matter of weeks. People's response toward social distancing in the emerging pandemic is uncertain. In this study, we evaluated the influence of information (formal and informal) sources on situational awareness of the public for adopting health-protective behaviors such as social distancing. For this purpose, a questionnaire-based survey was conducted. The hypothesis proposed suggests that adoption of social distancing practices is an outcome of situational awareness which is achieved by the information sources. Results suggest that information sources, formal (P = .001) and informal (P = 0.007) were found to be significantly related to perceived understanding. Findings also indicate that social distancing is significantly influenced by situational awareness, P = .000. It can, therefore, be concluded that an increase in situational awareness in times of public health crisis using formal information sources can significantly increase the adoption of protective health behavior and in turn contain the spread of infectious diseases.
| S-EPMC7262187 | biostudies-literature
Project description:Governments across the world have implemented restrictive policies to slow the spread of COVID-19. Recommended face mask use has been a controversially discussed policy, among others, due to potential adverse effects on physical distancing. Using a randomized field experiment (N = 300), we show that individuals kept a significantly larger distance from someone wearing a face mask than from an unmasked person during the early days of the pandemic. According to an additional survey experiment (N = 456) conducted at the time, masked individuals were not perceived as being more infectious than unmasked ones, but they were believed to prefer more distancing. This result suggests that wearing a mask served as a social signal that led others to increase the distance they kept. Our findings provide evidence against the claim that mask use creates a false sense of security that would negatively affect physical distancing. Furthermore, our results suggest that behavior has informational content that may be affected by policies. Supplementary Information The online version contains supplementary material available at 10.1007/s40881-021-00108-6.
| S-EPMC8590132 | biostudies-literature
Project description:ImportanceSchool closures because of COVID-19 have left 1.6 billion students around the world without in-person classes for a prolonged period. To our knowledge, no study has documented whether reopening schools in low- and middle-income countries during the pandemic was associated with increased aggregate COVID-19 incidence and mortality with appropriate counterfactuals.ObjectiveTo test whether reopening schools under appropriate protocols during the COVID-19 pandemic was associated with increased municipal-level COVID-19 cases and deaths in São Paulo State, Brazil.Design setting and participantsThis observational study of municipalities in São Paulo State, Brazil, uses a difference-in-differences analysis to examine the association between municipal decisions to reopen schools during the COVID-19 pandemic and municipal-level COVID-19 case and death rates between October and December 2020. The study compared 129 municipalities that reopened schools in 2020 with 514 that did not and excluded data for 2 municipalities that reopened schools and closed then again.Main outcomes and measuresNew COVID-19 cases and deaths per 10 000 inhabitants up to 12 weeks after school reopenings and municipal-level aggregate mobility for a subset of municipalities.ResultsThere were 8764 schools in the 129 municipalities that reopened schools compared with 9997 in the control group of 514 municipalities that did not reopen schools. The municipalities that reopened schools had a cumulative COVID-19 incidence of 20 cases per 1000 inhabitants and mortality of 0.5 deaths per 1000 inhabitants in September 2020 (the baseline period) compared with an incidence of 18 cases per 1000 inhabitants and mortality of 0.45 deaths per 1000 inhabitants during the baseline period in the comparison group. The findings indicated that there were no statistically significant differences between municipalities that authorized schools to reopen and those that did not for (1) weekly new cases (difference-in-differences, -0.03; 95% CI, -0.09 to 0.03) and (2) weekly new deaths (difference-in-differences, -0.003; 95% CI, -0.011 to 0.004) before and after October 2020. Reopening schools was not associated with higher disease activity, even in relatively vulnerable municipalities, nor aggregate mobility.Conclusions and relevanceThe findings from this study suggest that keeping schools open during the COVID-19 pandemic did not contribute to the aggregate disease activity.
| S-EPMC8903124 | biostudies-literature
Project description:ObjectivesThe COVID-19 pandemic has resulted in an enormous burden on population health and the economy around the world. Although most cities in the United States have reopened their economies from previous lockdowns, it was not clear how the magnitude of different control measures-such as face mask use and social distancing-may affect the timing of reopening the economy for a local region. This study aimed to investigate the relationship between reopening dates and control measures and identify the conditions under which a city can be reopened safely.Study designThis was a mathematical modeling study.MethodsWe developed a dynamic compartment model to capture the transmission dynamics of COVID-19 in New York City. We estimated model parameters from local COVID-19 data. We conducted three sets of policy simulations to investigate how different reopening dates and magnitudes of control measures would affect the COVID-19 epidemic.ResultsThe model estimated that maintaining social contact at 80% of the prepandemic level and a 50% face mask usage would prevent a major surge of COVID-19 after reopening. If social distancing were completely relaxed after reopening, face mask usage would need to be maintained at nearly 80% to prevent a major surge.ConclusionsAdherence to social distancing and increased face mask usage are keys to prevent a major surge after a city reopens its economy. The findings from our study can help policymakers identify the conditions under which a city can be reopened safely.
| S-EPMC8433041 | biostudies-literature