Schools were closed in England on 4 January 2021 as part of increased national restrictions to curb transmission of SARS-CoV-2. The UK government reopened schools on 8 March. Although there was evidence of lower individual-level transmission risk amongst children compared to adults, the combined effects of this with increased contact rates in school settings and the resulting impact on the overall transmission rate in the population were not clear. We measured social contacts of > 5000 participants weekly from March 2020, including periods when schools were both open and closed, amongst other restrictions. We combined these data with estimates of the susceptibility and infectiousness of children compared with adults to estimate the impact of reopening schools on the reproduction number. Our analysis indicates that reopening all schools under the same measures as previous periods that combined lockdown with face-to-face schooling would be likely to increase the reproduction number substantially. Assuming a baseline of 0.8, we estimated a likely increase to between 1.0 and 1.5 with the reopening of all schools or to between 0.9 and 1.2 reopening primary or secondary schools alone. Our results suggest that reopening schools would likely halt the fall in cases observed between January and March 2021 and would risk a return to rising infections, but these estimates relied heavily on the latest estimates or reproduction number and the validity of the susceptibility and infectiousness profiles we used at the time of reopening.

中文翻译：

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使用每周接触调查数据估计重新开放学校对英格兰 SARS-CoV-2 繁殖数量的影响


2021 年 1 月 4 日，英格兰学校关闭，作为遏制 SARS-CoV-2 传播的国家加强限制的一部分。英国政府于 3 月 8 日重新开放学校。尽管有证据表明，与成人相比，儿童的个人传播风险较低，但这种情况与学校环境中接触率增加的综合影响以及由此对人群总体传播率的影响尚不清楚。从 2020 年 3 月开始，我们每周测量超过 5000 名参与者的社交接触，包括学校开放和关闭的时期以及其他限制。我们将这些数据与儿童相对于成人的易感性和传染性的估计相结合，以估计重新开放学校对繁殖数量的影响。我们的分析表明，按照与之前时期相同的措施重新开放所有学校，将封锁与面对面教学相结合，可能会大幅增加繁殖数量。假设基线为 0.8，我们估计随着所有学校重新开放，该数字可能会增加到 1.0 到 1.5 之间，或者仅重新开放中小学的话，可能会增加到 0.9 到 1.2 之间。我们的结果表明，重新开放学校可能会阻止 2021 年 1 月至 3 月期间观察到的病例下降，并可能面临感染再次上升的风险，但这些估计在很大程度上依赖于最新的估计或繁殖数量以及我们的易感性和传染性概况的有效性。重新开放时使用。