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Keeping schools open had no impact on contagion, Swedish study suggests

Finnish children returned to school in May after two months of remote learning and national infection rates have continued to decline since then
Finnish children returned to school in May after two months of remote learning and national infection rates have continued to decline since then

Shutting down primary schools may have been unnecessary as a Swedish study suggests that keeping them open had no impact on contagion.

There was no measurable difference in the number of coronavirus cases among children in Sweden, where schools were left open, compared with neighboring Finland, where schools were shut, the research showed.

A working paper, published by the Public Health Agency of Sweden and the Finnish Institute for Health and Welfare, compares the two countries’ approach to education during the pandemic.

Sweden and Finland adopted very different strategies to tackle Covid-19, with the former choosing to avoid a full-blown lockdown and the latter imposing tough social distancing.

But there was no difference in the overall incidence of the laboratory-confirmed Covid-19 cases in children aged between one and 19-years-old in the two countries, indicative data from the study shows.

Finnish children returned to school in May after two months of remote learning and national infection rates have continued to decline since then.

Contact tracing in primary schools in Finland found hardly any evidence of children infecting others, according to the research paper.

A Swedish comparison of cases among daycare and primary school staff, found that there was no increased risk for teachers, compared with risk levels in other professions.

Schools in England closed on March 20 for all but the children of key workers and the most vulnerable youngsters.

Pupils in Reception, Year One and Year Six were allowed to return from June 1, but many will have been at home for six months by the time the new academic year begins in September.

A report published earlier this year found that more than two million children have done virtually no schoolwork during the lockdown.

Yesterday Aldi announced that it is launching cut-price home tutoring packages. The budget supermarket chain is hoping to appeal to parents who are worried that their children have fallen behind while schools have been closed.

Hanna Nohynek, chief physician at the infectious diseases unit of Finland’s health authority and a co-author of the Nordic research, said that "children get sick with Covid-19 much more rarely and less severely.”

She said that children’s role in the transmission needs further study but added: "It would appear that their role in transmitting Covid-19 isn’t at all as big as with other respiratory infections, such as influenza."

Meanwhile, an epidemiological study from South Korea found that children between the ages of 10 and 19 are more likely to spread the coronavirus within a household than younger children or adults.

The findings, released on the US Centres for Disease Control and Prevention website, come as countries across the world grapple with the heated question of how and when to reopen schools amid fears of a resurgence in cases when students return to the classroom.

The researchers traced and tested more than 59,000 people who had contact with 5,706 South Korean Covid-19 patients between January and March and found that, on average, 12 percent of household contacts tested positive for the virus.

For people who lived with infected older children, 19 per cent tested positive for the virus within about 10 days after the initial case was detected, the highest rate of transmission among the age groups studied.

Children under the age of 10 spread the virus at the lowest rate, though researchers warned that the figure may have been impacted by school closures and could change when they reopen.

A Department for Education spokesperson said: “The decision to ask schools to close to the majority of children was taken to reduce the transmission of coronavirus, in line with scientific and medical advice at the time.

“The circumstances have now changed. The prevalence of coronavirus has decreased, our NHS Test and Trace system is up and running and we are clear about the measures needed to keep children safe.

“We also know that getting back to school is vital for children’s education and wellbeing, so we are now doing everything we can to ensure all pupils can return to the classroom from September.”