COVID addendum: some student-teacher transmission

 after having just sent out the blog on daycare and alluding to a prior one on schools, the MMWR just released another study finding some (see https://www.cdc.gov/mmwr/volumes/70/wr/mm7008e4.htm?s_cid=mm7008e4_x)

in very brief:

-- 9 covid transmission clusters in Ge​orgia elementary schools involving 13 educators and 32 students, from Dec1 to Jan 20

--in 1 cluster, the index person was a student, in 4 it was the teacher (these were clusters where there was a known index person)

-- but: 

    --plastic dividers were in place between students, but the students were <3 ft apart; the room set-ups did not allow the 6-foot distancing

    --in some cases, there were small group sessions with increased proximity between educators and students

    --though mask-wearing was apparently pretty consistent, interviews suggested that there were specific instances of lack of or inadequate student mask use

    --when eating, masks were not required, and students ate lunches in the classrooms (with inadequate distancing, as above)

--a few prior studies have reported low in-school transmission rates even in counties with high background covid rates in the community, in both the US and foreign studies (eg UK and Germany)

so, this study does add a couple of things to the prior one on schools (see last blog http://gmodestmedblogs.blogspot.com/2021/02/covid-low-viral-transmission-in-daycare.html ):

--most of covid-19 transmission, from this and other studies, occurs from educator-to-educator

--there should be aggressive vaccination programs targeting teachers, as a means to safely open schools and decrease in-school and community spread of SARS-CoV-2, and also to allow schools to stay open with fewer covid-related interruptions

--there should be enforced mask-wearing and distancing in the schools, which may require significant redesign of the classroom desk spacing, etc

geoff

 

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