Why It’s (Mostly) Safe to Reopen the Schools: Younger children urgently need to get back to their classrooms, and the evidence from Europe shows no wider harms. It’s more complicated with older students

By Avik Roy. Excerpts:

"In Boston, the city reported last spring that more than one in five public school children who participated in virtual learning dropped out. Low-income children, in particular, are less likely to have high-speed internet access at home and often lack the extracurricular educational opportunities that wealthier parents can provide. School closures also increase food insecurity, because 30 million children receive free or reduced-price meals through the National School Lunch Program."

"Covid-19 school closures have led to a 27% decline in reports of child abuse. Because school personnel are often the first people to notice maltreatment, a decline in reported cases is possibly a sign that more child abuse is going undetected.

The American Academy of Pediatrics has succinctly and forcefully summarized the case for reopening: “The importance of in-person learning is well-documented, and there is already evidence of the negative impacts on children because of school closures in the spring of 2020. Lengthy time away from school and associated interruption of supportive services often results in social isolation, making it difficult for schools to identify and address important learning deficits as well as child and adolescent physical or sexual abuse, substance use, depression and suicidal ideation. This, in turn, places children and adolescents at considerable risk of morbidity and, in some cases, mortality.”"

"in June, the unemployment rate for women was 20% higher than for men, in part because of their much higher level of participation in the education sector."

"While there are 45 million children in prekindergarten, kindergarten, elementary or middle school, as of July 29, only 28 Americans ages 1–15 have died of the coronavirus, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention."

"in 2016, 190 children ages 1–14 died of influenza or pneumonia, 625 died of homicide, 1,257 died of cancer and 2,895 died of unintentional injuries like car accidents"

"Iceland, the Netherlands, Belgium, Denmark, Norway, Austria, Germany, Finland, France and Sweden reopened schools in April and May, and their experience has been largely positive."

"Denmark trod carefully, requiring children to stay 2 meters apart wherever possible. Children were grouped into “bubbles” of 12 and were required to wash their hands every two hours but not to wear masks. It worked. Denmark’s case and mortality counts continued to decline after reopening schools"

"In a study of 54 families with Covid-19 by the Dutch National Institute for Public Health and the Environment, no child under 12 was found to be the “index” patient—that is, the first patient in the family. These results, the institute concluded, “confirm the impression that children do not play a significant role in the transmission of the virus.”"

"A study of 5,706 South Korean index patients published in the journal Emerging Infectious Diseases suggested that children ages 10–19 may transmit Covid-19 at rates comparable to those of adults. In 231 relatives of 124 such index children, 43 of the relatives tested positive: a rate of 19%. By contrast, only 5% of the relatives of children under 10 tested positive. These figures compared with positive rates of 12% to 18% in the relatives of adult index patients."