Preliminary data suggest that coronavirus transmission in schools may not prove as severe as public health experts feared.
The first set of data published in the new National COVID-19 School Response Data Dashboard, launched by researchers at Brown University, showed that only a fraction of students and teachers had been diagnosed with the coronavirus from Aug. 31 to Sept. 13. The tracker shows an average of 230 cases per 100,000 students and 490 cases per 100,000 staff members. The tracker collected data from over 550 schools, about 300 of which were open for in-person classes.
“These numbers will be, for some people, reassuring and suggest that school openings may be less risky than they expected,” Emily Oster, an economist at Brown University, told the Washington Post.
Oster, who created Brown’s tracker, noted that the school coronavirus rates are “much lower” than those in the surrounding community, suggesting that the virus is not spreading as rapidly as expected inside school buildings.
Still, case reporting quality is not uniform across the United States, meaning experts do not yet have a full picture of how schools are faring. Reopening and social distancing policies are not uniform across all school districts either. School districts decide for themselves how to enforce mask-wearing and physical distancing.
“I don’t think that these numbers say all places should open schools with no restrictions or anything that comes close to that,” Oster said. “Ultimately, school districts are going to have different attitudes toward risk.”
Education organizations, such as the School Superintendents Association, the National Association of Elementary School Principals, the National Association of Secondary School Principals, and more, have teamed up to urge school leaders to contribute to the tracker.
Separately, Texas health officials have reported 2,352 positive tests in schools, roughly 0.21% of the 1.1 million students attending school in person. Zeph Capo, the president of the Texas branch of the American Federation of Teachers, told the Washington Post that while he has not seen the high rate of positive tests that he had expected, he predicted that the numbers will rise as more students return to school buildings and if the pandemic worsens in the coming months.
