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Only 5 COVID-19 cases associated with the school were detected among exposed students and teachers and tested in 20 schools in the district.
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The rare infections associated with school were attributed to the misuse of the mask or the closed space for lunch.
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Schools can reopen safely, even when seats are a meter away, if other measures, such as masks, are observed, says the CDC.
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COVID-19 transmission rates were high in Salt Lake County, Utah, last December and January, but in a school district, they remained very low thanks to mitigation measures such as wearing a mask, a March 19 report by Centers for Disease Control and prevention found.
Specifically, only 0.7% of teachers and students who were in close contact with an infected colleague or colleague contracted COVID-19 of them at school. None of the 20 schools analyzed experienced an outbreak of coronavirus.
The authors claim that the report demonstrates how mitigation measures, such as wearing a mask and restricting extracurricular activities, can make school reopening safe – even, as was the case in the schools studied, children cannot always sit at one. meter away.
According to this report and other studies, the CDC changed its orientation from physical distance to K-12 schools on Friday, saying that 3 feet of space is sufficient among students in most circumstances.
The cases associated with the school were related to the use of an inadequate mask or seats close to lunch
To conduct the study, the CDC researchers analyzed 20 K-6 schools in a Salt Lake County school district between December 3, 2020 and January 31, 2021.
They identified 1,041 students and teachers susceptible to COVID-19 who, while in school, were in close contact with 51 of their classmates and colleagues positive for COVID. “Close contact” meant that they were with the infected person, while contagious, for 15 minutes or more in a classroom, cafeteria, school bus or at recess.
After testing 735 of the 1,041 contacts, the study’s authors found that only 12 contracted the disease and only five contracted it at school. In those school-associated cases, the transmission appeared to occur because the infected person was not wearing the mask correctly or was sitting next to someone at lunch.
Using masks and surprising intervals can prevent transmission, even if some students and teachers are COVID-positive
The study authors credit the school’s mitigation strategies with preventing higher rates of spread and outbreaks in schools.
For example, students were placed in groups whenever possible, and most schools scheduled lunch, gymnastics and other activities such as using the library and art classes. They also limited or made virtual extracurricular and face-to-face events such as sports, assemblies, presentations and field trips. 86% of teachers reported that their students always wore the mask, except for eating and drinking.
These strategies have proved successful, despite the fact that children are separated by an average distance of 1 meter, and teachers often have interactions of more than 2 meters with their children in small groups, without any plexiglass or other barrier .
Even when the school district loosened its quarantine orientation in mid-December – requiring only close contact with an infected person to quarantine if one or both were not wearing masks – the COVID-19 case rates associated with the school have not changed. This change in orientation resulted in savings of more than 1,200 days of face-to-face learning, according to the report.
This could be a model for other schools
The study had some limitations. On the one hand, genome sequencing technology to differentiate between school and community transmission was not always available. In addition, some contacts of infectious people may have been lost, and some identified contacts may have already been unintentionally immune to COVID-19. The findings also cannot be applied to new variants of COVID-19 that were not circulating in the Utah community at the time.
But the study’s authors say Utah schools can serve as role models for others who are looking to resume personal learning safely.
“When ≥6 foot spacing is not feasible,” they write, “schools in high-incidence communities can still limit transmission within the school by wearing masks consistently and implementing other important mitigation strategies.”
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