Outbreaks of the common cold may become more common as schools reopen for face-to-face learning, according to a new report by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC).
In the report recently published in Emerging Infectious Diseases, the CDC newspaper, researchers looked at the reopening of schools in Hong Kong as an indication of what could happen in the United States as students move away from remote learning. In Hong Kong, schools closed due to COVID-19 from late January to May 2020. They reopened briefly, but closed again in July amid an increase in cases.
However, when schools and daycare centers reopened in October, cases of common cold among children emerged – despite the mandatory use of face masks and other measures in place to curb the spread of COVD-19.
The researchers suspect that children were more susceptible to the rhinoviruses that cause the common cold, since they returned to personal learning because they spent most of the year away from others outside the home, decreasing the number of chances of exposure to rhinoviruses and, ultimately, they increase immunity.
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“A large number of common cold outbreaks in Hong Kong schools and daycare centers during October-November 2020 led to school layoffs across the country,” they wrote in the report. “Increased susceptibility to rhinoviruses during prolonged school closures and layoffs due to coronavirus disease and the variable efficacy of non-pharmaceutical interventions may have increased the transmission of cold-causing viruses after returning to school.”
Outbreaks – 482 were recorded between October 25 and November 28, said the CDC – occurred largely in primary schools, daycare centers, daycare centers and daycare centers.
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“The population’s susceptibility to rhinoviruses and other respiratory viruses, including influenza viruses, may have increased over time because people were probably less exposed to viruses when intense measures of social distance, including school leave, were implemented in response to pandemic COVID-19. This would increase the potential for transmission when schools resume, “wrote the report’s authors, noting that in September schools in England experienced a similar occurrence. Two weeks after the total reopening of schools,” there has been a substantial increase in the detection of rhinovirus among adults, possibly due to transmission between children ”.
The researchers are not sure why common cold outbreaks occurred, despite the wide range of infection control measures in place when the children returned to school.
“Although in general the modes of transmission can be similar for different respiratory viruses, how much each mode contributes to the transmission of a specific virus remains unclear; therefore, the effectiveness of certain non-pharmaceutical interventions may differ between viruses, ”they hypothesized. “For example, face masks have been shown to be effective in blocking the release of coronaviruses and influenza viruses, but not rhinoviruses, in exhaled air.”
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They also noted that rhinoviruses are more resistant to certain disinfectants than coronaviruses and flu viruses, which can also help explain the outbreaks.
“Our findings highlight the increased risk posed by the common cold virus in places where schools were closed or dismissed for long periods during the COVID-19 pandemic,” they concluded.