- Teachers spread the coronavirus to other staff and students in recent outbreaks in schools in Georgia.
- Inadequate masking and detachment may also have contributed to transmission within the school.
- Combining several prevention strategies is the best way to prevent an outbreak.
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A new investigation found that teachers were instrumental in transmitting COVID-19 in primary schools.
The findings suggest that prioritizing school staff in implementing the ongoing vaccine could potentially reduce the spread of the virus in schools, allowing for safer reopening.
The investigation of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention took place in Cobb County, Georgia, where nine outbreaks of COVID-19 occurred in six primary schools between December 1, 2020 and January 22, 2021. The CDC identified 32 student cases and 13 cases of educators in schools, and at least 18 household contacts of infected people also tested positive.
At least two of the infection groups began with the spread from educator to educator and continued as long as teachers exposed students to the virus, the report concluded. Teachers tested positive in all but one group.
“In all groups, educators played an important role in spreading COVID-19 in schools,” CDC public relations expert Jasmine Reed told Insider by email. “Although COVID-19 has spread from student to educator and from student to student, it has happened less often.”
Teachers shared the virus over lunch and transmitted it during class
Although schools require students and staff to wear masks, some may have spread the coronavirus by removing the facial cover for lunch.
After observing the schools, the researchers determined that the transmission between educators probably occurred during personal meetings or lunches in at least two groups. Teachers could then have exposed students to the virus in the classroom.
This specific transmission pattern led to half of the cases of students and teachers in the two schools in question, the report concluded.
Inadequate masking and detachment may also have led to infections
If students were properly masked and sitting at a distance, the spread of the virus within the classroom could have been better contained.
But despite schools reporting high levels of mask compliance, CDC researchers learned in interviews that not all students used their facial covers correctly and some did not even use them.
In addition, students in this district usually sat less than a meter apart, with plastic dividers between them. Distancing two meters away was not possible due to the large influx and layout of the classroom, but experts told Insider that the partitions alone are not enough to prevent the spread of the smallest virus-laden drops.
The students also had lunch in these classrooms, so it is possible that some student-to-student transmission may have occurred during that period without a mask.
Multiple precautionary layers can help prevent outbreaks
Previous CDC investigations have found that it is possible to prevent and mitigate outbreaks of COVID-19 with simple preventive measures.
Overnight camps in Maine managed to nip potential outbreaks in the bud, selecting campers and counselors on arrival this summer. Although two team members and a camper tested positive, the camps had no secondary transmission and had an almost normal summer.
The camps combined several strategies, including early identification and isolation, quarantine, masking, physical distance and grouping campers into small groups.
A similar multilayered approach was also effective in daycare settings, according to a pediatric study published in December.
“It’s like a piece of Swiss cheese,” Laura Blaisdell, the lead author of the Maine report, told Insider. “Each layer has a limitation, and it is the placement of the layers on top of each other that allows us to cover these holes.”