• James D Munday, Katharine Sherratt, Sophie Meakin, Akira Endo, Pearson Carl A B CAB Centre for Mathematical Modelling of Infectious Diseases, London School of Hygiene and Tropical Medicine, London, UK. , Joel Hellewell, Sam Abbott, Nikos I Bosse, CMMID COVID-19 Working Group, Katherine E Atkins, Jacco Wallinga, W John Edmunds, Albert Jan van Hoek, and Sebastian Funk.
• Centre for Mathematical Modelling of Infectious Diseases, London School of Hygiene and Tropical Medicine, London, UK. james.munday@lshtm.ac.uk.
• Nat Commun. 2021 Mar 29; 12 (1): 1942.

AbstractIn early 2020 many countries closed schools to mitigate the spread of SARS-CoV-2. Since then, governments have sought to relax the closures, engendering a need to understand associated risks. Using address records, we construct a network of schools in England connected through pupils who share households. We evaluate the risk of transmission between schools under different reopening scenarios. We show that whilst reopening select year-groups causes low risk of large-scale transmission, reopening secondary schools could result in outbreaks affecting up to 2.5 million households if unmitigated, highlighting the importance of careful monitoring and within-school infection control to avoid further school closures or other restrictions.

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