Implications of the school-household network structure on SARS-CoV-2 transmission under school reopening strategies in England
James D Munday, Katharine Sherratt, Sophie Meakin, Akira Endo, Carl A. B. Pearson, Joel Hellewell, Sam Abbott, Nikos I Bosse, CMMID COVID-19 Working Group, Rosalind M. Eggo, David Simons, Kathleen O’Reilly, Timothy Russell, Rachel Lowe, Quentin J. Leclerc, Jon C. Emery, Petra Klepac, Emily Nightingale, Matthew Quaife, Kevin van Zandvoort, Gwenan M. Knight, Thibaut Jombart, Christian Julián Villabona‐Arenas, Eleanor M. Rees, Charlie Diamond, Megan Auzenbergs, Graham F. Medley, Anna M. Foss, Georgia R. Gore‐Langton, Arminder Deol, Mark Jit, Hamish Gibbs, Simon R. Procter, Alicia Roselló, Christopher I Jarvis, Yang Liu, Rein M G J Houben, Stéphane Hué, Samuel Clifford, Billy J. Quilty, Amy Gimma, Damien C. Tully, Fiona Yueqian Sun, Kiesha Prem, Katherine E. Atkins, Jacco Wallinga, W. John Edmunds, Albert Jan van Hoek, Sebastian Funk
Abstract
In 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.