8/18—COVID-19, children, and schools: overlooked and at risk

Seroprevalence and contact tracing studies show children are […] vulnerable and transmit the virus to a meaningful degree. Research suggesting otherwise is hampered by substantial bias. Additionally, large clusters in school settings have been reported, with implications for the control of community transmission. Risk-reduction strategies must be implemented in schools as a matter of urgency (Hyde 2020).

Rapid Review: What is the specific role of daycares and schools in COVID-19 transmission?
Based on the published reports to date, young children are not a major source of
transmission of COVID-19 in school and daycare settings. The quality of evidence is moderate, and findings are consistent. Implementation of infection control measures appear to be important to limiting spread as evidenced by several outbreaks where limited or no measures were in place.

Measurement Method for Evaluating the Lockdown Policies during the COVID-19 Pandemic
We propose a method comprising data analytics and machine learning classification for evaluating the effectiveness of lockdown regulations. The model shows a direct correlation between lockdown procedures and the infection rate. The lockdown attributes include retail and recreation, grocery and pharmacy, parks, transit stations, workplaces, residential, and schools. Our results show that combining all the independent attributes in our study resulted in a higher correlation (0.68) to the dependent value Interquartile 3 (Q3).

Secondary Attack Rate of COVID-19 in household contacts: Systematic review
After initial screening of 326 articles, 13 eligible studies were included in the final evidence synthesis. We found that secondary attack rate varies widely across countries with lowest reported rate as 4.6% and highest as 49.56%. The rates were unaffected by confounders such as population of the country, lockdown status and geographic location. Review suggested greater vulnerability of spouse and elderly population for secondary transmission than other household members.

Potential Role of Social Distancing in Mitigating Spread of Coronavirus Disease, South Korea
Although we found clear, positive correlations on a daily scale between normalized traffic and the median estimates of Rt in Daegu (r = 0.93; 95% credible interval 0.86–0.96; Appendix) and Seoul (r = 0.76; 95% credible interval 0.60–0.87; Appendix), these correlations are conflated by time trends and by other measures that could have affected Rt. […] Even though social distancing alone might not prevent spread, it can flatten the epidemic curve (compare Figure 2, panels B, D) and reduce the burden on the healthcare system.

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