Alliance for Pandemic Preparedness

October 13, 2020

Using an Agent-Based Model to Assess K-12 School Reopenings Under Different COVID-19 Spread Scenarios – United States, School Year 2020/21

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  • An agent-based model that simulated communities from K-12 schools across the US found that the percentage of individuals with symptomatic COVID-19 significantly decreased by as much as 75% in scenarios where students returned to school in non-overlapping split cohorts. Depending upon community factors like initial level of COVID-19 incidence and number of workplaces open for in-person businesses, split cohort scenarios could avert approximately 28-60 million cases nationwide over the simulated 8-month period. 

Germann et al. (Oct 13, 2020). Using an Agent-Based Model to Assess K-12 School Reopenings Under Different COVID-19 Spread Scenarios – United States, School Year 2020/21. Pre-print downloaded Oct 13 https://doi.org/10.1101/2020.10.09.20208876