February 26, 2021

Stepping Back to School: A Step-by-Step Look at COVID Introduction, Spread, and Exportation

Category: Article Summary

Topic: Modeling and Prediction

Keywords (Tags): modeling prediction, schools

• [Report, not peer-reviewed] Covasim, a model previously used to describe SARS-CoV-2 transmission among inter-personal contacts in King County, Washington predicted that the rate of introduction of SARS-CoV-2 into K-12 school classroom settings is proportional to the prevalence of SARS-CoV-2 in the community. The model is an agent-based model of contacts at home, school, work and in the community. According to the model, each 0.1% increase in community prevalence resulted in an increase in daily introduction rate by 3.1 per 100,000 population. In a classroom setting, if in-school transmissibility is low, potential outbreaks were predicted to be small, with additional countermeasures such as asymptomatic testing adding little value. If transmission is high, however, large outbreaks are possible with more transmissible variants or if interventions are insufficient. The model also predicted that the frequency of exports from schools to the broader community is dependent on the number of students infected in the schools. 

Klein et al. (2021). Stepping Back to School: A Step-by-Step Look at COVID Introduction, Spread, and Exportation. https://covid.idmod.org/data/Stepping_Back_to_School.pdf