Back

The Impact of Schools on the Transmission of Sars-Cov-2: Evidence from Italy

Lattanzio, S.

2022-07-18 epidemiology
10.1101/2022.07.18.22276940 medRxiv
Show abstract

This paper studies the effect of school re-openings and closures on the spread of Sars-Cov-2 in Italy. Exploiting different re-opening dates across regions after the summer break 2020, I show that early opening regions experience on average 1,900 more cases per day in the 40 days following school re-openings compared with late opening ones. However, the uncertainty around the estimates is large and suggests a wide dispersion in the effects of school re-openings on Sars-Cov-2 transmission. I also study the effect of school closures in Campania, one of the biggest regions in Southern Italy. Using a synthetic control approach, I show that school closures are associated with lower case numbers relative to the counterfactual group, particularly in younger age groups. In contrast, I find no significant effects on older age groups, who are more likely to require hospitalization. Finally, exploiting survey data on incidence rates in schools, I provide descriptive evidence on the increased incidence among teachers and students relative to the general population, following school re-openings.

Matching journals

The top 15 journals account for 50% of the predicted probability mass.

50% of probability mass above

"Similar papers" are the closest papers from that journal in the model's embedding space. They show what the match is built on, but the ranking comes mostly from a classifier over the whole training set, not from these examples alone.