School Covid Cases in U.K. Are Lower Than in Community, Data Show

(Bloomberg) -- Covid-19 infection rates among staff and students at U.K. schools are lower than in the community, according to new data -- a good sign as Britain prepares to reopen them next week.

About 15% of staff members from more than 120 primary and secondary schools across England had Covid-19 antibodies in December, researchers found, compared with about 18% of working-age people in the same local authorities. Testing carried out between Dec. 2 and Dec. 10, when schools were still open, found that between 1% and 2% of pupils and staff who were in school were infected.

The survey, the second run by the London School of Hygiene & Tropical Medicine, Public Health England and the Office for National Statistics, suggests that staff and pupils are at no greater risk from the disease than others in the community. Measures such as extra cleaning, “bubble” systems keeping groups of children together, and home isolation for those in contact with a positive case may be at least partially mitigating the spread of infection, the researchers said.

Antibody results for pupils in the second study weren't available yet, but a similar exercise in November found that about 8% of primary school children and 11% of secondary students had antibodies.

The results will be welcomed by the U.K. government, which is moving to reopen schools next week. The data also support the country's decision not to prioritize vaccination by profession rather than age, a policy that has proved controversial among teachers and other frontline workers outside the National Health Service. Children rarely develop severe Covid-19 and appear to be often asymptomatic.

“We're in a much better place than we've ever been before” to reopen schools, said Shamez Ladhani, consultant paediatrician at PHE and the study's chief investigator, during a briefing with reporters. “Everybody's doing this knowing that the benefits outweigh the risks, but the risks are not zero.”

Ladhani said teachers appear to be more at risk than other staff members, but this may be due to the increased contact with people generally rather than specifically with children. The researchers are also planning to analyze transmission patterns among staff and children in coming studies.

High-level surveillance data from PHE shows that rates of transmission are very low between students and higher among the staff, Ladhani said, but it isn't known whether the spread is occurring more from the community or within schools.

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