An email from Johns Hopkins: New Report: Filling in the Blanks: National Research Needs to Guide Decisions about Reopening Schools in the US. Excerpt:
Today (Friday, May 15, 2020), the Center for Health Security at Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health has released a new report calling for a national mandate to prioritize and fund research about children and COVID-19 so that governors, school districts, teachers, parents and guardians can make informed decisions about reopening schools in the US.
According to the report, “Filling in the Blanks: National Research Needs to Guide Decisions about Reopening Schools in the US,” there is an urgent need to generate additional evidence to better assess the potential risks of students and teachers returning to school classrooms in the fall. While published studies to date indicate that children with COVID-19 are less likely to suffer severe illness than adults, there is only limited scientific evidence to gauge whether children with COVID-19 in school can transmit the virus to other children, teachers, school staff and family members.
New research would help answer key questions including:
• How vulnerable to severe illness are students who have underlying health conditions, such as asthma, diabetes, or severe obesity?
• How safe is it for adults with serious underlying health conditions to send their children back to school without fear of those children bringing the virus home and infecting others in the family?
• How safe is it for teachers, administrators, and other school staff, especially those who are medically vulnerable, to return to school and interact with students who may be asymptomatic but infectious?
While some research relevant to these questions has begun, the authors say, the U.S. government (as well as other national governments, non-governmental organizations and philanthropies) should fund additional studies aimed at understanding the role of children in transmission of COVID-19.
The report also includes a summary of other countries’ approaches to school reopenings. The authors recommend tracking these various efforts closely to monitor whether any result in increased community transmission, and whether successful approaches could be translated to the US education landscape.
