Thread by @smartrestartaps

1/ Study finds indoor sports most likely setting in our schools to spread COVID-19.

Secondary attack rates by setting:
📌indoor, contact sports like🏀, wrestling, cheer (23.8%)
📌staff meetings or lunches (18.2%)
📌elementary school rooms (9.5%)

academic.oup.com/cid/advance-ar…

2/ Tracked COVID-19 cases Dec 11, 2020, to Jan 22, 2021, in an Atlanta district that included 8 elementary schools, 2 middle schools, and a high school. Students were in-person 4 days per week and wore masks, with desks spaced 3 to 6 feet apart. More kids in ES rooms than MS/HS.

3/ All cases confirmed by PCR testing. Secondary attack rate (SAR) — % of contacts who become infected— was calculated by setting (classroom, bus, indoor sports); student or staff; symptomatic or asymptomatic, and time of exposure.

Overall, 9% secondary contacts got sick.

4/ Symptomatic index cases got more people sick than asymptomatic case, ~11% versus 3%.

📌Staff more likely to be an index case than kids.
📌 17% of the infected got more than 2 other people sick in school settings
📌 ~ 6 in 10 index cases ➡️no symptoms

5/ This is a good study that included surveillance testing that has been missing from others; they caught silent spread.

More densely occupied rooms with <3 ft spacing had more cases, even with extra ventilation.

(Relates to us because APS is planning for no distance in fall.)

6/ Ventilation can’t protect if you‘re all up in your neighbor‘s plume of exhaled breath, leaking out of their mask. Current masks greatly reduce aerosol particles but aren’t 100%.

When they increased spacing to >3ft, COVID spread decreased. Also masks weren‘t worn at sports.

7/ Plexiglass desk barriers were used but there was still spread indoors. Hmmm... maybe those were waste a money?

Wish we could find out more about meals eaten indoors. Staff members lunching together gave each other COVID, but not much info about kids lunch here.

8/ This study documents several areas that policy must address to prevent school building reopenings from fueling more COVID-19 in out communities. Define the issues correctly, so you can solve them, and we can get on with our lives.

9/ Here’s a chart of how cases played out. Hope to see more research like this study with surveillance testing and more expansive tracing. It would really help to get end this thing.