Thread by @DrEricDing

Reopening schools in Texas potentially led to ~40,000 cases of #COVID19 and hundreds of deaths in Texas last year, study finds— “robust evidence that reopening Texas schools gradually but substantially accelerated the community spread of COVID-19." 🧵
abcnews.go.com/Health/rapid-s…

2) according to an analysis by economists and public policy experts from the University of Kentucky, analysis estimate that ~43,000 people contracted COVID-19 and 800 people possibly died in Texas two months after schools reopened statewide, when virus transmission was high.

3) The research highlights how in-person learning and its potential "spillover" can affect nearby communities.

4) “the May study, titled School Reopening, Mobility and COVID-19 Spread: Evidence from Texas, found all of the school districts in Texas reopened for in-person learning at different points during the 2020 fall semester at near-full capacity.”

5) “Our best estimate is that over 90% of school districts opened fully in-person without any staggered or phased-in attendance. This is in contrast to 42% nationally," the study said. "At the time, COVID-19 rates in the community were relatively high."

6) Dr. Charles Courtemanche, professor at the University of Kentucky's Gatton College of Business and Economics and one of the study's authors, said research showed that reopening schools in Texas seemed to have signaled to the greater community that life was returning to normal.

7) While schools can reopen safely, the study found increased social activity among adults when kids went back to in-person learning that could have contributed to community spread.

8) "If you think about the overall effect of reopening schools and COVID-19 spread in a community, what's happening within the walls of the school is actually just a really small piece of the puzzle," Courtemanche said.

9) "Are the parents going back to in-person [jobs]? Are the parents just going out to lunch more now? Are they resuming other sorts of leisure activities that carry various degrees of risk?"

10) "It's really quite remarkable how you see that the effects start to emerge at the exact time schools were reopened. It wasn't "three weeks before, four weeks before, two months before, they start to pop out that week. That's pretty strongly consistent with a causal effect."

11) Meanwhile here is the school related outbreaks elsewhere in UK (where adults are heavily vaccinated)… but clearly still an outbreak is occurring in Bolton UK ( and it’s the Indian variant)