Classrooms around the world are beginning to open for in-person education, offering developmental benefits to children beyond what distance learning can provide, while administrators are ensuring that proper safety measures are put in place to protect students and faculty from COVID-19 and stressing that students are at a very low risk of contracting the virus.
Pediatricians and educators have said that distance learning can cause more harm than good, even with the coronavirus remaining active, Science magazine reported last month. Evidence shows that children rarely develop severe symptoms from the virus as well.
Not only are children not at a high risk of catching the coronavirus, but virtual education leaves much to be desired compared to in-person learning, especially since it leaves parents in a tight spot between teaching their children and working. Many children unable to go to school every day become more susceptible to hunger, malnutrition and abuse.
Arnaud Fontanet
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But while schools are reopening, outbreaks of the virus are likely to occur, the article stated.
“Outbreaks in schools are inevitable,” Otto Helve, a pediatric infectious disease specialist at the Finnish Institute for Health and Welfare, told Science. “But there is good news.”
Helve said the benefits of in-person school are greater than the risks that come with it. For one, people under 18 “are between one-third and one-half as likely as adults” to catch the coronavirus, Science reported. The younger the children, the lower the risks, several studies have shown.
Arnaud Fontanet, an epidemiologist at the Pasteur Institute, conducted an investigation with colleagues in Crépy-en-Valois in late March. The team found that 38% of high school students had been infected with the coronavirus, but only six children in elementary school had been infected.
“It’s still a bit speculative,” Fontanet told Science. High school students “have to be very careful. They have mild disease, but they are contagious.” Younger kids “probably don’t transmit very well. They are close to each other in schools, but that is not enough” to fuel the spread of the coronavirus.
While masks can help prevent the spread of the virus, children are more likely to touch their face regardless and find masks more uncomfortable to wear than adults do.
“For me, masks are part of the equation,” Susan Coffin, an infectious disease physician at the Children’s Hospital of Philadelphia, told Science. “Respiratory droplets are a major mode of transmission” and wearing a mask can help prevent these droplets from spreading.
Reopening classrooms remains an experimental learning process that will continue to develop as more knowledge comes to light.
