Weighing policymaking: A narrative review of school closures as COVID-19 pandemic-mitigation strategies

Abstract

Introduction: In the era of data-driven decision-making, unacceptable haziness, and inconsistency surrounds the yearlong scientific and public debate on the school closure policy in the coronavirus disease-2019 (COVID-19) pandemic mitigation efforts. Aim: The present literature review stems out of the need for a clear scaffold collecting in one place all current evidence, as well as helping to organize incoming future evidence, concerning both the role of schools in driving the severe acute respiratory syndrome coronavirus 2 (SARS-CoV-2) community spread and the cost-effectiveness of school closure in containing such spread. Methods: References for this review were initially identified through searches of PubMed, Scopus, and Cochrane Library for articles published from March 2020 to March 2021 by the use of key terms “Schools,” “COVID-19,” “pandemic,” “clusters,” “outbreak,” and “seroprevalence,” selecting all articles from 2020 to 2021 with full-text availability. A further search was undertaken by screening citations of articles found in the original search and through Google Scholar and ResearchGate. Results: Overall, evidence shows that opening schools and keeping them open in the context of the SARS-CoV-2 pandemic is possible, although behaviorally challenging and unfeasible if educational facilities or testing services are inadequate. Contrary to other respiratory viruses, children are not chief targets of SARS-CoV-2 infection, transmission, and disease. It also appears that the second wave of the SARS-CoV-2 virus spread in the WHO European region has been unrelated to school re-opening. Conclusions: A fact-based understanding of what is currently known on such a consequential policy is required to provide a basis of evidence for advocacy of either school closure or school opening at times of high-intensity community transmission of SARS-CoV-2.