(WASHINGTON EXAMINER) – Preliminary data suggest that coronavirus transmission in schools may not prove as severe as public health experts feared.
The first set of data published in the new National COVID-19 School Response Data Dashboard, launched by researchers at Brown University, showed that only a fraction of students and teachers had been diagnosed with the coronavirus from Aug. 31 to Sept. 13. The tracker shows an average of 230 cases per 100,000 students and 490 cases per 100,000 staff members. The tracker collected data from over 550 schools, about 300 of which were open for in-person classes.
“These numbers will be, for some people, reassuring and suggest that school openings may be less risky than they expected,” Emily Oster, an economist at Brown University, told the Washington Post.
Oster, who created Brown’s tracker, noted that the school coronavirus rates are “much lower” than those in the surrounding community, suggesting that the virus is not spreading as rapidly as expected inside school buildings.
