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Abstract
Objective There is an urgent public need to readdress the school closure strategies. We aimed to describe the epidemiology of COVID-19 in schools and school-aged children to understand their roles in transmitting SARS-CoV-2 in Korea.
Design Retrospective cohort study.
Setting All schools in Korea
Patients All school-aged children in Korea.
Interventions None (observational study).
Main outcome measures Incidence rate, proportion of affected schools.
Results Between February and December 2020, the incidence rate was lower among school-aged children (63.2–79.8 per 100 000) compared with adults aged 19 and above (130.4 per 100 000). Household was the main route of transmission (62.3%), followed by community (21.3%) and school clusters (7.9%). Among the schools in Korea, 52% of secondary schools had COVID-19 cases, followed by 39% of primary schools and 3% of kindergartens.
Conclusions We found that schools and school-aged children aged 7–18 years were not the main drivers of COVID-19 transmission. The major sources of transmission were households.
- COVID-19
- child health
- infectious disease medicine
- paediatrics
Data availability statement
Data are available upon reasonable request. Data are available on reasonable request. Data are part of the epidemiologic investigation. Requests to access the data should be directed to the study team: Young-Joon Park, Korea Disease Control and Prevention Agency. email: pahmun@korea.kr.
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