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No doubt Munro and Faust intended to be provocative,1 but there is an unfortunate non-sequitur in the title of their Viewpoint paper: based on limited evidence, the authors suggest that since children may not be super-spreaders for COVID-19, it is safe to reopen schools. While acknowledging a lack of high-quality sero-surveillance data, the paper then reiterates: “Governments worldwide should allow all children back to school”. If only it were that simple. In fact, the question should not be ‘are children super-spreaders?’ but ‘what effect will re-opening schools to all pupils have on the local community in terms of spread of coronavirus?’ Schools vary with regard to feasibility of social distancing (still considered essential), and risk factors for severity of illness among …
Footnotes
Twitter @John Puntis
Competing interests I am co-chair of Keep Our NHS Public and fully support the 5 tests elaborated by the National Education Union for safe reopening of schools and its ten-point proposals for a National Education Recovery Plan.
Provenance and peer review Not commissioned; internally peer reviewed.