School closings reduce flu by 21 percent

ANTWERP, Belgium, Nov. 27 (UPI) -- Closing schools during a pandemic would have a significant impact -- about 21 percent -- on disease transmission, researchers in Belgium found.

Niel Hens of Hasselt and Antwerp University in Belgium led a team of researchers from Belgium, England, Wales, Finland, Germany, Italy, Luxemburg, Poland and the Netherlands to estimate the effects of school closure on the number of close contacts people make in a day.

"Mathematical models of how infectious diseases spread from person to person through close contacts rely on assumptions regarding the underlying transmission process," Hens said in a statement.

Hens and colleagues found contacts in general are reduced by about 10 percent when schools are closed. On weekends intergeneration mixing becomes more frequent through family and social gatherings but school-age gathering is less frequent.

"Children are important spreaders of many close contact pathogens due to their frequent and intimate social contacts, their general hygiene and perhaps their increased shedding," Hens said. "The reduced opportunity for contact we describe here would be a great benefit in a pandemic situation."

The study, published in the BMC Infectious Diseases, said if school closure in a pandemic resembles school closure during holiday periods, then disease transmission would decrease by about 21 percent.