Their findings tell two different stories, says Engy Ziedan, a Tulane economist on the team. The Coronavirus Crisis 5 Things We've Learned About Virtual School In 2020 It's easy to imagine infections going undetected in communities with spotty testing, Hassig says, but "if you get infected with coronavirus and you become substantially ill, you're going to become hospitalized." Mining nationwide data from 2020, she and her colleagues looked to see if more people ended up in the hospital after nearby schools reopened.
Instead, Susan Hassig, a Tulane epidemiologist who worked on the study, says they focused on hospitalization rates as a more reliable indicator of virus spread. The REACH researchers worried that testing in the U.S., especially among children, is still too varied and unpredictable. As in, did the rate of positive coronavirus tests among kids or communities increase after schools reopened? Up to this point, researchers studying the public health effects of school reopening have focused largely on positivity rates. The study comes from REACH, the National Center for Research on Education Access and Choice, at Tulane University. But a new, nationwide study suggests reopening schools may be safer than previously thought, at least in communities where the virus is not already spreading out of control. Since the beginning of this pandemic, experts and educators have feared that open schools would spread the coronavirus further, which is why so many classrooms remain closed. Jessica Rinaldi/Boston Globe via Getty Images Fonseca Elementary School in Fall River, Mass., in November. A first-grader raises her hand at Mary L.