# 1854
Today we get news of another study, this time from France, that suggests that closing schools during a pandemic might not have as big of an impact as previously thought.
As a strong proponent of closing schools early, and keeping them closed as long as necessary, I am admittedly biased on this subject. Pandemic influenza has shown a predilection for the young, and even a small reduction in the percentage of children infected could translate into thousands of lives saved.
The oft repeated warning, that closing schools `would create significant hardships for working parents' pales in comparison to the hardships that burying their children would bring. And that is really the bottom line here.
The whole idea behind NPI's, Non Pharmaceutical Interventions such as school closures and social distancing, is to reduce the impact of a pandemic. The authors of this latest study admit that school closures could reduce the peak number of infected individuals by as much as 40%.
Parents, of course, would have to ensure that children stay at home in a pandemic. The point of closing schools is to reduce societal contact during a pandemic wave. Allowing children to congregate, or sending them to alternative day care centers, would defeat that intervention.
Whether this study is more predictive than others that have suggested greater reductions in illness and deaths is difficult to judge. I have to believe there is a significant difference in the impact of closing schools for 3 months during a pandemic and closing them for 2-weeks during flu season.
But even if the numbers promulgated in this study are correct, then 1 in 7 deaths during a pandemic might be avoided by closing schools. This is hardly a trivial number.
And with the Federal projections of 2 million US deaths during a severe pandemic, that would work out to as many as 285,000 lives saved, a good many of those likely to be children.
No, closing schools wouldn't be easy, and it would no doubt create hardships.
But those are the types of things you endure in order to save tens of thousands of lives during a pandemic.
School closings may be no holiday for flu pandemic
By Julie Steenhuysen
CHICAGO (Reuters) - Closing schools during an influenza pandemic could prevent one in seven cases of flu, British researchers said on Wednesday in a study that suggests such action would have less impact than some other estimates.
But they said school closings would create significant hardships for working parents, who might be forced to create informal daycare arrangements that would undo efforts to contain the spread of flu.
"We find school closings would be less effective than some studies have suggested," said Dr. Simon Cauchemez of Imperial College London, whose study appears in the journal Nature.
"The main effect would be to slow and flatten the outbreak -- so the numbers becoming ill in the worst week of the outbreak might be reduced by up to 40 percent, reducing peak demand on health-care systems," Cauchemez said in an e-mail.
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KEEPING KIDS ISOLATED
They found school holidays prevent 16 to 18 percent of seasonal influenza cases. When extrapolated to a pandemic, they said prolonged school closure might reduce the cumulative number of cases by 13 to 17 percent, and peak attack rates by 39 to 45 percent.
But that impact would be reduced if it proved too difficult to keep children apart. "If we want the policy to have an impact, children must be kept relatively isolated and not cared for in groups," Cauchemez said.
U.S. cities that quickly closed schools and discouraged public gatherings during the great flu pandemic of 1918 -- which killed tens of millions of people globally -- had as many as 50 percent fewer deaths than cities that took less decisive measures, according to a recent study.
