(Reuters) – Teachers may play an important role in transmitting COVID-19 to schools, the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) said Monday, citing a study in elementary schools of a school district in Georgia.
The report comes after the agency’s investigators last month said there was little evidence that schools were spreading COVID-19 infections in the country, based in part on a study by Wisconsin schools, which alleviated concerns to enable face-to-face learning. The Wisconsin study found significantly less virus spread in schools compared to transmission to surrounding communities.
An investigation involving about 2,600 students and 700 primary school staff in a Georgia school district showed nine groups of COVID-19 cases involving 13 educators and 32 students from six elementary schools, the CDC said. .
Of these, two clusters involved a likely teacher-to-teacher transmission, followed by teacher-to-student transmission in classrooms, according to the agency in its weekly morbidity and mortality report.
According to the research, teacher transmission resulted in about half of 31 school-related cases.
The study was subject to some limitations, including difficulty in determining whether coronavirus transmission occurred at school or outside the local community, the agency noted.
Distinguishing the two types of transmission was particularly difficult when the average number of 7-day cases per 100,000 people exceeded 150, the agency said.
The CDC said vaccination against COVID-19 educators should be considered as an additional mitigation measure that should be added when available, although it is not necessary for the reopening of schools.
Reports from Manojna Maddipatla to Bengaluru; Edited by Bill Berkrot