Model-Based Comprehensive Analysis of School Closure Policies for Mitigating Influenza Epidemics and Pandemics

PLoS Computational Biology
Laura FumanelliSimon Cauchemez

Abstract

School closure policies are among the non-pharmaceutical measures taken into consideration to mitigate influenza epidemics and pandemics spread. However, a systematic review of the effectiveness of alternative closure policies has yet to emerge. Here we perform a model-based analysis of four types of school closure, ranging from the nationwide closure of all schools at the same time to reactive gradual closure, starting from class-by-class, then grades and finally the whole school. We consider policies based on triggers that are feasible to monitor, such as school absenteeism and national ILI surveillance system. We found that, under specific constraints on the average number of weeks lost per student, reactive school-by-school, gradual, and county-wide closure give comparable outcomes in terms of optimal infection attack rate reduction, peak incidence reduction or peak delay. Optimal implementations generally require short closures of one week each; this duration is long enough to break the transmission chain without leading to unnecessarily long periods of class interruption. Moreover, we found that gradual and county closures may be slightly more easily applicable in practice as they are less sensitive to the value of the ex...Continue Reading

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Oct 21, 2016·BMC Infectious Diseases·Constanze CiavarellaMarco Ajelli
Nov 23, 2018·Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the United States of America·Quan-Hui LiuAlessandro Vespignani
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Jul 6, 2021·Decision Support Systems·Zeynep ErtemMayteé Cruz-Aponte
Nov 11, 2021·Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the United States of America·Akira EndoSebastian Funk

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