COVID-19 is one of the biggest global public health challenges of the century with almost 42 million cases and more than a million deaths to date. Until a COVID-19 vaccine or effective pharmaceutical intervention is developed, alternative tools for the rapid identification, containment, and mitigation of the spread of severe acute respiratory syndrome coronavirus 2 (SARS-CoV-2) are of paramount importance for managing community transmission. Within this context, school closure has been one of the strategies implemented to reduce spread at local and national levels. Experience gained from influenza epidemics showed that school closures reduce social contacts between students and therefore interrupt chains of transmission between students and households.

How school-age children transmit coronaviruses such as severe acute respiratory syndrome, Middle East respiratory syndrome, and SARS-CoV-2 within school settings and at a local community scale is less clear. Regardless, as of mid-March 2020, about half the world’s student population were required to stay at home. Evidence from human influenza outbreaks (where children are key vectors) indicates that school closures are only effective during low viral transmissivity (defined as reproductive number <2) if viral susceptibility is greater in children than in adults.

Although the role of children in COVID-19 transmission remains unclear (in terms of both incubation length and asymptomatic prevalence), one report suggested that children and young adults (10–19 years) spread COVID-19 to the same extent as adults,

and therefore, can be a source of SARS-CoV-2 in household transmission clusters. However, data is not consistent with earlier studies reporting little evidence of transmission from children to adults.

This knowledge gap is partly due to disproportionately low rates of community testing on children and adolescents.