COVID-19 and School Activities in Italy

摘要

After a linear growth during September, the diffusion in Italy of SARS-CoV-2, responsible for COVID-19, has been growing exponentially since the end of that month with a doubling time approximately equal to one week. This has had an impact on public health, with the numbers of both ordinary and intensive care beds growing exponentially with the same doubling time. Different factors could have contributed to this phenomenon. Among them, school activity is expected to have played a major role, as indicated by published works dealing with the first phase of the pandemic after lockdown [1,2]. However, other measures were introduced that could have been responsible for the effect. Here, an exponential increase in the percentage frequency of SARS-CoV-2-positive cases began approximately two weeks after schools restarted in September 14, the same length of the time interval between the start of the national lockdown in March 12 and the location of the following incidence peak in March 24. Furthermore, there were no other known factors present, as, for example, work activities started at the beginning of September. Therefore, we strongly believe that the school restart has been the major factor in COVID-19 exponential increase, especially in connection to public transportation used by students. At the moment, strong measures of different types are being introduced in Italy and in other countries to limit the diffusion of the pandemic. Therefore, this work could be of great help to find the best measures to adopt.