Is it really time to go back to school?

摘要

No doubt Munro and Faust intended to be provocative,1 but there is an unfortunate non-sequitur in the title of their Viewpoint paper: based on limited evidence, the authors suggest that since children may not be super-spreaders for COVID-19, it is safe to reopen schools. While acknowledging a lack of high-quality sero-surveillance data, the paper then reiterates: “Governments worldwide should allow all children back to school”. If only it were that simple. In fact, the question should not be ‘are children super-spreaders?’ but ‘what effect will re-opening schools to all pupils have on the local community in terms of spread of coronavirus?’.