The impacts of school resumption on the incidence of pandemic (H1N1) 2009 in school students

摘要

School closure is one non-pharmaceutical intervention that is often suggested in pandemic preparedness plans, and it was widely implemented in Pandemic (H1N1) 2009 to reduce transmission amongst school students. However, from past epidemiological studies, the effect of school closure in reducing respiratory disease transmission was inconclusive.Given this public health intervention causes major disruption to the education system and potentially raises childcare issues to working parents, evaluating its effect in the recent pandemic is necessary to improve future pandemic planning.In Hong Kong, since school closure was implemented early in the pandemic and closure was effectively continued with the commencement of summer holiday, the lack of incidence data in the absence of school closure makes it difficult to analyse its effect directly. This has prompted us to analyse the situation indirectly from the angle of school resumption after summer holiday.