ArticleHealth policy (Amsterdam, Netherlands)2021
School openings and the COVID-19 outbreak in Italy. A provincial-level analysis using the synthetic control method.
Article in Health policy (Amsterdam, Netherlands), 2021. The graph could read no effect estimate from its abstract, so it casts no vote on the map. Cited by 22 papers.
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Who cites it
22 citing papers in PubMed.
- Age-specific COVID-19 case dynamics during school closure periods: Evidence from 12 european countries.The European journal of health economics : HEPAC : health economics in prevention and care · 2026Article
- On the determinants of anti-COVID restriction and anti-vaccine movements: the case of IoApro in Italy.Scientific reports · 2023Article
- Evaluation of a COVID-19 rapid antigen testing program among student athletes in a public high school district.Evaluation and program planning · 2023Article
- The effect of self-esteem on the spread of a pandemic. A cross-country analysis of the role played by self-esteem in the spread of the COVID-19 pandemic.Social science & medicine (1982) · 2023Article
- The importance of investing in data, models, experiments, team science, and public trust to help policymakers prepare for the next pandemic.PLOS global public health · 2023Review
- Comparative impact assessment of COVID-19 policy interventions in five South Asian countries using reported and estimated unreported death counts during 2020-2021.PLOS global public health · 2023Article
- Economic expectations and anxiety during the COVID-19 pandemic: a one-year longitudinal evaluation on Italian university students.Quality & quantity · 2023Article
- Mechanisms influencing the factors of urban built environments and coronavirus disease 2019 at macroscopic and microscopic scales: The role of cities.Frontiers in public health · 2023Article
- Carrot and stick: Economic support and stringency policies in response to COVID-19.Evaluation and program planning · 2022Article
- Correlations between the urban built environmental factors and the spatial distribution at the community level in the reported COVID-19 samples: A case study of Wuhan.Cities (London, England) · 2022Article
- When and how do business shutdowns work? Evidence from Italy's first COVID-19 wave.Health economics · 2022Article
- Vaccination nudges: A study of pre-booked COVID-19 vaccinations in Sweden.Social science & medicine (1982) · 2022Article
- Back to school or … back to lockdown? The effects of opening schools on the diffusion of COVID-19 in Italian regions.Socio-economic planning sciences · 2022Review
- Work ethics, stay-at-home measures and COVID-19 diffusion : How is the pandemic affected by the way people perceive work?The European journal of health economics : HEPAC : health economics in prevention and care · 2022Article
- Schools under mandatory testing can mitigate the spread of SARS-CoV-2.Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the United States of America · 2022Article
- COVID-19 Diffusion Before Awareness: The Role of Football Match Attendance in Italy.Journal of sports economics · 2022Article
- Impact of implementation timing on the effectiveness of stay-at-home requirement under the COVID-19 pandemic: Lessons from the Italian Case.Health policy (Amsterdam, Netherlands) · 2022Article
- The Effects of School Closures on COVID-19: A Cross-Country Panel Analysis.Applied health economics and health policy · 2022Article
- Water pollution and administrative division adjustments: A quasi-natural experiment in Chaohu Lake, China.PloS one · 2022Article
- Increasing ventilation reduces SARS-CoV-2 airborne transmission in schools: A retrospective cohort study in Italy's Marche region.Frontiers in public health · 2022Article
Corrections and comments
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Authors and funding
3 authors.
Funding
No grant is acknowledged in the PubMed record.
Abstract
Schools have been central in the debate about COVID-19. On the one hand, many have argued that they should be kept open, given their importance to youngsters and the future of the country, and the effort many countries have made in establishing protocols to keep them safe. On the other hand, it has been argued that open schools further the spread of the virus, given that these are places with large-scale interaction between teenagers and adults accompanying their children, as well as a major source of congestion on public transportation. We aim to identify the effect of school openings on the spread of COVID-19 contagion. Italy offers an interesting quasi-experimental setting in this regard due to the scattered openings that schools have experienced. By means of a quantitative analysis, employing a synthetic control method approach, we find that Bolzano, the first province in Italy to open schools after the summer break, had far more cases than its synthetic counterfactual, built from a donor pool formed from the other Italian provinces. Results confirm the hypothesis that despite the precautions, opening schools causes an increase in the infection rate, and this must be taken into account by policymakers.
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