ArticleProceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the United States of America2021
The association of opening K-12 schools with the spread of COVID-19 in the United States: County-level panel data analysis.
Article in Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the United States of America, 2021. The graph could read no effect estimate from its abstract, so it casts no vote on the map. Cited by 33 papers.
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Who cites it
33 citing papers in PubMed, 1 citations in OpenAlex.
- The impact of policy restrictions and mobility changes on excess mortality during the COVID-19 pandemic in The Netherlands, 2020-2022.PloS one · 2026Article
- Acute SARS-CoV-2 infection.Nature reviews. Disease primers · 2025Review
- Association Between Social Vulnerability and Infection-Induced SARS-CoV-2 Antibody Seroprevalence Among Children: United States, 2021-2022.Public health reports (Washington, D.C. : 1974) · 2025Article
- Back to school: The effect of school visits during COVID-19 on COVID-19 outcomes.Journal of health economics · 2025Article
- Impact of lifting school mask mandates on community SARS-CoV-2 cases, hospitalizations, and deaths: a retrospective observational study.Frontiers in public health · 2025Observational
- COVID-19 Incidence and Age Eligibility for Elementary School.JAMA network open · 2024Article
- COVID-19 School Closures Were Associated With A Decline In Employment For Female Nurses With Young Children.Health affairs (Project Hope) · 2024Article
- Racial, socioeconomic, and neighborhood characteristics in relation to COVID-19 severity of illness for adolescents and young adults.PNAS nexus · 2023Article
- COVID-19 infections among Iraqi school students: Severity, types, and symptoms.Journal of medicine and life · 2023Article
- The complex interplay between weather, social activity, and COVID-19 in the US.SSM - population health · 2023Article
- News Coverage of Face Masks in Australia During the Early COVID-19 Pandemic: Topic Modeling Study.JMIR infodemiology · 2023Article
- School closures and effective in-person learning during COVID-19.Economics of education review · 2023Article
- Association of In-person vs Virtual Education With Community COVID-19 Case Incidence Following School Reopenings in the First Year of the COVID-19 Pandemic.JAMA network open · 2023Article
- A descriptive study of COVID-19 cases in primary and secondary schools in the Maltese islands: a nationwide experience.European journal of public health · 2023Article
- Wastewater surveillance of SARS-CoV-2 and influenza in preK-12 schools shows school, community, and citywide infections.Water research · 2023Article
- Comprehensive profiling of the human viral exposome in households containing an at-risk child with mitochondrial disease during the 2020-2021 COVID-19 pandemic.Clinical and translational medicine · 2022Article
- Article
- Transmission Dynamics and Effectiveness of Control Measures during COVID-19 Surge, Taiwan, April-August 2021.Emerging infectious diseases · 2022Article
- Article
- 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
Corrections and comments
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Authors and funding
3 authors at 2 institutions in 2 countries.
Funding
No grant is acknowledged in the PubMed record.
Abstract
This paper empirically examines how the opening of K-12 schools is associated with the spread of COVID-19 using county-level panel data in the United States. As preliminary evidence, our event-study analysis indicates that cases and deaths in counties with in-person or hybrid opening relative to those with remote opening substantially increased after the school opening date, especially for counties without any mask mandate for staff. Our main analysis uses a dynamic panel data model for case and death growth rates, where we control for dynamically evolving mitigation policies, past infection levels, and additive county-level and state-week "fixed" effects. This analysis shows that an increase in visits to both K-12 schools and colleges is associated with a subsequent increase in case and death growth rates. The estimates indicate that fully opening K-12 schools with in-person learning is associated with a 5 (SE = 2) percentage points increase in the growth rate of cases. We also find that the association of K-12 school visits or in-person school openings with case growth is stronger for counties that do not require staff to wear masks at schools. These findings support policies that promote masking and other precautionary measures at schools and giving vaccine priority to education workers.
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Read under generation 80e0d062 · epoch 390. Bibliography from PubMed, PubMed Central and OpenAlex; grants from NIH RePORTER; trial links from ClinicalTrials.gov; estimates, votes and beliefs from the OpenQuestion graph.