School reopenings in Ontario only resulted in a small increase in COVID-19 cases in the province in early 2021, a new study finds.
The study, published in Health Affairs, a U.S. peer-reviewed journal on health policies, sought to determine the change in COVID-19 case rates in the weeks after the reopening of the province’s public schools.
“We conducted an event study regression examining whether the reopening of elementary and secondary schools was associated with a change in community COVID-19 case growth rates,” said the study, published this month.
Specifically, the authors focused on the period starting Dec. 26, 2020, through March 8, 2021—during the time when the provincewide shutdown was enacted until three weeks after schools in the final public health units were permitted to reopen….