Lessons from the Emerald Isle

Researchers in Ireland found that children were not a source of COVID- 19 transmission. All schools were closed in Ireland soon after the World Health Organization declared a pandemic. But an examination of every case of the coronavirus in school- aged children in Ireland found that “children are not emerging as considerable drivers of transmission of COVID- 19.” “These findings suggest that schools are not a high risk setting for transmission of COVID- 19 between pupils or between staff and pupils,” researchers wrote. Researchers looked at every single case of COVID- 19 among school- aged children in Ireland — there were only three before schools were closed— and then used contact tracing measures to track whether or not those patients transmitted the virus to other students in their schools. The answer was a resounding no, but there are some important caveats. It is, after all, a small nation. “This study is limited by small numbers of cases, researchers wrote, and noted that “only symptomatic contacts were tested, and so asymptomatic secondary cases were not captured.”