Evidence about the effectiveness of school closures as a measure to control the spread of COVID-19 is controversial. We posit that schools are not an important source of transmission; thus, we analyzed two surveillance methods: a web-based questionnaire and a telephone survey that monitored the impact of the pandemic due to COVID-19 cases in Bogotá, Colombia. We estimated the cumulative incidences for Acute Respiratory Infection (ARI) and COVID-19 for each population group. Then, we assessed the differences using the cumulative incidence ratio (CIR) and 95% confidence intervals (CI95%). The ARI incidence among students was 20.1 times higher when estimated from the telephone survey than from the online questionnaire (CIR: 20.1; CI95% 17.11–23.53). Likewise, the ARI incidence among schoolteachers was 10 times higher in the telephone survey (CIR: 9.8; CI95% 8.3–11.5). the incidence of COVID-19 among schoolteachers was 4.3 times higher than among students in the online questionnarie (CIR: 4.3, CI95%: 3.8–5.0) and 2.1 times higher in the telephone survey (CIR = 2.1, CI95%: 1.8–2.6), and this behavior was also observed in the general population data. Both methods showed a capacity to detect COVID-19 transmission among students and schoolteachers, but the telephone survey estimates were probably closer to the real incidence rate.
【저자키워드】 COVID-19, students, surveys and questionnaires, school teachers, Colombia, 【초록키워드】 pandemic, Schools, respiratory infection, ARI, Surveillance, Effectiveness, incidence rate, Acute respiratory infection, School, General population, incidence, respiratory, estimate, questionnaire, COVID-19 cases, COVID-19 transmission, telephone survey, cumulative incidence ratio, 95% confidence interval, COVID-19 case, measure, cumulative, spread of COVID-19, analyzed, detect, incidence of COVID-19, 【제목키워드】 SARS-CoV-2, Population, School, closure, student, teacher, Developing,