Name: Why Texas and Europe aren’t the same when it comes to reopening schools
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Why Texas and Europe aren’t the same when it comes to reopening schools

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This is a carousel. Use Next and Previous buttons to navigateIn the debate over when to reopen Texas school buildings, many advocates for resuming in-person classes have pointed to western Europe and eastern Asia, where several countries have started face-to-face instruction again and largely avoided surges of the novel coronavirus.The comparison, however, relies on a potentially dubious assumption: that Texas, home to one of the world’s largest COVID-19 outbreaks, will get the same results as Denmark, France, Germany and other countries that curbed the coronavirus before reopening schools.As it stands, the Lone Star State’s rates of confirmed COVID-19 cases and deaths far outpace those reported in several nations before they started reopening campuses this past spring, an analysis of World Health Organization and Texas Department of State Health Services data shows.Public health experts said Texas’ dramatically higher community spread puts the state at higher risk of wider outbreaks if some of the state’s 5 million-plus schoolchildren and their teachers return to classrooms in August, though the exact danger to the public remains unknown.In the past week, Texas reported a daily average of 35 new cases per 100,000 residents, among the nation’s highest rates to date. By contrast, leading countries that reopened schools averaged about 1 case per 100,000 residents in the week leading up to their return of school.The gap in average daily death rates is much smaller, though still significant: about 4 per million residents in Texas this past week, compared to about 1 per million before schools reopened in other countries.On HoustonChronicle.com:“We do see data from other countries saying they’re safe opening schools, but they are in different scenarios than us,” said Galveston County’s local health authority, Philip Keiser. “We don’t know what the best way to do this is in Galveston and Texas at this point.”While few children have shown severe symptoms of COVID-19 and youth deaths are rare, much debate remains about the role students may play in spreading the virus to teachers, parents and older relatives who are at higher risk of health complications.Some preliminary studies suggest older children can transmit the virus at rates similar to adults, while other researchers argue the evidence points to limited or nonexistent transmission. The studies to date have involved small sample sizes, complicating efforts to draw definitive conclusions.One of the larger samples, which tracked about 150 infected children and 700 of their contacts in South Korea, concluded people aged 10 to 19 spread the virus at rates similar to adults, but children under than 10 transmitted at lower rates.It also remains unknown whether lessons from school reopenings abroad will apply in places with higher coronavirus spread, such as the United States.“There’s nowhere that has had a community-wide number of cases per day that looks like many of the locations we have in the U.S. and opened schools,” said Brandon Guthrie, as assistant professor at the University of Washington’s departments of global health and epidemiology. “Because a lot of places haven’t had a huge amount of transmission, it’s hard to find enough cases to draw definitive conclusions.”Several countries with minimal outbreaks and well-developed testing protocols have reopened schools without any major hitches, aided by safety protocols such as mask requirements, distancing measures and sanitization schedules. Israel reported a spike in COVID-19 cases after restarting in-person classes, with some government officials tracing the spread to schools and attributing the increase to the country’s broader reopening of society.As the new school year approaches in the United States, debates over reopening campuses have escalated in recent weeks.At the federal level, President Donald Trump aggressively has pushed to restart in-person classes, arguing the benefits of face-to-face instruction outweigh the public health risks. A July 8 message from Trump’s Twitter account reads, in part: “In Germany, Denmark, Norway, Sweden and many other countries, SCHOOLS ARE OPEN WITH NO PROBLEMS.”More Education NewsTrump softened his stance Thursday, saying districts in cities and states in COVID-19 hotspots “may need to delay reopening for a few weeks.” His comments came as the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention issued new guidance recommending that education leaders in areas with “substantial, uncontrolled” transmission of COVID-19 “work closely with local health officials to make decisions on whether to maintain school operations.”On HoustonChronicle.com:With the tacit blessing of Gov. Greg Abbott, who largely has delegated decision-making about school reopening to local officials, many of the state’s largest school districts until after Labor Day at the earliest. In the past two weeks, several county health authorities in Texas have ordered campus closures into September and many school boards have pushed back their start dates due to the outbreak.Harris County and city of Houston health officials on Friday issued a closure order for all public and secular private schools that runs through Labor Day, with County Judge Lina Hidalgo warning that an extension appears likely. Harris County reported a daily average of 28 confirmed COVID-19 cases per 100,000 residents and 2.5 deaths per million residents during the past week.Fort Bend County is experiencing the region’s least-severe outbreak — daily average of 16 confirmed cases per 100,000 residents and 1.5 deaths per million residents the past week — but Health and Human Services Director Jacquelyn Minter advised the county’s largest school district this week to keep its campuses closed.“When you’ve got uncontrolled spread the way we have right now, it takes a huge effort to put the genie back in the bottle,” Minter said. “Currently, we don’t see any way of doing that. We’ve overwhelmed our ability as a public health response team to do that with our contact tracing, with our ability to test and get the results back in time, to know what’s actually going on in our community.”Montgomery County health officials also recommended — but did not order — that local campuses remain closed through Labor Day. Brazoria and Galveston county health authorities have warned about high transmission rates in their area, but they have not issued closure orders.Many Texas school leaders and health officials hope the region’s coronavirus curve falls in the next seven weeks, mirroring trends from this spring in New York, New Jersey, Michigan and other hard-hit states. From their peaks, those states saw case and death counts decline by roughly 70 percent to 90 percent in a seven-week time frame.Those dramatic reductions, however, came amid widespread lockdowns and business closures.Gov. Greg Abbott has ordered some shutdowns — bars remain closed, restaurants only can operate at 50 percent capacity — but largely staked his approach on encouraging people to stay at home and mandating the use of face coverings. Case counts and hospitalization data suggests Texas’ outbreak could be peaking or plateauing, though death counts continue to rise.On HoustonChronicle.com:For now, Houston-area public health leaders have said they want to see significant declines in positive cases, rates of positive tests, hospitalizations and deaths before they recommend the reopening of schools. However, they have not publicly released specific benchmarks that should be reached before in-person classes resume.“We’ve got some in mind, some we’ve already been reviewing, but we don’t have anything yet that’s been final and ready to make public,” Shah said. “Our eventual goal is to make that clear to the community.”Without clear consensus on child-to-adult transmission, nearly all of the Houston region’s largest districts expect to begin with online-only classes in August or delay the start of school until Sept. 8, then re-evaluate their plans in the coming weeks. Preliminary survey data from several school districts — including Aldine, Clear Creek, Humble and Spring Branch ISDs — suggests about one third to two thirds of families want to send children to campuses once school buildings reopen.“If there were a good answer, if there were an easy answer, we would lay it out for you and everybody would be happy,” Cy-Fair ISD Superintendent Mark Henry said. “But there are no perfect answers.”jacob.carpenter@chron.com

This is a carousel. Use Next and Previous buttons to navigateIn the debate over when to reopen Texas school buildings, many advocates for resuming in-person classes have pointed to western Europe and eastern Asia, where several countries have started face-to-face instruction again and largely avoided surges of the novel coronavirus.The comparison, however, relies on a potentially dubious assumption: that Texas, home to one of the world’s largest COVID-19 outbreaks, will get the same results as Denmark, France, Germany and other countries that curbed the coronavirus before reopening...

Why Texas and Europe aren’t the same when it comes to reopening schools

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