Assessing classroom and laboratory spread of COVID-19 in a university after elimination of physical distancing.

Autor: Rebmann T; Institute for Biosecurity, College for Public Health and Social Justice, Saint Louis University, St Louis, Missouri, United States of America.; President's Office, Saint Louis University, St Louis, Missouri, United States of America., Loux TM; Department of Epidemiology and Biostatistics, College for Public Health and Social Justice, Saint Louis University, St Louis, Missouri, United States of America., Gomel A; President's Office, Saint Louis University, St Louis, Missouri, United States of America., Lugo KA; President's Office, Saint Louis University, St Louis, Missouri, United States of America., Bafageeh F; Department of Epidemiology and Biostatistics, College for Public Health and Social Justice, Saint Louis University, St Louis, Missouri, United States of America., Elkins H; Saint Louis County Department of Public Health, St Louis, Missouri, United States of America., Arnold LD; Department of Epidemiology and Biostatistics, College for Public Health and Social Justice, Saint Louis University, St Louis, Missouri, United States of America.
Jazyk: angličtina
Zdroj: PloS one [PLoS One] 2023 Mar 16; Vol. 18 (3), pp. e0283050. Date of Electronic Publication: 2023 Mar 16 (Print Publication: 2023).
DOI: 10.1371/journal.pone.0283050
Abstrakt: The objective of this study was to assess COVID-19 classroom transmission in the university setting when physical distancing was eliminated. Data was collected in fall 2021 at a private university. Universal masking, robust contact tracing, vaccination requirement, and enforced testing were in place. Exposures were classified as classroom versus non-classroom. ANOVA and chi-squared tests were used to identify significant relationships between predictors and COVID-19 test result. Logistic regression was conducted to investigate the relationship between exposure type and test result. A total of 162 student cases were identified with 1,658 associated close contacts. One-third of contacts (31.1%, n = 516) only had a non-classroom exposure, 63.8% (n = 1,057) only had a classroom exposure, and 5.1% (n = 85) had both. Close contacts were significantly more likely to test positive if they had a non-classroom exposure (60 of 601; 10.0%) compared to a classroom exposure (1 of 1057; 0.1%) (OR 58.8, CI 18.5-333.3, p < 0.001). Removing physical distancing in classrooms that had universal masking did not result in high rates of COVID-19 transmission. This has policy implications because eliminating physical distancing does not greatly increase transmission risk when universal masking is in place.
Competing Interests: The authors have declared that no competing interests exist.
(Copyright: © 2023 Rebmann et al. This is an open access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License, which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original author and source are credited.)
Databáze: MEDLINE
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