Gretchen VogelScience’s COVID-19 reporting is supported by the Pulitzer Center and the Heising-Simons Foundation.A new, more transmissible coronavirus variant has upended efforts to balance the known harm that closed schools cause against the risk that the pandemic virus might spread in classrooms.
Studies done before it emerged seemed to point in a hopeful direction: School outbreaks are rare, even when community spread is relatively high, providing schools limit class sizes and require safety measures including masks.