A new study has found that school closures in Japan did not stop the spread of coronavirus last year, as was the case during the initial wave of the pandemic.
Japan and the U.S. compared schools that were closed in spring 2020 to schools that continued operations.
The researchers found no difference in the numbers of Covid cases per 100 people between these two municipalities.
Researchers from Harvard University, Massachusetts and Gakushuin University Tokyo were part of the team. They found that closing schools disrupted the lives of children without addressing the public health crisis.
The U.S. and Japan have conducted a new joint study that examined the number of Japanese communities which closed their schools after the Covid Wave. Pictured: School pupils study at a community center after schools closed in Osaka, Japan, March 2020
Researchers did not find statistically any difference between the numbers of cases per 100,000 in areas with close classes (red and black) or those without.
‘We do not find any evidence that school closures in Japan reduced the spread of COVID-19,’ the authors wrote.
“Our null results indicate that school closure policies need to be reconsidered due to potential adverse consequences for both parents and children.”
Schools were quickly shut down when the COVID-19 pandemic struck March 2020.
Researchers have shown that students who attend school online from kindergarten through 12th grade are more likely to be sick than students in K-12.
Zoom school has been shown to be a negative influence on both mental health and academic ability.
This new study was published in Nature Medicine. The researchers looked into Half of Japan’s 47 prefectures include 847 municipalities within Tokyo and Osaka.
The next step was to look at the researchers. the number of new COVID-19 cases per 100,000 residents in the municipalities between March and June 2020.
These results revealed that statistically, there wasn’t any difference between them in terms of the number cases.
Co-researcher, Dr Kentaro Fukumoto of Gakushuin University’s Polimetrics Department, stated that school closings decrease children’s opportunities to learn, affect their physical and psychological development, and make a parent’s job more challenging.
“The central government should consider carefully whether schools will be closed in the near future,”
It isn’t the first time that schools were closed in an effort to stop the spread of the disease.
City University of Hong Kong researchers and the Institute of Automation, Chinese Academy of Sciences Beijing discovered that in-person education only reduced the incidence of infection among youth in New York City.
Comparatively, the rate of deaths and cases due to social isolation of all the population at public places dropped by 50%.