The impact of adding school closure to other social distance measures, 17 March 2020

Paper by LSHTM on the impact of adding school closure to other social distance measures. It was considered at SAGE 17 on 18 March.

This is 1 of 3 papers informing the SPI-M-O: Consensus view on the impact of school closures on COVID-19, as published under SAGE 17 and should be read in that context alongside the other documents for SAGE 17. The SPI-M-O consensus view summarises the main insights across the available evidence and modelling at the time.

These results should not be interpreted as a forecast, but rather illustrative outputs under a set of assumptions to inform wider discussion. These modelling outputs are subject to uncertainty given the evidence available at the time, and dependent on the assumptions made.

It should be viewed in context: the paper was the best assessment of the evidence at the time of writing. The picture is developing rapidly and, as new evidence or data emerges, SAGE updates its advice accordingly.

Therefore, some of the information in this paper may have been superseded and the author’s opinion or conclusion may since have developed.

This paper has been published on The Lancet website.

These documents are released as pre-print publications that have provided the government with rapid evidence during an emergency. These documents have not been peer-reviewed and there is no restriction on authors submitting and publishing this evidence in peer-reviewed journals.

Redactions within this document have been made to remove any personal details.