Disentangling the mess

This morning I read that in some parts they are introducing weekly use of rapid COVID-19 tests in middle and high schools and the more I think about it, the more I like the idea. I guess that they have not introduced the measure earlier just because there were not enough tests to enact it in a reliable way. Let me summarize the obvious advantages.

The most important aspect is that testing at all schools samples a full cross-section of society. One of the big problems of the previous approaches is that they relied both on the commitment and the leeway of the people to support them: staying at home is something that most architects, lawyers and scientists can do, but not so for doctors, bricklayers or truck drivers, so it is understandable that the compliance with the social distancing is higher among the former than among the latter. The commitment to the social well-being is also depending on everybody's good will and it is understandable that families that are already struggling do not feel strongly compelled to add the burden of social distancing.

Photo: pixahive.com

Another advantage of testing at schools is that almost every kid lives in close quarters with a family, so testing the child is almost equivalent to testing the whole family. If any member of the family gets infected, the chances that the child will be exposed are very high, so the test has a multiplicative effect equivalent to the pool testing that some labs are doing for the PCR tests.

The next profit of this testing approach is safeguarding the health of teachers. Many have had a long professional career and have educated multiple generations of students, but are now in the age segment most susceptible to suffering a severe version of the COVID disease. By testing regularly one can ensure that schools are essentially "clean" and therefore elderly teachers do not have to be afraid to come to work.

Children are known to be the age group with the least likelihood of showing symptoms when infected, and this means that, while infected adults will probably show symptoms and stay at home, infected children are likely to keep attending the school (and potentially infecting their mates) due to the absence or the little import of the symptoms. By testing at schools these hidden transmission chains can be interrupted promptly and the contacts of the positive kid can be traced carefully to avoid further spread.

The final point is that all this testing can be done without a minuscule impact to the academic schedule of the kids. Considering that they are doing full homeschooling or, at best, attending school on alternating days, devoting 30 minutes per week to the testing is a significant gain over the current 50% loss. And the reopening of the schools is going to be particularly beneficial for those who are worst off: it is not much of a problem for Karen and I to take care of the kids all day long and even help them with their homework or provide technical assistance whenever they have trouble connecting to their video conferences, but there are other families where the homeschooling phase is exerting a crushing strain.

Together with the vaccination of the elderly this is likely to be a very effective measure to curb the infection. It would limit the need to track and contain the people who are not connected to children, which is a significantly smaller crowd than the whole population. Let us hope that it demonstrates its power and that the example becomes widespread so that we can soon all return to normal life. The next question one might ask is "what are we going to do with all those test kits (and their packaging)?". But that is going to be a question for another day. Have a nice evening.