A study published in the BMJ looks at risk of hospital admission with COVID-19 among teachers compared with healthcare workers and other adults of working age in Scotland.
Dr Jeremy Rossman, Senior Lecturer in Virology, University of Kent, said:
“The recent study from Public Health Scotland looks at the risks of severe COVID and hospitalisatoins due to COVID in teachers over the 2020-2021 academic year in Scotland. This is a robust study including over 130,000 teachers and 1.3 million controls in Scotland from March 2020 through July 2021.
“The study finds that teachers and their household members were at a lower risk of severe COVID than the general population. This lower risk was even present when schools were closed, suggesting that factors outside of the school environment may be affecting the risk of severe COVID in the teachers (such as fewer underlying health conditions or greater awareness of COVID risks and so greater precaution taking). This low rate of severe COVID in teachers is indeed good news, but falls short of reassuring that teachers are not at risk of COVID disease when schools are open. The study found that teachers were at an increased risk of COVID infections compared to the general population (though the study was not designed to look at this outcome and so the results may be subject to confounding factors). The study also does not look at the incidence of Long COVID in teachers during this period and it is important to remember that hospitlaisations and severe COVID are not the only adverse impacts to health from a COVID-19 infection. Even though teachers in Scotland are not at increased risk of severe COVID, they are still at risk of catching COVID and developing Long COVID, as such there is a continued need for COVID precautions in schools to protect the health of both teachers and students.”
‘Risk of hospital admission with covid-19 among teachers compared with healthcare workers and other adults of working age in Scotland, March 2020 to July 2021: population based case-control study’ by Lynda Fenton et al. was published in the BMJ at 23:30 UK time on Wednesday 1 September 2021.
DOI: 10.1136/bmj.n2060
Declared interests
Dr Jeremy Rossman: “I have no conflicts of interest to declare.”