A8 N THE NEW YORK TIMES, TUESDAY, DECEMBER 1, 2020Tracking an OutbreakGlobal Fallout
PARIS — As a second lockdown
appeared inevitable amid sky-
rocketing coronavirus infections,
the scientists advising the French
government in October warned
that keeping students in their
classrooms meant it would take
longer to tame the surge.
The government kept the
schools open anyway, even as the
country became an epicenter of
the second wave of the coronavi-
rus in Europe. French leaders de-
cided that they would try to sub-
due the surge, while also trying to
minimize economic and academic
damage by keeping children
learning where they do it best: in
school.
Five weeks into a second na-
tionwide lockdown, France, like
much of Europe, has proved that it
is possible to bring the rate of
known infections down, even with
schools open.
It is a lesson that has been taken
up late in the United States, where
Chicago, Boston, San Francisco
and other cities, have made it a
priority to keep bars and restau-
rants open — though not neces-
sarily for indoor service or at full
capacity — even as they have
closed their schools.
Many European countries, in-
cluding France, have made the op-
posite choice: keeping schools
open but closing restaurants and
bars.
In France, 11 percent of corona-
virus tests are coming back pos-
itive but students have kept going
to school, while New York City
shut its public schools on Nov. 19,
after the positive test rate reached
3 percent.
But recent studies have shown
that young children, at least, are
low transmitters of the virus, and
at least some American officials
are reconsidering their approach:
Mayor Bill de Blasio of New York
abruptly decided on Sunday to re-
open elementary schools while
keeping upper grades closed, and
other districts around the country
have made similar moves.
Allowing schools to remain
open has been one of the most sig-
nificant departures from Europe’s
initial lockdowns last spring.
“The first lockdown was horri-
ble,” said Marine Huguenin, who
was watching her two daughters
play at a Paris park, which was
filled with strollers and masked
parents after school on a recent af-
ternoon.
During the earlier lockdown,
the entire family was stuck inside,
she said, with Ms. Huguenin and
her husband looking after their
children during the day, then
catching up on work between 9:
p.m. and 1 a.m.
The numbers tell the story of
France’s progress so far. In early
November, the number of new
cases in France in a seven-day pe-
riod soared to more than 80 per
100,000 people; as of Sunday it
had dropped to 17 per 100,000.
“Obviously, the decline has
been slower because schools are
open, but we had to find a middle
ground,” said Yazdan Yazdan-
panah, an infectious disease spe-
cialist and a member of France’s
Scientific Council, which advises
the government on the pandemic.
But, he added, the slower drop in
infections has been offset by pos-
itive effects on education, mental
health and the economy.
The trade-off has been general-
ly well-accepted in an otherwise
contentious lockdown during
which an increasing number of
people have challenged restric-
tions on movement and business.
In Paris, keeping schools open
has shifted the mood in a city that
lived through one of the world’s
strictest lockdowns in the spring.
At the time, Paris felt like a
ghost town, with every inch of the
city — from small residential
streets to the Champs-Élysées —
deserted. This time, things seem
much nearer to normal. Chairs are
stacked inside closed cafes and
restaurants. But neighborhoods
come to life in the mornings and
afternoons as parents take their
children to and from school, and
older students linger on sidewalks
with studied indifference.
Clusters have appeared in
schools throughout France,
though not in “worrying num-
bers,” said Dr. Yazdanpanah, the
infectious disease specialist.
With classrooms open, parents
have been able to focus on work at
home or commute to their work-
places, which has helped blunt the
second lockdown’s blow to the
economy.
The Bank of France estimated
that economic activity last month
would be 12 percent below normal
— far less than the 31 percent drop
experienced in April.
Most European countries, in-
cluding Britain, France, Germany
and Spain, have kept schools open
even as the continent remains
among the worst-hit. A few coun-
tries, like Austria, the Czech Re-
public and Italy, have closed
schools, in part or in full.
In France, as in much of the
world, schools shut down during
the first wave in the spring as sci-
entists tried to figure out what role
children played in transmitting
the virus.
The country’s 12 million stu-
dents in primary and secondary
schools engaged in online learn-
ing, but soon, teachers and educa-
tion officials warned that many
children had fallen behind.
“It reinforced our conviction to
keep the schools open, for educa-
tion and social reasons,” said So-
phie Vénétitay, a teacher and un-
ion official.
Meanwhile, new studies sug-
gested that despite early fears,
keeping schools open, while not
without risk, could be relatively
safe so long as rules to limit the
spread of the virus were in place.
In August, a report released by
the European Center for Disease
Prevention and Control said evi-
dence “indicates that closures of
child care and educational institu-
tions are unlikely to be an effec-
tive single control measure for
community transmission of
Covid-19.”
Most studies on transmission
now suggest that children young-
er than 10 spread the virus less ef-
ficiently than adults do, but that
teenagers become infected and
spread the virus just as much as
adults. So keeping high schools
open safely is trickier, especially if
community transmission is high
— making social distancing rules
even more important.
After reining in the first wave of
the epidemic, France saw infec-
tions begin rising again in August
as people resumed socializing and
the government failed to effec-
tively carry out public health
measures of testing, tracing and
isolating.
By October, infections were
skyrocketing across most of Eu-
rope.
But even after a warning from
his scientific advisers, President
Emmanuel Macron announced
that France’s schools would re-
main open, as nonessential busi-
nesses were ordered closed. “Our
children cannot be permanently
deprived of instruction, educa-
tion, contact with the school sys-
tem,” he said.
Henri Bergeron, a sociologist at
the Paris Institute of Political
Studies, the elite university
known as Sciences Po, and a co-
author of a book, “Covid-19: An
Organizational Crisis,” said: “This
time, health priority is mixed with
economic priority.”
To address concerns as cases
ballooned, education officials
slightly tightened rules, including
lowering the age for mandatory
mask-wearing to 6 years old from- Many schools staggered hours
for parents to drop off and pick up
their children, and have adjusted
lunch periods to lessen crowding.
In many high schools, students
now take turns, spending half
their days in school and the rest at
home.
Three months into France’s
school year, schools have not be-
come a major driver of infections,
according to health experts. And
the number of students who
tested positive in the seven days
that ended on Thursday dropped
44 percent from the week before,
according to figures released by
the Education Ministry. The latest
figure translates to 0.06 percent of
the 12 million schoolchildren in
France.
On Friday, out of 61,500 schools
nationwide, only 19 primary
schools, three middle schools and
three high schools were closed be-
cause of outbreaks.
Outside Turgot High School in
Paris, small groups of students
chatted and smoked after the end
of their classes on a recent after-
noon. Some said they thought stu-
dents were being infected outside
school, when they met on week-
ends, sometimes at parties.
Jeanne Piffaut, 17, said she
found it hard studying alone and
being unable to ask her teachers
questions in person.
“I’m worried that the situation
will get worse,” she said, “and that
schools end up closing.”
FRANCE
Even With Schools Open,
A Nation Brings Infections
Down During a Lockdown
This article is by Norimitsu On-
ishi, Constant Méheutand An-
tonella Francini.
Parents can focus
on work, limiting
economic damage.
Reporting was contributed by Alli-
son McCann from London, Monica
Davey from Chicago, Ellen Barry
from Boston, Thomas Fuller from
San Francisco and Apoorva Man-
davilli and Sarah Mervosh from
New York.
even as those cities have con-
fronted second waves of the virus.
In-person learning is essential
for young children, who often
need intensive parental supervi-
sion just to log on for the day, edu-
cation experts say. And mounting
evidence has shown that elemen-
tary schools are unlikely to fuel
transmission as long as districts
adopt strict safety measures. The
evidence is more mixed for middle
and high schools.
“With younger kids, we see this
pleasant confluence of two facts:
Science tells us that younger chil-
dren are less likely to contract,
and seemingly less likely to trans-
mit, the virus,” said Elliot Haspel,
the author of “Crawling Behind:
America’s Child Care Crisis and
How to Fix It.”
He added: “And younger chil-
dren are the ones that most need
in-person schooling, and in-per-
son interactions.”
Districts including Chicago,
Philadelphia and Los Angeles
have plans to bring back young
children first when they eventu-
ally reopen classrooms.
In Rhode Island, Gov. Gina Rai-
mondo, a strong proponent of
keeping schools open, recently
asked colleges to shift to all-re-
mote learning after Thanksgiving
and gave districts the option of re-
ducing the number of high school
students attending in person. She
said there was “not a shred of data
to suggest schools are major
spreaders,” but said that high
schools had proved to be more
problematic than elementary and
middle schools, because the stu-
dents are more mobile.
That model of giving priority to
younger students has been pio-
neered in Europe, where many
countries have kept primary
schools open even as most other
parts of public life have closed
during the continent’s second
wave.
Italy has kept its primary
schools open but left middle and
high schools remote-only, and
while all schools in Germany are
open, discussions about possible
closures have focused mainly on
high schools.
In America, more and more dis-
tricts have begun to prioritize ele-
mentary school students for in-
person learning.
In urban districts, which gener-
ally have been slower to reopen
than rural and suburban districts,
that has meant making plans to
bring back the youngest students
first. In parts of the Midwest
where school districts were more
aggressive about reopening, and
where there has been a huge rise
in cases, public health officials
have emphasized keeping ele-
mentary schools open even as
they have closed high schools and
in some cases middle schools.
“The data is becoming more
compelling that there is very lim-
ited transmission in day care and
grade schools,” said Michael Os-
terholm, director of the Center for
Infectious Disease Research and
Policy at the University of Minne-
sota and a member of President-
elect Joseph R. Biden Jr.’s corona-
virus task force, in a recent inter-
view.
“I keep telling people, ‘Stop
talking about kids — talk about
those younger than 10,’ ” he added.
“We’re seeing a very different epi-
demiology in that group than
we’re seeing, for example, in high
school students.”
The data is far from perfect, butseveral studies have suggested
that children under 10 transmit
the virus less efficiently than old-
er children or adults.
A study published in the journal
Pediatrics surveyed 57,000 child
care providers across the United
States and found that those who
continued working during the
first three months of the pandemic
were not any more likely to get
sick than those whose programs
closed.
That evidence has allowed ex-
perts to focus on urgent concerns
about how young children are ac-
tually learning during the pan-
demic. Mr. Haspel and others
have raised concerns about chil-
dren’s ability to learn how to read
over an iPad or laptop screen.
When teachers attempt to teach
reading remotely, “you are really
kind of tying one leg to the other
and trying to run a race,” he said,
in part because young children of-
ten need small group or individual
instruction.
Every aspect of remote learn-
ing, from signing in to completing
assignments, requires basic liter-
acy. That is why so many parents
and caretakers have had to sacri-
fice work or bring their children to
day care centers so that the chil-
dren can get full-time help com-
pleting tasks online.
Abundant evidence has shown
that students who are not reading
by third grade have an extremely
hard time catching up with their
peers who do and are more likely
to drop out of high school.
Crucially, reopening elemen-
tary schools — while keeping mid-
dle and high schools closed — has
become the favored option of in-
fluential teachers’ unions, whose
leaders have pushed to delay re-
opening plans in some cities be-
cause of lack of federal funding, in-
sufficient safety measures and anoutpouring of concern from rank-
and-file educators about return-
ing to classrooms.
But Randi Weingarten, presi-
dent of the American Federation
of Teachers, the nation’s second
largest teachers’ union, said New
York’s plan to bring back elemen-
tary school students with strin-
gent safety protocols could be a
national model.
“What we’ve learned is that, un-
like adults, elementary school stu-
dents actually follow the rules,
and actually have been really
good at wearing their masks and
adhering to physical distancing,
and are really grateful about hav-
ing school,” she said.
When New York announced its
new reopening plan, Ms. Wein-
garten offered her clear endorse-
ment, and a supportive statement
from the United Federation of
Teachers, New York City’s teach-
ers’ union, quickly followed.
Asked why his administration
was turning its focus to young
children, Mr. de Blasio said Sun-
day, “I feel for all our parents who
are experiencing so many chal-
lenges right now, how important it
is for them to have their younger
kids in school, how important that
is at that age, both educationally
and socially.”
Some New York City schools
are reopening despite rising cases
here. But other districts, including
Chicago, Los Angeles and Phila-
delphia, have pledged to reopen
schools, starting with young chil-
dren, only when — or if — virus
cases stabilize.
Officials in Las Vegas and its
surrounding suburbs had hoped
to restart in-person learning in
November. Then came a rise in
cases that forced the district to de-
lay its plan until at least February.
But the school superintendent,
Jesus Jara, said he is intent onbringing as many students back
as possible, in part because of the
catastrophic toll of remote learn-
ing on children’s mental health:
There have already been 12 stu-
dent suicides this academic year
in the district, Dr. Jara said.
Young children will restart in-
person classes first when class-
rooms reopen.
“That has been our biggest con-
cern, that our babies have been
home without face-to-face in-
struction for so long,” Dr. Jara
said.
A few districts have prioritized
the youngest children from the be-
ginning.
In Massachusetts, the Cam-
bridge public school district has
brought back students in pre-
school and children in prekinder-
garten through first grade, along
with some students in all grades
who have disabilities or are learn-
ing English.
Some districts that opened ear-
lier in the fall for all grades — and
have seen cases rise sharply —
have chosen to move high schools,
and in some cases middle schools,
to remote learning but to keep ele-
mentary schools open.
On Nov. 15, Gov. Gretchen Whit-
mer of Michigan, a Democrat, is-
sued an emergency order shut-
ting down indoor service at bars
and restaurants, closing casinos
and movie theaters, halting most
organized sports and forcing high
schools and colleges to transition
to remote learning.
But the state kept open elemen-
tary and middle schools, saying
that younger students needed in-
person learning the most and that
there had been fewer outbreaks
associated with elementary and
middle schools than with high
schools and colleges.
And in Johnson County, Kansas,
a suburb of Kansas City where
cases are surging, school districts
have switched middle and high
school to remote learning while
keeping in-person classes for ele-
mentary schools.
But in some parts of the coun-
try, politicians and education offi-
cials have resisted calls to close
high schools even as the virus rav-
aged their communities through-
out the fall. President Trump has
continued to insist that schools
should remain open, even though
school leaders across the country
have said they need more federal
stimulus dollars to reopen safely.
Gov. Ron DeSantis of Florida, a
Republican, has been one of the
most vocal proponents of school
reopening. On Monday, he said of-
ficials who sought to close schools
were akin to “today’s flat-earth-
ers.”Many cities have allowed young children back into classrooms. Evidence suggests that transmission is lower than in high schools.SARAH BLESENER FOR THE NEW YORK TIMESEDUCATIONIn Reopening of Schools, Youngest Lead the Way
Mayor Bill de Blasio, left, announced Sunday that prekinder-
garten and elementary schools would reopen in New York City.TODD HEISLER/THE NEW YORK TIMESReopening elementary schools has become the favored option of influential teachers’ unions.SARAH BLESENER FOR THE NEW YORK TIMESFrom Page AReported was contributed by Jen-
nifer Medina from Los Angeles,
Neil MacFarquhar from New York,
Melissa Eddy from Berlin and Ra-
phael Minder from Barcelona.