Speaker
Description
Introduction
Schools are a critical setting during respiratory pandemics. While their high-contact environments can amplify community transmission, they remain essential for children’s learning and wellbeing. The RE-PASS project develops a multi-scale modeling framework to support school-based interventions that balance infection control with minimizing educational disruption.
Methods
The framework captures transmission across three interconnected scales: 1) within-classroom dynamics reflecting daily interactions of students and teachers; 2) within-school transmission mediated by shared staff and cross-group contacts; and 3) a school–community network linking households, schools, and the community. Epidemiological states of individual agents are tracked daily, including time-dependent virus shedding. The framework is demonstrated using SARS-CoV-2 data from the early outbreak in the Netherlands before vaccines were available. The synthetic school–household network is based on Dutch data and incorporates socio-economic stratification.
Results
The model simulates outbreaks of respiratory pathogens and evaluates school-based interventions at multiple levels. In addition to epidemiological outcomes, it quantifies educational outcomes, including in-person learning days lost and projected learning loss.
Conclusion
This framework supports policy-relevant evaluation of school-based interventions by quantifying both health and educational impacts during future respiratory pandemics.
