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Schools reopening and the COVID-19 pandemic: a case study from Macaé, Rio de Janeiro, Brazil

2022; Brazilian Academy of Sciences; Volume: 94; Issue: suppl 3 Linguagem: Inglês

10.1590/0001-3765202220211361

1678-2690

Allan Pierre Bonetti Pozzobon, Ana Cristina Petry, Carla Zilberberg, Cíntia Monteiro de Barros, José Luciano Nepomuceno‐Silva, Natália Martins Feitosa, Lupis Ribeiro Gomes Neto, Bruno da Costa Rodrigues, Rodrigo Brindeiro, Keity Jaqueline Chagas Vilela Nocchi, Flávia Borges Mury, Jackson Souza‐Menezes, Manuela Leal da Silva, Márcio José de Medeiros, Raquel de Souza Gestinari, Alessandra da Silva de Alvarenga, Carina Azevedo Oliveira Silva, Daniele das Graças dos Santos, Diego Henrique Silvestre, Graziele Fonseca de Sousa, Janimayri Forastieri de Almeida, JHENIFER N. DA SILVA, Layza Mendes Brandão, Leandro de Oliveira Drummond, Raphael de Mello Carpes, Renata Coutinho dos Santos, Taynan Motta Portal, Amílcar Tanuri, Rodrigo Nunes da Fonseca,

SARS-CoV-2 detection and testing

Since the first reported case of COVID-19 in Brazil, the public and private educational system started to close. Up to November 2020, scientific discussions about the return of schooling activities have been rarely performed by the national scientific community and police-makers. The great delay of school returning in Brazil contrasts with successful international strategies of school reopening worldwide and seems counterintuitive with the reopening of non-essential activities. Here, important issues to be considered before and during school reopening are reviewed and discussed. COVID-19 testing is essential to avoid disease spreading, but high cost of individual RT-qPCRs impairs an extensive testing strategy for school returning. To reduce costs and increase the speed of diagnosis, we tested the efficiency of a pooled-sample PCR strategy in a cohort of the educational staff in the city of Macaé/RJ, finding five asymptomatic individuals (0,66%) among the 754 people tested. Thus, a polled-sample PCR testing strategy of the educational staff might prevent infection spreading in schools at a reasonable cost. We discuss how our test strategy could be coupled with internationally recognized safety rules to allow for a safe school return and how countries from different world regions are dealing with educational activities during COVID-19 pandemic.