When you think how daft a decision that was it's mind blowing. Having an unnecessary mass household mixing event just before a need for full on lockdown. How many spreader events were caused.
Relatively few. If you take Public Health England's
data from the last week of school in December, there were 260 potential outbreaks reported across the enitre week in educational settings, of which 200 were confirmed to have at least 1 case. 227 in care homes, 93 in hospitals, 174 in workplaces and other settings. In a week where 110,000 cases were reported, 200 outbreaks in educational settings is not a lot. And outbreaks at schools are disproportionately likely to be recorded, because they've had their own national school helpline since September to facilitate recording.
Super spreader events are much more likely to happen in other indoor settings with lots of adults, and an absolutely tiny proportion of cases are traced back to super spreader events in school. Super spreader events
rely on someone with an exceptionally high viral load that spreads more easily. Kids are the least likely to be that. Household mixing of much smaller numbers in much more locations over Christmas will have had an impact several magnitudes larger, just because of how the disease spreads differently among adults and children.
More on super spreader events and children:
It is notable here that one child infected while displaying symptoms did not transmit the virus when visiting 3 schools.11 Clearly, children are less likely to develop severe complications from the disease, where a significant proportion are asymptomatic/or have subclinical symptoms12 and a meta-analysis shows those <20 years have an odds ratio of 0.56 for being an infected contact compared to those who are older, indicating children are less susceptible compared to adults.14 Evidence suggests children are not the primary source of infection in most household clusters as 9.7% of 31 transmission clusters identified were thought to have children as a paediatric index case.13 Further, transmission between children does not play a vital role in the formation of SSEs with explanations including lower levels of ACE2 present in the nasal epithelium of children compared to adults.
And a
later study:
The role of children in the spread of SARS-CoV-2 remains highly controversial. To address this issue, we performed a meta-analysis of the published literature on household SARS-CoV-2 transmission clusters (n=213 from 12 countries). Only 8 (3.8%) transmission clusters were identified as having a paediatric index case. Asymptomatic index cases were associated with a lower secondary attack in contacts than symptomatic index cases (estimate risk ratio [RR], 0.17; 95% confidence interval [CI], 0.09-0.29). To determine the susceptibility of children to household infections the secondary attack rate (SAR) in paediatric household contacts was assessed. The secondary attack rate in paediatric household contacts was lower than in adult household contacts (RR, 0.62; 95% CI, 0.42-0.91). These data have important implications for the ongoing management of the COVID-19 pandemic, including potential vaccine prioritization strategies.
40-word summary In household transmission clusters of SARS-CoV-2 children are unlikely to be the index case. Children are also less likely than adults to be infected with SARS-CoV-2 from a family member.