Returning high school students potentially sparked nearly 9,400 secondary cases of COVID-19 throughout the UK during the Christmas season.

The results of a groundbreaking study, freely available once the embargo lifts, reveal the potential impact of student home returns during the Christmas vacation on the spread of Covid-19. The study, published by Taylor & Francis Group, can be accessed via this link: https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/full/10.1080/20476965.2020.1857214.

Mathematicians at Cardiff University developed a model that considers various factors, such as the prevalence of the virus, the probability of secondary transmission, the number of household occupants, and the number of students returning home. The model predicts that each infected student returning home, on average, would cause 0.94 secondary household infections.

With over 1 million UK students potentially moving for the Christmas vacation, a 1% infection level could lead to 9,400 new secondary household cases across the country. To mitigate this, the authors suggest multiple strategies, including advising against mixing, implementing staggered departure times, and facilitating mass testing before departure.

The results of the study have been presented to the Welsh Government and have influenced policies related to the two-week firebreak in Wales and the upcoming vacation. The data has also been communicated across the governments of England, Scotland, and Northern Ireland.

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An online app (http://bit.ly/Secondary_infections_app) has been developed to allow users to rerun and adapt the simulations based on local parameters. For a copy of the study, contact Simon Wesson at [email protected] or +44 (0)20 7017 4311. For an interview with one of the authors, Dr. Thomas Woolley, contact [email protected] or 07462076119.

Taylor & Francis Group has offices in multiple locations including Oxford, New York, Philadelphia, Boca Raton, Boston, Melbourne, Singapore, Beijing, Tokyo, Stockholm, New Delhi, and Cape Town. Follow Taylor & Francis Group on Twitter at @ourx. The study does not account for transmission to the students' wider home communities or the journey home, which may result in a larger number of cases.

Returning high school students potentially sparked nearly 9,400 secondary cases of COVID-19 throughout the UK during the Christmas season.