Substantial Impact of School Closure on the Transmission Dynamics during the Pandemic Flu H1N1-2009 in Oita, Japan.
<h4>Background</h4>School closure is considered as an effective measure to prevent pandemic influenza. Although Japan has implemented many class, grade, and whole school closures during the early stage of the pandemic 2009, the effectiveness of such a school closure has not been analysed...
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| Format: | Article |
| Language: | English |
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Public Library of Science (PLoS)
2015-01-01
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| Series: | PLoS ONE |
| Online Access: | https://journals.plos.org/plosone/article/file?id=10.1371/journal.pone.0144839&type=printable |
| _version_ | 1826584312424693760 |
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| author | Shoko Kawano Masayuki Kakehashi |
| author_facet | Shoko Kawano Masayuki Kakehashi |
| author_sort | Shoko Kawano |
| collection | DOAJ |
| description | <h4>Background</h4>School closure is considered as an effective measure to prevent pandemic influenza. Although Japan has implemented many class, grade, and whole school closures during the early stage of the pandemic 2009, the effectiveness of such a school closure has not been analysed appropriately. In addition, analysis based on evidence or data from a large population has yet to be performed. We evaluated the preventive effect of school closure against the pandemic (H1N1) 2009 and examined efficient strategies of reactive school closure.<h4>Materials and methods</h4>Data included daily reports of reactive school closures and the number of infected students in the pandemic in Oita City, Japan. We used a regression model that incorporated a time delay to analyse the daily data of school closure based on a time continuous susceptible-exposed-infected-removed model of infectious disease spread. The delay was due to the time-lag from transmission to case reporting. We simulated the number of students infected daily with and without school closure and evaluated the effectiveness.<h4>Results</h4>The model with a 3-day delay from transmission to reporting yielded the best fit using R2 (the coefficient of determination). This result suggests that the recommended period of school closure is more than 4 days. Moreover, the effect of school closure in the simulation of school closure showed the following: the number of infected students decreased by about 24% at its peak, and the number of cumulative infected students decreased by about 8.0%.<h4>Conclusions</h4>School closure was an effective intervention for mitigating the spread of influenza and should be implemented for more than 4 days. School closure has a remarkable impact on decreasing the number of infected students at the peak, but it does not substantially decrease the total number of infected students. |
| first_indexed | 2024-12-22T03:10:03Z |
| format | Article |
| id | doaj.art-809139101621453aa2d65e2b93e96212 |
| institution | Directory Open Access Journal |
| issn | 1932-6203 |
| language | English |
| last_indexed | 2025-03-14T15:35:45Z |
| publishDate | 2015-01-01 |
| publisher | Public Library of Science (PLoS) |
| record_format | Article |
| series | PLoS ONE |
| spelling | doaj.art-809139101621453aa2d65e2b93e962122025-02-25T05:32:52ZengPublic Library of Science (PLoS)PLoS ONE1932-62032015-01-011012e014483910.1371/journal.pone.0144839Substantial Impact of School Closure on the Transmission Dynamics during the Pandemic Flu H1N1-2009 in Oita, Japan.Shoko KawanoMasayuki Kakehashi<h4>Background</h4>School closure is considered as an effective measure to prevent pandemic influenza. Although Japan has implemented many class, grade, and whole school closures during the early stage of the pandemic 2009, the effectiveness of such a school closure has not been analysed appropriately. In addition, analysis based on evidence or data from a large population has yet to be performed. We evaluated the preventive effect of school closure against the pandemic (H1N1) 2009 and examined efficient strategies of reactive school closure.<h4>Materials and methods</h4>Data included daily reports of reactive school closures and the number of infected students in the pandemic in Oita City, Japan. We used a regression model that incorporated a time delay to analyse the daily data of school closure based on a time continuous susceptible-exposed-infected-removed model of infectious disease spread. The delay was due to the time-lag from transmission to case reporting. We simulated the number of students infected daily with and without school closure and evaluated the effectiveness.<h4>Results</h4>The model with a 3-day delay from transmission to reporting yielded the best fit using R2 (the coefficient of determination). This result suggests that the recommended period of school closure is more than 4 days. Moreover, the effect of school closure in the simulation of school closure showed the following: the number of infected students decreased by about 24% at its peak, and the number of cumulative infected students decreased by about 8.0%.<h4>Conclusions</h4>School closure was an effective intervention for mitigating the spread of influenza and should be implemented for more than 4 days. School closure has a remarkable impact on decreasing the number of infected students at the peak, but it does not substantially decrease the total number of infected students.https://journals.plos.org/plosone/article/file?id=10.1371/journal.pone.0144839&type=printable |
| spellingShingle | Shoko Kawano Masayuki Kakehashi Substantial Impact of School Closure on the Transmission Dynamics during the Pandemic Flu H1N1-2009 in Oita, Japan. PLoS ONE |
| title | Substantial Impact of School Closure on the Transmission Dynamics during the Pandemic Flu H1N1-2009 in Oita, Japan. |
| title_full | Substantial Impact of School Closure on the Transmission Dynamics during the Pandemic Flu H1N1-2009 in Oita, Japan. |
| title_fullStr | Substantial Impact of School Closure on the Transmission Dynamics during the Pandemic Flu H1N1-2009 in Oita, Japan. |
| title_full_unstemmed | Substantial Impact of School Closure on the Transmission Dynamics during the Pandemic Flu H1N1-2009 in Oita, Japan. |
| title_short | Substantial Impact of School Closure on the Transmission Dynamics during the Pandemic Flu H1N1-2009 in Oita, Japan. |
| title_sort | substantial impact of school closure on the transmission dynamics during the pandemic flu h1n1 2009 in oita japan |
| url | https://journals.plos.org/plosone/article/file?id=10.1371/journal.pone.0144839&type=printable |
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