Tracking COVID for Safer Schools

They also aimed to estimate asymptomatic transmission rates in schools as measured by targeted nucleic acid viral testing for SARS-CoV-2. T cell, B cell, and SARS-CoV-2 antibody assays were used to further characterize immune response to the virus. (Note: psychological impact and vaccine receptiveness data not shared with CITF Databank [1], data on asymptomatic transmission rates in children not shared with CITF Databank [2].)

Methods

This cohort study recruited active school staff from the Vancouver, Delta, and Richmond school districts in British Columbia. Participants provided a blood sample for serology testing and completed online questionnaires annually at the beginning of 2021, 2022 and 2023. Contributed dataset contents: The datasets include 2444 participants who completed baseline questionnaires between February 2021 and June 2021.

An additional 82 participants who did not complete a baseline questionnaire gave blood samples or follow-up surveys over the three sampling periods: approximately 87% of participants gave a blood sample between February 2021 and July 2021, 64% between January 2022 and March 2022, and 40% between January 2023 and May 2023. A total of 4828 samples were collected. Variables include data in the following areas of information: demographics (age, gender, race-ethnicity and indigeneity, education, household composition), general health (smokes; chronic conditions; height and weight; flu vaccine), COVID infection history (dates of positive PCR tests, hospitalizations, symptoms), adherence to COVID-19 public health guidelines, time spent with children, SARS-CoV-2 vaccination, and serology (antibodies against SARS-CoV-2 RBD, nucleocapsid, and spike proteins).

[1]: Please contact original study team for psychological and vaccine receptiveness data. [2]: Please contact original study team for data on asymptomatic transmission rates in children.