School in Italy: a safe place for children and adolescents

AbstractBackgroundDuring the first SARS-CoV-2 pandemic phase, the sudden closure of schools was one of the main measures to minimize the spread of the virus. In the second phase, several safety procedures were implemented to avoid school closure.To evaluate if the school is a safe place, students and staff of two school complexes of Rome were monitored to evaluate the efficacy of prevention measures inside the school buildings.MethodsOral secretions specimens were collected from 1262 subjects for a total of 3431 samples, collected over a 3 months period.Detection of Coronavirus SARS-CoV-2 was performed by real-time PCR. Target genes were represented by E gene, RdRP/S gene and N gene.Results…