Headlines - The Impact of School Breaks on the Spread of Epidemics

Among the measures to limit the spread of infectious disease outbreaks such as the flu, school closures are the subject of controversy due to both the difficulty of implementing this measure and its actual effectiveness. An article in last week’s Annals of Internal Medicine¹ reports on a study conducted in Alberta, Canada, based on the 2009 flu outbreak. Using more than 35,000 virological samples, the authors recorded the date of testing, the patient’s age, and the location of the illness, and used mathematical modeling to compare this data with weather patterns and … the various dates of school breaks in this province of 3.7 million people. [...]