Background
infection
INFECTION, SECONDARY, MAY
To protect the global population, including school-aged children, against the spread of SARS-CoV-2, national and regional authorities implemented infection prevention and control (IPC) measures in various societal settings. Because the role of school-aged children in the transmission dynamics was unclear, IPC measures against COVID-19 were implemented in schools from an early stage [International organizations (WHO, UNESCO, UNICEF, IFRC) and national public health authorities recommended a broad range of COVID-19 IPC measures for primary and secondary educational settings [In Belgium, several IPC measures were recommended in schools which can be classified into the above-mentioned WHO categories. From mid-March until May 2020, remote learning was mandatory for all schools. Schools reopened for in-person teaching in May 2020 while implementing IPC measures such as hand and respiratory hygiene, ventilation and physical distancing measures and introducing an intensive contact tracing programme. Furthermore, the last four grades of secondary school (ages 14–17) were required to organize 50% of classes online in order to limit physical presence at school. Mask wearing was compulsory for all primary and secondary school staff and all pupils from secondary schools [Studies examining the impact of IPC measures in schools remain limited [To our knowledge, no information on the implementation of IPC measures against SARS-CoV-2 transmission in Belgian schools has been published thus far. Even though this manuscript reports on data from school year 2020–2021, the findings reported are still of interest. Beginning June 2022, of the 270,000 PubMed hits for COVID-19, less than 150 hits were found adding search terms such as IPC and schools. The objective of this paper is to document the implementation of IPC measures in Belgian primary and secondary schools and to assess how the implementation of such measures relates to the prevalence of anti-SARS-CoV-2 antibodies among pupils and staff.