The verdict is, once again, in: Masking in schools is effective.
During the COVID-19 pandemic’s delta variant wave, schools that required masking had approximately one-fourth the rates of in-school coronavirus transmission than schools with optional or partial masking policies, researchers report online March 9 in Pediatrics.
While the findings reinforce past research on masking efficacy, this is the first study to focus on secondary transmissions, or transmissions that happen at school, says study coauthor Danny Benjamin, an epidemiologist at Duke University. The team found that schools play a small role in terms of transmission in a community, accounting for less than 10 percent of total cases in the study. But
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