As cases surge, no clear answers on school reopening

“It’s pretty clear the disease is far milder in children than in adults,” says Dan Cooper, MD, a professor of pediatrics at UC Irvine and the lead author of an article on reopening schools published in The Journal of Pediatrics. “So the good news is, bringing the kids back doesn’t mean you’re assigning large numbers of children to a terrible disease.” Some research suggests that children are less likely to spread the virus to adults. “It’s all theoretical,” Cooper says. “We just don’t have the data.”