Data shows that sending children back to school in Denmark did not lead to increased coronavirus infections.
Denmark was the first country in Europe to send children back to school following the outbreak of the coronavirus, and official data from the country shows that coronavirus infections did not increase as a result, according to Reuters.
“You cannot see any negative effects from the reopening of schools,” Danish epidemiologist Peter Andersen said Thursday.
Officials in Finland also announced that they have found no evidence that opening schools has caused the virus to spread faster.
Several European countries, including Denmark, Finland, Sweden, and Iceland, have reopened schools, and Swedish schools never closed.
In the United States, schools across the country are closed until at least fall due to concerns that children are coronavirus carriers, although some data shows that individuals under 18 are largely unaffected by the virus.
White House Coronavirus Task Force member Dr. Anthony Fauci has cautioned against children going back to school and pushed back against the idea that they aren’t at risk from the virus.
“I think we better be careful if we are not cavalier in thinking that children are completely immune to the deleterious effects of the illness,” Fauci said earlier this month. “The idea of having treatments available or a vaccine to facilitate reentry of students into the fall term would be something that would be a bit of a bridge too far,” he added.
President Trump referred to Fauci’s caution about opening schools as “not an acceptable answer.”
