By Michael Erman, Gwladys Fouche and Alistair Smout

(Reuters) – School for children in many nations has been underway for more than a month and fears the Delta coronavirus variant would derail in-person learning have largely proven unfounded.

According to officials and data from local sources, the case rate in a dozen countries that have high vaccination rates in Asia and Europe has slowed down in August.

It is unclear if this can be attributed to global decreases in cases or seasonal factors. The same goes for vaccinations. As winter draws near, public health professionals say that they will be watching for any signs of an increase.

“In the United States, in-school transmission is higher in places with low adult vaccination and no mitigation, but, overall, schools have stayed open,” said Monica Gandhi, professor of medicine at University of California San Francisco Medical School. “It is going better than expected.”

Cases among children increased nearly seven fold in August but peaked the week ended Sept. 2, American Academy of Pediatrics data shows. According to Burbio research, only 2% of U.S. school have been closed temporarily due to COVID-19 epidemics.

Because shots aren’t yet approved or have just started, children make up the biggest proportion of those who remain unvaccinated. 

Public health experts claim that August’s spike in summer-related illnesses and increase in cases due to testing have subsided. They are now seeing a decline in the number of community-related cases, rising vaccinations and mitigation measures at schools.

However, there are some exceptions. There are exceptions.

However, in the United States and Scandinavia, Germany, France (and even South Korea), cases have fallen despite concerns that the deadly Delta virus would increase the spread of infections.

Sweden’s schools, which have been open since the outbreak, experienced an initial increase in COVID-19 cases among students after the summer vacations. However, the number of cases is now low among both children and adults.

The daily average of cases in Norway rose to 1,785 within the first week of school. It then fell by 60% over last week.

We expect that the downward trend will continue for at least a few more weeks before easing off to a lower level for at least a few months. Then there are uncertainties about the winter season,” Preben Aavitsland, senior physician at the Norwegian Institute of Public Health, told Reuters by email.

Aavitsland stated that everything, from partying to lessons in music, drove up the number of adolescent cases during August.

The UK has experienced an increase in cases of children who attended schools that were opened earlier, however, the problem has not been spread to the larger population. Neil Ferguson is an epidemiologist at Imperial College London.

Schools in Scotland were reopened mid-August and the positive tests rose to new heights by the month’s end.

According to data from government agencies, around one in twenty children aged 3 to 16 years old had COVID-19 in the week ending Sept. 3. This compares to 1 to 45 in the general population. Since then, the number of cases in children below 19 years old has fallen every week.

Although cases rose in Scotland long before the opening of schools, there is some transmission, Rowland Kao from University of Edinburgh told Reuters via email.

“It’s very hard to separate community transmission that is related to schools, to transmission in schools. However, clusters of cases in single classrooms do not appear to be particularly high, suggesting that it is at least a mix of both,” Kao said.

UNITED STATES

In the United States, the number of children’s cases has grown as a percentage of overall cases, according to the American Academy of Pediatrics.

“Schools simply reflect what’s going on in the surrounding community and, in most cases, you have less transmission than in the surrounding community because of mitigation measures in place,” said Dr. Sean O’Leary, a pediatrics professor at the University of Colorado.

In Kentucky, for instance, 45 of the state’s 171 school districts have closed down at least once since the academic year began in August, according to Joshua Shoulta, a spokesman for the Kentucky School Boards Association.

The number of vaccine-preventable diseases in Kentucky has fallen, but is still high. Just over half of the state’s population are fully vaccinated. The state’s school districts were already struggling with staff shortages before COVID-19 cases and quarantines, Shoulta said. Last week’s special session of the state legislature saw lawmakers give local school officials greater autonomy in order to comply with COVID-19 protocol.

“What we know now and the tools we have compared to where we were at this time last year makes it a slightly different ball game,” Shoulta said.

A Texas school district has less than half of the substitute teachers that it requires. Hawkins (NASDAQ:), superintendent of the Livingston (TX) Independent School District, said the district was forced to close down for Labor Day week after more than 10% of the 600-member faculty got COVID-19.

Hawkins said Texas Governor Greg Abbott’s decision to bar school districts from requiring masks is driving much of the increase in cases. Livingston said that there were more positive cases in the first weeks of school among teachers and students than at any time last year. Just under 7% of the district’s approximately 4,000 students, or nearly 300 children, had been infected as of mid-September.

“For a couple of weeks, we had people like myself and other administrators in classrooms substitute teaching,” Hawkins said.

California has an estimated 40 million people, nearly nine times as large as Kentucky. Los Angeles and San Francisco schools reported very low numbers of cases within their first weeks, thanks to ventilation, masks and vaccinations. Burbio says that Kentucky has closed half the schools and districts in California, while Kentucky had more.