640 - School Absenteeism as a Marker for Community Covid-19 Rates

Saturday, April 29, 2023

3:30 PM – 6:00 PM ET

Poster Number: 640
Publication Number: 640.226

Ashley Stark, Duke University School of Medicine, Durham, NC, United States; Anthony A. Kajencki, Carrboro High School, Carrboro, NC, United States; Katelyn M. Mann, Wakefield High School, Wake Forest, NC, United States; Natalie S. Rodriguez, University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, Chapel Hill, NC, United States; Ian Q. Troan, Duke University School of Medicine, RALEIGH, NC, United States; C Larry. Hill, Duke Clinical Research Center, Durham, NC, United States; Kanecia Zimmerman, Duke University School of Medicine, Durham, NC, United States; Daniel Benjamin, Duke University School of Medicine, Durham, NC, United States

Presenting Author(s)

AS

Ashley Stark, MD, MS

Fellow, Neonatology
Duke University School of Medicine
Durham, North Carolina, United States

Background: Reported community transmission rates of Covid-19 may not be accurate after at-home testing has become widely available and individuals with mild cases may not present to a clinician. It is currently unknown if school absenteeism can serve as a marker of broader community Covid-19 transmission.

Objective: To evaluate whether school absenteeism can be a marker of broader community Covid-19 transmission rates

Design/Methods: We performed a retrospective observational study of North Carolina school K-12 districts that participated in the ABC Science Collaborative, offered in-school instruction, and contributed at least 2 of 4 weeks for each month of the 2021-2022 academic year as well as publicly available databases including the North Carolina Department of Public Instruction (NCDPI) online database, CDC Covid-19 data repository, and the National Center for Education Statistics (NCES). We used comparative statistics to describe community and school Covid-19 infection rates to student absenteeism rates across each month with Tukey’s adjustment to reduce type 1 error.

Results: A total of 494,927 students from 27 school districts were included. The number of reported absentee days and Covid-19 infected students by month is detailed in Table 1. The student and community Covid-19 infection rates per month for the 2021-2022 academic year did not show a significant difference (p >0.05) across each month of comparison. The student absenteeism rate did show a similar trend to both the community and student Covid-19 infection rate across the academic year (Figure 1).

Conclusion(s):

Student absenteeism and infection rates can be used as a marker for community infection rates, which may be helpful in the current era of potentially inaccurate Covid-19 reporting due to wide availability of at-home testing.