Austrian SARS-CoV-2 school monitoring - Results of Rounds 4 & 5 available

The SARS-CoV-2 monitoring consortium headed by Michael Wagner has now assembled the results of the measurement rounds 4 and 5, which were conducted in April and May 2021, respectively. In total, more than 16.500 pupils and teachers were tested via gargling & pooling & RT-qPCR in these rounds. While no infected teachers were detected, 0.27% (round 4) and 0.11% (round 5) of the pupils were found to carry SARS-CoV-2, despite having been tested negatively in the mandatory antigen testing at Austrian schools. 17 and 33% of the positively tested children, respectively, had a Ct-value of below 30 in at least one of the applied PCR assays, indicating that the respective pupils might still haave been infectious at the time of testing. In both rounds, children in primary schools showed a higher SARS-CoV-2 infection prevalence than older pupils. Consistent with previous rounds, schools with a low social index had a higher prevalence of SARS-CoV-2 infections. For a more detailed overview on the results, please have a look at the results abstract provided via the link below.