2022/03/23 by Emanuele Amodio, Amodio, Emanuele, Michèle Battisti +7
Economics, Econometrics and Finance · Mathematics · Medicine · #COVID-19 Pandemic Impacts #COVID-19 epidemiological studies #FOS: Economics and business #General Economics (econ.GN) #SARS-CoV-2 and COVID-19 Research
paper · pdf · doi:10.48550/arxiv.2203.12331
openalex publication_date 2022/03/23 · openalex created_date 2025/10/10 · openalex updated_date 2026/07/28
Do school openings trigger Covid-19 diffusion when school-age vaccination is available? We investigate this question using a unique geo-referenced high frequency database on school openings, vaccinations, and Covid-19 cases from the Italian region of Sicily. The analysis focuses on the change of Covid-19 diffusion after school opening in a homogeneous geographical territory. The identification of causal effects derives from a comparison of the change in cases before and after school opening in 2020/21, when vaccination was not available, and in 2021/22, when the vaccination campaign targeted individuals of age 12-19 and above 19. The results indicate that, while school opening determined an increase in the growth rate of Covid-19 cases in 2020/2021, this effect has been substantially reduced by school-age vaccination in 2021/2022. In particular, we find that an increase of approximately 10% in the vaccination rate of school-age population reduces the growth rate of Covid-19 cases after school opening by approximately 1.4%. In addition, a counterfactual simulation suggests that a permanent no vaccination scenario would have implied an increase of 19% in ICU beds occupancy.