{"doi":"10.1093/jpids/piad072","title":"School Absenteeism as a Marker for Community COVID-19 Rates","abstract":"BACKGROUND: Reported community transmission rates of coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19) may not be accurate, particularly since at-home testing has become widely available. School absenteeism may serve as a marker of broader community COVID-19 transmission. METHODS: We performed an observational study of North Carolina kindergarten through 12th grade schools participating in the ABC Science Collaborative that offered in-school instruction, and contributed severe acute respiratory syndrome coronavirus 2 data for at least 2 of 4 weeks monthly for the 2021-2022 academic year. Additionally, we analyzed publicly available databases including the North Carolina Department of Public Instruction, Centers for Disease Control and Prevention COVID-19 Data Repository, and National Center for Education Statistics. We described community and school COVID-19 infection rates compared with student monthly absenteeism rates to determine if the relationship between community COVID-19 infection rates and student absenteeism varied over time. RESULTS: We included 500 192 students from 27 school districts. For the 2021-2022 academic year, the student and community COVID-19 infection rates did not show a significant difference (P > .05) across each month of comparison. Student absenteeism rates and community COVID-19 infection rates by month showed a similar trend across the academic year. For every 1% increase in community infection percentage, we found a 1.68% (1.12-2.25%) increase in absenteeism (P < .001); for every 1 month change in time, we found a 0.12% (0.01-0.24%) increase in absenteeism (P < .05). CONCLUSIONS: Student absenteeism and infection rates may be a useful marker of COVID-19 community infection rates when testing frequency and results reporting are inconsistent.","journal":"Journal of the Pediatric Infectious Diseases Society","year":2023,"id":389273,"datarank":0.0,"base_score":0.0,"endowment":0.0,"self_citation_contribution":0.0,"citation_network_contribution":0.0,"self_endowment_contribution":0.0,"citer_contribution":0.0,"corpus_percentile":null,"corpus_rank":null,"citation_count":1,"citer_count":0,"citers_with_citation_signal":0,"citers_with_endowment":0,"datacite_reuse_total":0,"is_dataset":false,"is_dataset_confidence":0.8758,"is_data_producer":false,"deposit_databanks":null,"is_oa":true,"file_count":0,"downloads":0,"has_version_chain":false,"published_date":"2023-01-01","fair_score":null,"fair_percentile":null,"algorithm_id":"datarank_citation_only_1hop_v6","ranking_scope":"data_only","authors":[{"id":326442,"name":"Daniel K. Benjamin","orcid":"0000-0002-0764-8585","position":1,"is_corresponding":false},{"id":1159562,"name":"Anthony Kajencki","orcid":null,"position":2,"is_corresponding":false},{"id":1159563,"name":"Katelyn Mann","orcid":null,"position":3,"is_corresponding":false},{"id":1030555,"name":"Natalie Rodriguez","orcid":"0000-0001-6669-8737","position":4,"is_corresponding":false},{"id":1159564,"name":"Ian Troan","orcid":null,"position":5,"is_corresponding":false},{"id":1159565,"name":"Larry Hill","orcid":null,"position":6,"is_corresponding":false},{"id":621139,"name":"Angelique E Boutzoukas","orcid":"0000-0002-9477-1492","position":7,"is_corresponding":false},{"id":319873,"name":"Kanecia O. Zimmerman","orcid":"0000-0003-3748-6932","position":8,"is_corresponding":false},{"id":628378,"name":"Ashley Stark","orcid":"0000-0002-9829-7900","position":0,"is_corresponding":true}],"reference_count":16,"raw_metadata":null,"created_at":"2026-07-19T01:18:22.323414Z","pmid":"38146857","pmcid":null,"fwci":null,"citation_percentile":null,"influential_citations":0,"oa_status":null,"license":null,"views":0,"total_file_size_bytes":0,"version_count":0,"fair_f":null,"fair_a":null,"fair_i":null,"fair_r":null,"fair_zscore":null,"fair_rationale":null,"fair_model":null,"fair_agent_version":null,"fair_fulltext_source":null,"fair_has_llm":null,"fair_computed_at":null,"clinical_trials":[],"software_tools":[],"db_accessions":[],"linked_datasets":[],"topics":[]}