| Many children in the U.S. are supposed to start heading back to the classroom in just a few weeks. Science currently offers little insight into how safe that might be. Other nations have sent children back to school—or never shuttered schools to begin with—but none has done so with the virus surging as it is in the U.S. That's on top of the fact that the virus can be airborne in crowded indoor spaces, and that children are commonly known to be spreaders of other respiratory viruses, like the seasonal flu. While there's data showing children aren't likely to become very ill from Covid-19, there's less information on how likely they are to transmit it to others.  A student common area at Torrey Pines High School in San Diego, California. Photographer: Bing Guan/Bloomberg Scant early data suggest children may in fact be less likely to transmit the disease. One Chinese study, for example, found that of 65 of 68 children with confirmed Covid-19 admitted to a hospital lived in households with previously infected adults, indicating the child caught the virus from the adult rather than transmitting it. In another study from Australia, nine students and nine staff members were infected across 15 schools, making close contact with 735 other students and 128 staffers. Only two secondary infections were found. There is also some evidence that younger children are less likely to spread the virus than older ones. What's more, staying home from school could do a different kind of long-term damage to kids, dimming lifetime earnings prospects and potentially reinforcing existing social and economic divides. Still, scientists say there just isn't enough convincing evidence that kids won't transmit the coronavirus. And that means that for schools that do opt to open, things will look a lot different than they did the previous September, with more masks, limited classroom time and physical distancing.—Kristen V. Brown | 
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