Leveraging School Infection Data to Address Community COVID-19 Data Gaps.

Background: At-home COVID-19 tests became available in the USA in April 2021 with widespread use by January 2022; however, the lack of infrastructure to report test results to public health agencies created a gap in public health data. Kindergarten through grade 12 (K-12) schools often tracked COVID-19 cases among students and staff; leveraging school data may have helped bridge data gaps.

Methods: We examined infection rates reported by school districts to ABC Science Collaborative with corresponding community rates from March 15, 2021 to June 3, 2022.