Fig. 3
Sensitivity of school closure strategies to intervention parameters. Unless otherwise stated, the parameters involved take the reference values: generation time Tg = 2.7 days, effective reproduction number Re = 1.4, relative susceptibility to infection of adults with respect to underaged individuals = 0.2, probability of becoming symptomatic upon infection pI = 30 %, relative transmission rate of symptomatic and asymptomatic individuals = 1, trigger for the monitoring of schools = 150 new weekly symptomatic cases, length of a single closure = 1 week, minimum interval between consecutive closures = 1 week. a-c denotes the analyzed features (see Additional file 1: SM for details on absolute absenteeism). Asterisks on intervention parameters indicate the default values. Means are computed over 100 stochastic model realizations. a Maximum reduction in infection attack rate for the strategies with varied intervention parameters for one, two, three, and four theoretical weeks lost. b Ranges of excess absenteeism for which the attack rate reduction for the strategies with varied intervention parameters is 90 % (red) and 80 % (yellow) that of the maximum value. Only strategies yielding two theoretical weeks lost are considered. Dots denote where the maximum is attained