“Parents’ Attitude to School Reopening before the Emergence of Omicron Variant of SARS-CoV-2: A Retrospective Web-based Survey”

Like many countries, in our country schools were reopened by September2021, mainly because of massive personal and social costs due to the social distancingstrategies. With the emergence of Omicron variant, questions are raised and still not fullyanswered about the causes of a noticeable increase in pediatric ICU admissions. Currently,schools have reopened. In this retrospective study, the parents’ willingness to September 2021school reopening was investigated. We extracted data from approximately 3,700 parents. The data gathering tool wasa self-administered, semi-structured, web-based survey, which was filled by the parents fromJuly 18th, 2021 to August 3rd, 2021. Only 38.4% of parents agreed with school reopening. The most common reasonparents were concerned with, irrespective of their agreement status, was full vaccinationof students, teachers, and staff (83.6%); also, the most common concern that might haveenforced the parents to consider school reopening was lower learning achievements at homeusing the online platforms (55.6%). Furthermore, full-time online learning was still themostly preferred mode of reopening by the parents (43.48%). The agreement with school reopening was low among the parents and theirhighest concern was full vaccination of students, teachers, and staff. During the longerclosure, the impact on students will worsen; policymakers should accelerate and encouragethe vaccination of young ages, supply safety measures, and retain the trust of the communityfor school reopening.