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Article History

Received: 17 January 2023

Accepted: 25 April 2023

First Online: 10 May 2023

Declarations

:

: In this study, all methods were carried out in accordance with relevant guidelines and regulations. Absenteeism data were provided by the schools/school board as aggregate numbers, with the agreement by school board representatives that the data could be used for research. Influenza data were collected by the public health unit for surveillance purposes, with only de-identified data shared for research that was conducted under the conditions outlined in a data sharing agreement. Only the influenza data used in this study were shared, for analysis, as record-level data (de-identified). Those data were collected by the public health unit under the Ontario Health Protection and Promotion Act, R.S.O. 1990, c. H.7 (), and O. Reg. 559/91: SPECIFICATION OF REPORTABLE DISEASES (). The need for informed consent at the point of data collection was deemed unnecessary as per these regulations.Data used for this study is not publicly available, and were collected by Wellington-Dufferin-Guelph Public Health. Permissions for sharing the data were outlined in a Data Release Agreement between Wellington-Dufferin-Guelph Public Health and the participating Boards of Education. Use of the data for this study was approved by the University of Guelph Research Ethics Board (REB # 18-04-010).

: Not applicable.

: The authors declare no competing interests.