Resuming in-person learning at Texas schools last fall accelerated spread of COVID-19, study says Texas Tribune Tags: Credit: Shelby Tauber for The Texas Tribune Sign up for The Brief, our daily newsletter that keeps readers up to speed on the most essential Texas news. When Texas schools returned to in-person education last fall, the spread of coronavirus “gradually but substantially accelerated,” leading to at least 43,000 additional cases and 800 additional deaths statewide, according to a study released Monday. The study was done by University of Kentucky researchers for the non-partisan National Bureau of Economic Research in Cambridge, Mass., and tracked weekly average COVID-19 cases in the eight weeks before and eight weeks after the state’s school districts sent students back to school in the fall of 2020.