Moreover, compliance with other social distancing measures needed to have been effective for school closures themselves to have been effective. A survey in Western Australia of parents of school children whose schools were closed at some stage during the pandemic indicated that 74% of home-quarantined children participated in outside activities at least once during the nominal quarantine period, recording an average of 3.7 activities per child. Most commonly reported were attendances at sporting events, parks, beaches and stores, places where it is likely other children would be exposed [34] . Public documentation of school closure during the pH1N1 epidemic in Australia is minimal, but the policy in the early phase of the pH1N1 response was to close only those classes with confirmed cases, escalating to whole schools where multiple classes across different age groups were affected. In the state of Queensland only 2.8% of all schools were closed for short periods [16] . In Western Australia school closures were only for one week and sometimes involved only closure of specific classes [34] . Too limited in scope and time, these strategies could not have been effective in interrupting the spread of the pandemic.