Top Three
Biden Admin Will Send Covid Tests to Schools: The Biden administration announced that it would provide schools with 10 million Covid-19 tests every month. White House Fact Sheet and highlights:
Sending 5 Million No-Cost Point-of-Care Tests Per Month to Schools. CDC will work with states who can submit requests to receive additional tests for high-need school districts that can put these tests immediately to use. After states submit initial requests, the first shipments will be delivered later this month.
Providing 5 Million Additional Lab-Based PCR Tests for Free to Schools Per Month. Three federally funded regional providers offer testing materials, supplies, and lab results and reporting at no direct cost to recipients through four regional hubs. Schools can immediately gain access to this free lab-based testing.
Deploying Federal Surge Testing Units to Support Free Testing Access for Students, School Staff, and Families at Community Testing Sites. HHS and FEMA are working with state, territorial, and tribal partners to address testing needs in communities and stand up federal testing sites.
Connecting Schools with COVID-19 Testing Providers to Set Up School Testing Programs using American Rescue Plan Funds.
The CDC will release additional materials for schools on how to implement test to stay programs, including a school checklist and frequently asked questions and answers.
Schools See Big Drop in Attendance as Students Stay Away, Citing Covid-19: Via WSJ
New York City, saw its overall attendance rate fall below 70% when classes resumed after the winter holidays
In Boston Public Schools, student attendance has hovered around 70% since winter break ended Jan. 4.
In Chicago, about two-thirds of public school students were present Jan. 3, the first day after winter break, rising to 72% the next day.
In Rochester, N.Y., public school attendance last week ranged from 61% to 66%, according to school district data. Just 44% of students at one high school were present on Jan. 3, and barely half showed up at one elementary school, Superintendent Lesli Myers-Small said at a Jan. 4 school board meeting.
Why Coronavirus Testing Is Falling Short in Many Schools: Via NYT.
“A lot of schools are just testing parts of their population once a week, or not using the tests strategically, or confusing surveillance with testing to suppress outbreaks,” said Dr. Michael J. Mina, a former Harvard University epidemiologist and a leading expert on rapid testing who is now the chief science officer for eMed, which authenticates at-home test results."
"The lack of clear federal guidance on rapid tests has also been an issue, forcing “every school system to recreate the wheel,” Dr. Mina said."
"Even in some large urban districts in heavily Democratic parts of the country, where leaders have vowed to keep schools open, effective testing has been hobbled. New York’s schools announced last week that they were doubling participation in their regular surveillance testing. But union officials noted that even at the expanded level, the optional screenings covered 20 percent of the district’s students at most."
"But even at its relatively low cost — the district’s cost per test is about half what the state negotiated for its tests with another vendor — Los Angeles Unified is spending about $5 million per week on coronavirus testing, said Nick Melvoin, the vice president of the school board. With more than 400,000 tests logged in the Los Angeles schools by Monday, the Omicron challenge, at least for the short term, was apparent: Nearly 15 percent were positive."
Omicron
WHO Body Says COVID-19 Vaccines May Need to be Updated for Omicron: A World Health Organization technical body said on that current COVID-19 vaccines may need to be reworked to ensure they are effective against Omicron and future variants.
Omicron Prompts Media to Rethink Which Data to Report: Via AP
"Yet these counts only reflect what is reported by health authorities. They do not include most people who test themselves at home, or are infected without even knowing about it. Holidays and weekends also lead to lags in reported cases."
"Hospitalization and death rates are considered by some to be a more reliable picture of COVID-19′s current impact on society. Yet even the usefulness of those numbers has been called into question in recent days. In many cases, hospitalizations are incidental: there are people being admitted for other reasons and are surprised to find they test positive for COVID, said Tanya Lewis, senior editor for health and medicine at Scientific American."
White House: Announced Tom Inglesby as a new COVID-19 testing adviser for three months. He is s the director of the Johns Hopkins Center for Health Security at the Bloomberg School of Public Health. Great addition to the White House efforts!
NTIA: Released ACCESS BROADBAND report which, among other things, lists all the various federal programs that support broadband.
ED: Released the Notice of Proposed Priorities, definitions, and requirements for the Full-Service Community Schools competitive grant program and is launching a 30-day public comment period for the program.
COVID-19 Research
Effectiveness of Pfizer Vaccine Against Critical Covid-19 in Adolescents: New study which found "Among hospitalized adolescent patients, two doses of the BNT162b2 vaccine were highly effective against Covid-19–related hospitalization and ICU admission or the receipt of life support."
Moderna On Timing for 2-5 Yr Olds: Moderna says it expects to report data in children 2-5 years of age in March.
Americans Value "Health and Safety" Over In-person Learning: New Axios survey.
"44% said it's more important to have schools open for in-person learning to avoid further interrupting students' education, the Harris polling found."
"More than six in 10 Gen Z, millennial and Gen X respondents chose health and safety over in-person learning, as did 62% of parents with children younger than 18. Only 48% of boomers — or respondents 57 and older — said the same."
A Popular At-home Test Detects Most Infectious Omicron Cases, A Study Suggests: NYT story featuring a study:
"It’s working as it was designed,” said Joseph DeRisi, a biochemist at the University of California, San Francisco, who is a president of the Chan Zuckerberg Biohub and an author of the paper. “There does not seem to be any performance deficit with Omicron.”
The COVID Generation: How Is The Pandemic Affecting Kids’ Brains?: Via Nature:
"Although children have generally fared well when infected with SARS-CoV-2, preliminary research suggests that pandemic-related stress during pregnancy could be negatively affecting fetal brain development in some children. Moreover, frazzled parents and carers might be interacting differently or less with their young children in ways that could affect a child’s physical and mental abilities."
"Tronick decided to see whether masks had a similar effect. With his colleague, psychologist Nancy Snidman, he conducted an experiment (which has not yet been peer reviewed) in which parents used smartphones to record interactions with their babies before, during and after they put on face masks. Although babies noticed when their parents put on masks — they would briefly change their facial expression, look away or point at the mask — they would then continue interacting with their parents as they had before."
"Face masks don’t seem to interfere all that much with emotional or language perception, either. A study published in May reported that two-year-olds were still able to understand words spoken by adults in opaque face masks."
"Children “compensate for information deficits more readily than we think”, says study lead author Leher Singh, a psychologist at the National University of Singapore. Researchers in the United States found that, although face masks made it harder for school-age children to perceive adults’ emotions — about as difficult as when adults were wearing sunglasses — the kids were still, for the most part, able to make accurate inferences."
Study Finds Emotional Stress at High Among Israeli Students During COVID Pandemic: Article on survey findings.
A Deceptive Covid Study, Unmasked: Via WSJ:
"Researchers examined the effect of a “test to stay” approach to schoolchildren identified as “close contacts” of Covid-positive people. Test to stay excuses these children from quarantining if they test negative for the virus. The study’s primary conclusion was that test to stay is a good way to move away from lengthy quarantine."
"But the researchers peppered their report with rhetorical sleights of hand aimed at misleading readers into other, less well-founded conclusions that were mostly inevitable products of their own study design. One of their primary conclusions is that “in schools with universal masking, test-to-stay is an effective strategy."
"An honest summary of the study might have said: “There is a low transmission rate of the virus among students, even when unmasked at lunch or during sports.” But a summary like that wouldn’t have reinforced the politically acceptable message of public-health authorities today, and so unfounded points had to be fashioned to fit the narrative."
Fact Checking Claims About a Statement by Rochelle Walensky: A viral video of the CDC director discussing COVID deaths and comorbidities is missing context.
Refreshing the U.S. Strategy To End the Pandemic: Via CAP.
The American Nurses Association Supports Boosters For 12-15 Yr Olds: ANA is supporting the FDA and CDC's recommendation for a Pfizer-BioNTech COVID-19 vaccine booster for children ages 12-15, five months after they have received their second dose.
Children and COVID-19: State-Level Data Report
For the week ending January 6th, over 580,000 child COVID-19 cases were reported. This number is a 78% increase over the 325,000 added cases reported the week ending December 30th and an almost tripling of case counts from the two weeks prior.
State
California:
Oakland students threaten to boycott classes unless unless the district reverts to remote learning or complies with a list of health and testing demands that include KN95 masks for each student, more testing and expanded outdoor space for lunchtime.
More than 65,000 Los Angeles students and employees test positive for COVID-19 as school resumes. As of Monday afternoon, the student positivity rate for COVID-19 cases is at 16.6% while the employee rate stands at 14.9%.
Governor Newsom signs Executive Order to support safe, in-person learning at schools. Will lower "state barriers that delay the hire of qualified short-term substitute teachers; permitting substitute teachers to have their assignments extended; and providing additional flexibility to support retired teachers who have returned to the classroom, as well as eliminating barriers that may prevent additional retired teachers from returning."
Indiana: Indy students implore U.S. Secretary of Education to help keep schools open.
Massachusetts:
Michigan: EPIC report "K-8 Student Achievement and Achievement Gaps on Michigan’s 2020-21 Benchmark and Summative Assessments". More than 200 pages of detailed analysis which found longstanding achievement gaps between racial & socioeconomic groups, as well as gaps between in-person & remote-only districts, widened over the course of the year.
Minnesota: Minneapolis, St. Paul teacher unions propose plans to respond to COVID in schools. A few of the requests:
"Maintain the 10-day isolation period for individuals who test positive for COVID-19 or require two negative antigen tests to return to school or work sooner."
"Provide antigen or PCR tests for all students to test weekly."
"Reducing class sizes, which has academic benefits and would allow for actual physical distancing in classrooms and other instructional spaces to lower the risk of outbreaks that would force more students and educators to miss in-person instruction."
"Designating some teachers at each school to work remotely with students who cannot attend school in person because the students have tested positive for the virus or are isolating at home after an exposure. These would be called “QuaranTeams.”
New York:
Adams: No Remote Learning Option in NYC Schools for 6 Months
Governor Hochul announces #VaxForKids campaign.
Ohio: A group of parents are suing the Hudson City Schools, accusing the school system of treating unvaccinated students differently. The parents are seeking a declaration that Hudson City Schools cannot enforce a mask policy and cannot require students to quarantine without a signed health order.
Wisconsin: "According to the 2021 Annual Report of the Wisconsin Office of Children's Mental Health, 29% of Wisconsin high school students felt sad or hopeless."
International
France: Unions poised for historic strike over France's Covid-19 school rules.
Economic Recovery
Inflation Rises 7% Over the Past Year: The highest since 1982.
The Kids (and the Adults) Aren’t All Right: Job Losses in the Care Sector Extend Beyond Child Care: Via DOL
Workers Unable to Work the Previous Week Due to COVID: Axios looks into the Census Household Pulse Survey data.
Unvaccinated workers, particularly low-wage earners, were much more likely to miss a full week of work because they had COVID symptoms or were caring for someone with symptoms.
41% of working-age Americans who earn more than $100,000 are vaxxed and boosted; compared to less than 18% for those earning $50,000 or less, according to Raifman and Sojourner’s analysis.
Resources
Nearly One-Third of States Are Leaving the Public in the Dark About 2021’s Standardized Tests: CRPE via The 74.
District Student Wellbeing Services Reflection Tool: New resource from Chiefs for Change.
Covid School Closures Are the Exception, Not the Rule: Via MSNBC
"What is most notable about the current Covid wave is that, in the face of record-high case numbers, school are not closing in significant numbers."
"Indeed, the current debate on schools is being driven by extremists on both sides: those who see any school closure as a return to spring 2020 and those who overstate the health risks of Covid for kids."
Trump Rips ‘Gutless’ Politicians Over Booster Shots: Via One America News that politicians who don’t disclose their booster shot status when asked in interviews are “gutless.”
“Well, I’ve taken it. I’ve had the booster. Many politicians — I watched a couple of politicians be interviewed and one of the questions was, ‘Did you get the booster?’ — because they had the vaccine — and they’re answering like — in other words, the answer is ‘yes’ but they don’t want to say it. Because they’re gutless. You gotta say it – whether you had it or not. Say it.”
School Closures Make the Case for School Choice: Argues Rick Hess.
No New Closures: Vladimir Kogan and Vinay Prasad, "With lifesaving vaccines widely available and protection from mild infection impossible, keeping schools open should be a top priority."
Owl Ventures Closes Over $1 Billion In New Funds: Congrats to the Owl team!
MDOT Reveals Winners of Snowplow Naming Contest: Announced today. Names will appear "on the MiDrive website, where residents can check the name and location of each plow in real time." Some good ones:
Ice to Meet You
Pillsbury Plowboy
Salt Salt Baby
Saltosaurus Rex
Snowdown Please, I'm Plowing
Aaron Brr, Sir
Fast and Flurryous
Flake Michigan
Han Snow-Lo
Ctrl Salt Delete
Salt-N-Peppa
Señor Flurry
Elmo's Feud With A Pet Rock Has Consumed The Internet: Via NBC News with quite a bit of background and context.
Elmo assumes he can take an oatmeal raisin cookie that has been given to the inanimate Rocco. When Zoe tells Elmo he can’t eat the cookie, he ... fully loses his cool.
“Rocco’s a rock, Zoe! Rocco won’t know the difference!” Elmo shouts.
And this: "Elmo did not immediately respond to a request for comment."