Top Three
Omicron Is a Bigger Risk for the Young, Medical Data Shows: Study. More via Bloomberg.
"The omicron variant may be more dangerous for children than earlier coronavirus strains, a study of hospitalization data from one of South Africa’s biggest medical insurance programs showed."
"Data from the 56,164 Covid-19-related hospital admissions among the more than 2 million beneficiaries of the Government Employees Medical Scheme found that the admission rate for children under the age of four was 49% higher during the omicron wave than for delta. It was also higher than during the infection surges driven by the original virus and the beta variant, according to the data analyzed by the National Institute for Communicable Diseases. In addition, admissions were 25% higher for those aged 4 to 18 than in the delta wave, although lower than for beta, it showed."
"Over all age groups, only 15.4% of those infected during the omicron wave went to the hospital. The corresponding numbers were 19.3% for delta, 28.4% for beta and 21.4% for the original virus."
"For persons between the ages of 0 and 4, the risk-adjusted increase in the case-admission rate is 48.9% and 5 to 17 is 25.4%. This suggests that children, unlike adults, may be more severely affected by Omicron than by preceding variants."
Prior Covid-19 Infection Offered Better Protection Than Vaccination During Delta Wave: New study released by the CDC with data from California and New York. New York Dept. of Health press release. More via Stat and WSJ.
Prior to the emergence of Delta, vaccinated individuals were about half as likely as those with natural immunity alone to be reinfected with COVID-19.
After Delta became the dominant strain, however, the unvaccinated with natural immunity were less likely to contract COVID-19 than those who were vaccinated and had no prior infection.
The study does not take into account boosters or the Omicron variant.
In New York State in the week beginning October 3, unvaccinated people without a previous COVID-19 diagnosis, were 4.5 fold more likely to have a positive COVID-19 test than vaccinated people without a previous COVID-19 diagnosis, 14.7-fold more likely than unvaccinated people with a previous diagnosis, and 19.8-fold more likely than vaccinated people with a previous COVID-19 diagnosis.
During the same period, compared with unvaccinated people without a previous COVID-19 diagnosis, numbers and hospitalization rates in California followed a similar pattern. For example, during October 3–16, hospitalization rates among unvaccinated people without a previous COVID-19 diagnosis were 19.8-fold higher than among vaccinated people without a previous COVID-19 diagnosis, 55.3-fold higher than among unvaccinated people with a previous COVID-19 diagnosis, and 57.5-fold higher than among vaccinated people with a previous COVID-19 diagnosis.
“Dr. Silk said the research also didn’t apply to the current Omicron wave. “It would be like comparing apples and oranges,” he said.”
Testing as an Alternative to Quarantining: Key Considerations and Best Practices for Implementing Test to Stay: New resource from Rockefeller and Duke. Issue brief highlights case examples from Illinois, Massachusetts, and North Carolina’s Test to Stay programs.
Federal
White House: President Biden press conference yesterday. Transcript / Video.
ED: Fact Sheet, "In One Year of the Biden-Harris Administration, the U.S. Department of Education Has Helped Schools Safely Reopen and Meet Students’ Needs"
IRS: Via Axios, Tax nightmare ahead
"The IRS, which relies on some software built in the 1960s, is facing a big backlog of paper filings from last year, including 6.2 million unprocessed 1040 forms."
"The IRS doesn’t have scanning technology, relying instead on humans to open the mail and manually enter information into its system."
"Last year, the agency received 282 million phone calls and answered just 29 million of them."
Also, via Gizmodo, "IRS Will Require Facial Recognition Scans to Access Your Taxes Online"
Build Back Maybe:
President Biden supports breaking up Build Back Better and passing "pieces, big chunks" of it.
But Speaker Pelosi seemed to suggest a single bill (noting that reconciliation doesn't work for passing "pieces.")
And Sen. Manchin doesn’t sound ready to move quickly on any narrower spending bill, Politico reports. He indicated he wanted to “start with clean sheet of paper and start over."
COVID-19 Research
COVID-19 Will Continue But The End Of The Pandemic Is Near: IHME's Christopher Murray with a really interesting piece in Lancet.
"Surprisingly, IHME models suggest that the transmission intensity of omicron is so high that policy actions—eg, increasing mask use, expanding vaccination coverage in people who have not been vaccinated, or delivering third doses of COVID-19 vaccines—taken in the next weeks will have limited impact on the course of the omicron wave."
"IHME estimates suggest that increasing use of masks to 80% of the population, for example, will only reduce cumulative infections over the next 4 months by 10%."
"As of Jan 17, 2022, omicron waves were peaking in 25 countries in five WHO regions and in 19 states in the USA."
"New SARS-CoV-2 variants will surely emerge and some may be more severe than omicron. Immunity, whether infection or vaccination derived, will wane, creating opportunities for continued SARS-CoV-2 transmission. Given seasonality, countries should expect increased potential transmission in winter months."
"The impacts of future SARS-CoV-2 transmission on health, however, will be less because of broad previous exposure to the virus, regularly adapted vaccines to new antigens or variants, the advent of antivirals, and the knowledge that the vulnerable can protect themselves during future waves when needed by using high-quality masks and physical distancing."
"COVID-19 will become another recurrent disease that health systems and societies will have to manage. For example, the death toll from omicron seems to be similar in most countries to the level of a bad influenza season in northern hemisphere countries."
Paxlovid: Pfizer said that multiple lab tests confirm its oral COVID-19 antiviral treatment remains effective against the Omicron variant.
What America Lost by Delaying the Vaccine Rollout: Via The Atlantic.
Communications Tool: Building Bridges: New resources from The Public Health Communications Collaborative (PHCC).
The Cambridge Startup Tracking COVID in America’s Wastewater: Via the Boston Globe.
"Their company, Biobot Analytics, has met the pandemic moment. What started as a research idea at MIT, focusing on how wastewater data can help mitigate the spread of disease, has turned into something bigger. Now, it’s a fast-growing startup — with over 65 employees and millions in funding — that has contracted with over 700 towns, across every state in the country, to study their sewage and help policy makers predict how bad the coronavirus could get in their communities."
The Cult of Masked Schoolchildren: Essay from oncologist Vinay Prasad.
When My Mom Got Covid, I Went Searching for Pfizer’s Pills: Rebecca Robbins in the NYT, "The experience showed how hard it is for many people to get potentially lifesaving treatments."
Omicron Pushes Up COVID Deaths: Via Axios:
Pandemic Pessimism Grows Amid Omicron Surge: Via Gallup.
Rise and Fall of Omicron: New FT visualization of South Africa data. BUT...cases in children are still rising in the UK.
State
Arizona: Arizona Attorney General Mark Brnovich said the state "will not be intimidated" by Biden on anti-mask school policies. More via Axios.
Colorado: Denver students plan walkout over COVID demands. (Letter)
Louisiana: New Orleans reported the number of quarantines increased 72% over the last week. But the number of infections dropped 23% from last week's 2,233 active cases.
Massachusetts:
A Boston moms group met for a primal scream. Here’s what happened.
Unveils first-in-the-nation COVID testing initiative for child care programs.
"Will allow program staff and children over the age of 2 who are close contacts to a COVID-infected person to test daily for five consecutive days following exposure. Those individuals will be allowed to remain in care programs as long as they continuously test negative."
Michigan: Flint schools extends virtual learning period indefinitely.
New Hampshire: Former state rep faces child neglect charges for giving children ivermectin as COVID-19 treatment.
Vermont: Vermont is no longer collecting school Covid data.
"The change comes as the state Agency of Education is urging schools to shift to a new Covid testing model, called “test at home,” in which parents will be responsible for testing their children for Covid-19."
“With the shift to Test at Home, schools are no longer doing contact tracing,” Truman said in an email. “This means we will not have data on which cases were at a K-12 learning community location while infectious.”
International
Australia:
Increased Covid risk a 'trade-off' in reopening schools, Australian chief medical officer says. “We do expect that transmission potential, as we call it, will increase as schools go back. But that is something we need to deal with,” chief medical officer, Prof Paul Kelly, said.
The Omicron wave is likely to exacerbate Australia's existing teacher shortages and demanding workloads.
Novavax becomes Australia's 5th approved COVID-19 vaccine.
"John Skerritt, head of the TGA, said in a press conference that there has been strong public interest in the vaccine because it relies on older technology than mRNA jabs from makers Pfizer and Moderna.”
“Novavax's jab is a protein-based, subunit vaccine that teaches the immune system to make antibodies to fight off COVID-19 using a technology similar to vaccines used against disease like Hepatitis B."
“I have [received] several hundred emails from individuals and groups who have said for whatever reason we would like to have [this] particular vaccine … this just gives them further choice,” Skerritt said."
Hong Kong: Will shut down secondary schools amid rising Covid cases.
Israel: The Health Ministry said it has decided to offer COVID-19 vaccine booster shots to children aged 5-11 who are at risk for serious illness.
UK:
Launches £7m project into study examining children hardest hit by Covid-19. Researchers will follow 30,000 children in Bradford from adolescence into adulthood
Inquiry launched to find 100,000 pupils absent in England.
Resources
Accelerator Camelback Ventures: Welcomes 2022 Fellows.
New Research Shows How Bad the Pandemic Has Been for Student Mental Health: Via EdWeek.
Omicron and Schools: I enjoyed this discussion with Mike Petrilli over at the Education Gadfly Show.
4 Education Policy Tools to Use in 2022: Via ECS.
I’m a Public School Teacher. The Kids Aren’t Alright.: Stacey Lance over at Common Sense.
Our K-12 Recovery Demands a Stronger Link Between Health and Education. That’s Why We Founded ILO Group: Via Julia Rafal-Baer.
Reporter Hit By A Car While On Air: This segment is quite something.
But let's talk about Tim for a moment, who doesn't seem to react AT ALL.
And then asks, "Were you hit up high or down low?" Tim, does it matter? SHE WAS HIT BY A CAR.
More from Tim: "I just saw you disappear." You know why Tim? BECAUSE SHE WAS HIT BY CAR.
This is Much Better: A baby giggling and a dog chasing a flashlight.