COVID-19 Policy Update #424
Monday 1/31
Top Three
American Academy of Pediatrics Updates Guidelines for Schools: New guidelines and press release.
A Lot of Vaccine News:
Novavax applies to the FDA for EUA of its Covid vaccine.
"Novavax’s vaccine uses a more conventional approach than the vaccines that were more swiftly developed and authorized. That could make it appealing to people who are hesitant to be inoculated with vaccines like those from Pfizer-BioNTech and Moderna that use the newer messenger RNA technology."
Moderna received full FDA approach for its COVID vaccine for 18 and above (Moderna press release / FDA statement).
Vaccine for Under Five: Scott Gottlieb on Face the Nation said the FDA may move faster.
"And I think the decision matrix has changed around the vaccine for six months to four year olds… Getting two doses into a child can provide baseline immunity that protects them from severe disease from hospitalization. And I think that may be why federal health officials are rethinking this if in fact they decide to authorize this on the basis of two doses. It could be out much sooner, perhaps as early as early March."
Early data indicate vaccines still protect against Omicron’s sister variant, BA.2. Also, the UK Health Security Agency released a report that suggests vaccine effectiveness against symptomatic disease was 70% for BA.2 compared to 63% for BA.1. More on the variant from CIDRAP.
School Disruptions: Via Burbio, the number of schools that experienced at least one day of disruption dropped to 2,103, a drop of 58% versus the previous week's total of 5,018.
Burbio also rolled out a School Mask Policy Tracker
Federal
FCC: Issued an NPRM proposing a nationwide bidding portal for the E-rate program.
ED:
Released the Notice of Proposed Priorities, definition, and requirements for its Project Prevent discretionary grant program and launched the 30-day public comment period.
The ARP Partnership, Assistance, Transformation, and Heightened Support (ARP PATHS) tool invites states to describe the strategies they are implementing that could serve as promising practices for other states.
Build Back Maybe:
“Democrats are increasingly willing to accept whatever child-care, healthcare and climate package that Sen. Joe Manchin (D-WV) would support as they return to Washington this week, hoping to salvage elements of the party’s economic agenda after months of failed negotiations,” the WSJ reports.
But Playbook reminds us: “Not only did Manchin turn his back on that framework a long time ago, he also walked away from an even narrower deal he offered to the White House in December (pre-K, health care and climate). Yet still many on the left are struggling to accept the new reality.”
COVID-19 Research
Predicting The Next Booster: Really informative piece by Katelyn Jetelina.
"On one end, we have the flu. It mutates a lot to escape our immunity, and about every 2-5 years our immune systems need a new vaccine formula to fight the virus. The new vaccine formula is fairly predictable, because the virus mutates in a ladder-like pattern: there is one major lineage, and every few years, a new variant sweeps and the others go extinct."
"SARS-CoV-2 has thrown us for a loop, as the mutations haven’t evolved in a ladder-like fashion. The next variant hasn’t been coming from the last: Omicron didn’t come from Delta, and Delta didn’t come from Alpha. The fact that SARS-CoV-2 has lacked a pattern of evolution like other coronaviruses or the flu is incredibly puzzling."
"We expect the ladder-like pattern to arise with SARS-CoV-2 eventually. But because it hasn’t yet, we don’t know which direction SARS-CoV-2 is heading. This makes proactively predicting the next booster formulas challenging and risky (from financial and logistic standpoints)."
Governors Call for Endemic Approach to Covid: “The Omicron wave is now receding in states where the extremely contagious variant arrived later, and some governors are saying it’s time for pandemic-fatigued Americans to try to restore a sense of normalcy and learn to live with the virus,” the NYT reports.
New Jersey Gov. Phil Murphy (D): “We’re not going to manage this to zero. We have to learn how to live with this.”
"As Omicron declines, Gov. Asa Hutchinson of Arkansas, a Republican, said the United States should remain vigilant but move toward treating the virus as endemic. He acknowledged that more variants were inevitable and called on the federal government to help states increase testing capacity and access to treatments."
“That’s where the federal government needs to step up,” he said on “Meet the Press” on Sunday. “Let’s take advantage of this going down to be prepared for what’s around the corner.”
The Rockefeller Foundation Partners with iHealth Labs, CareEvolution, Amazon, and Six State Health Departments to Deliver Free Covid-19 Tests to Vulnerable Communities: Announcement.
Pope Francis Calls Access to Accurate Information on Coronavirus Vaccines ‘A Human Right’: Via the Washington Post.
"We can hardly fail to see that these days, in addition to the pandemic, an ‘infodemic’ is spreading: A distortion of reality based on fear, which in our global society leads to an explosion of commentary on falsified if not invented news."
"Meeting with members of the International Catholic Media Consortium on COVID-19 Vaccines — a fact-checking network that aims to combat misinformation — the pope said that being fully informed by scientific data was a human right."
Omicron Has States Rethinking Broken School Covid Testing: Via Politico.
"Test-to-stay programs try to limit student quarantines with frequent tests and contact tracing. Children exposed to infected classmates can remain at school, typically as long as they're asymptomatic, wear masks and regularly test negative. The concept was taking hold before the CDC embraced the practice in mid-December."
"Meanwhile, the CDC said it’s evaluating whether tests done at home can play a role in Test to Stay programs — to determine if and how K-12 schools should monitor at-home test results."
"The Department of Health and Human Services would not disclose how many rapid tests had been distributed to schools under the latest White House plan, nor would the department identify which states were receiving them."
Identify Omicron-Vulnerable School Communities with New COVID-19 School Safety Measures Data: Great new maps from PolicyMap including mask mandates and Burbio data.
GOP-Led States Take Aim at Covid-19 Vaccine Mandates for School Children: Via WSJ, over a dozen state legislatures have proposed bans on vaccine requirements for K-12 students.
As Covid Shots for Kids Stall, Appeals Are Aimed at Wary Parents: Via NYT.
"The disparity of rates among states is stark. In Vermont, the share of children who are fully vaccinated is 52%; in Mississippi, it is 6%."
The Coronavirus Will Surprise Us Again: Sarah Zhang in The Atlantic.
"The coronavirus’s variants keep surprising us because its evolutionary leaps look like nothing else we’ve seen before."
"Omicron racked up more than 50 mutations, with more than 30 in its spike protein alone. Of the four seasonal coronaviruses that cause common colds, two accumulate only 0.3 or 0.5 adaptive mutations a year in their spike proteins. A third doesn’t seem to change much at all. The fourth is a mystery—we don’t have enough long-term data on it."
"Omicron doesn’t just have a lot of mutations; it has some really unusual ones. Thirteen of the mutations cluster in sites where scientists haven’t seen many changes before."
US Would Have Halved Its COVID Hospitalizations If It Had Matched Europe's Vaccination Rate: Via the FT.
Denmark: Cases, mostly BA.2. are soaring but ICU cases are falling.
Path To Endemic: Amazing visualization via the FT of COVID becoming less lethal over time - along with comparing it to seasonal influenza.
State
Kansas: More than 1,000 staff members (14% of all staff) in Wichita are in quarantine because of COVID-19.
New Hampshire: Will sell at-home COVID tests in liquor outlets.
New Jersey: The substitute teacher shortage forced Millville Public Schools to give middle and high school students an entire month of half-days.
New York:
NYC enrollment has shrunk to its lowest point in at least a decade - at drop of 10% since the pandemic started.
"Black students saw the steepest declines since the 2019-20 school year, with a 14% decrease in enrollment. There was an 11% drop in the number of White students and a 9% decrease among Hispanic students."
NYC to offer free, at-home delivery of COVID antiviral pills.
South Carolina: Since the start of 2022, at least 230 schools have gone virtual for at least one day for COVID-related reasons, pushing more than 100,000 students at those schools toward virtual learning.
There have also been over 400,000 students and staff quarantined for COVID-related reasons since the start of 2022.
Texas: Students, frustrated by limited COVID-19 protocols, turn to petition drives and walkouts.
West Virginia: "West Virginia Gov. Jim Justice flashed his pet bulldog's butt to critics during his state address on Thursday, telling Bette Midler and others to "kiss her hiney."
Side note: More dogs as part of State Addresses please.
International
UK:
Britain will this begin offering vaccinations to children 5-11 who are most at risk from coronavirus.
Schools in England reinstate mask wearing rules as Covid cases soar.
Qatar: Approves Pfizer/BioNTech vaccine for children 5-11.
Economic Recovery
Rents Are Soaring In Some Cities: “Average rents rose 14% last year, to $1,877 a month, with cities like Austin, New York and Miami notching increases of as much as 40%.” More data over at the Washington Post.
Compensation Up: BLS reported that total compensation costs for employers increased 4% in 2021. More via SHRM.
Goodbye to the Days of the ‘Rust Belt’: Via Richard Florida in the WSJ, after years of unsung efforts to revive the fortunes of America’s industrial heartland, Intel’s new chip factory in Ohio is a sign of rebirth.
"It has a hardworking, reliable workforce with long experience in manufacturing and technical work on farms. And its communities have made significant investments in vocational and community-college programs to provide young workers with the technical skills for advanced manufacturing."
Resources
‘It’s Just Stressful’: Students Feel the Weight of Pandemic Uncertainty: Via NYT
Teachers Are Quitting, and Companies Are Hot to Hire Them: Via WSJ
How the Evolving Science on COVID Precautions Puts District Leaders in a Bind: Via EdWeek.
Online Tutoring by College Volunteers: Experimental Evidence from a Pilot Program: Study and EdWeek article.
"College students from highly selective universities served as volunteer tutors working 1-on-1 with predominantly low-income students of color twice a week for 30 minutes during the school day."
"We find that the pilot program produced consistently positive but statistically insignificant effects on student achievement."
"At the same time, the online volunteer tutoring program we study is extremely low cost making it far more cost-effective than other models.”
Driving Towards Equity: ERN analysis of all 50 state ESSER plans.
All Hands on Deck: New Leaders resource for school principals on reopening.
KnowledgeWorks: Announced that William Hite Jr., EdD, superintendent of schools for the School District of Philadelphia, will become CEO and president of KnowledgeWorks effective July 1.
Public Education is Facing a Crisis of Epic Proportions: Via Washington Post.
Peyton Manning: On watching the NFL playoff games Emily in Paris.
