Top Three
Moderna to Ask FDA to Authorize Covid-19 Vaccine For 6 Months to 6 Year Olds: Moderna Press Release.
"Moderna said the studies — in children aged 6 months to 23 months and 2 years to 6 years — showed the vaccine generated similar immune responses as those seen in adults aged 18 to 25 who received two doses of Moderna’s adult Covid vaccine," Stat reports.
"However, the two-dose vaccine was less effective at preventing symptomatic infection — meaning that subjects had symptoms and then a positive Covid test — than vaccines have been in previous trials for older age groups. In children 6 months to 23 months, cases of Covid were decreased 43.7%; they were decreased by 37.5% in the 2 years to under 6 years age group."
"We believe these latest results from the KidCOVE study are good news for parents of children under 6 years of age. We now have clinical data on the performance of our vaccine from infants six months of age through older adults," said Stéphane Bancel, Chief Executive Officer of Moderna. “Additionally, after consultation with the U.S. FDA we have initiated a submission for emergency use authorization of our COVID-19 vaccine in children ages 6 to 11 years old and are updating our submission to the FDA for emergency use authorization of mRNA-1273 in adolescents ages 12 to 17 years with additional follow-up data. We remain committed to helping to end the COVID-19 pandemic with a vaccine for children of all ages."
Covid Absences in Schools in England Triple in Two Weeks: Via the Guardian - and another early warning of what the U.S. may see in a few weeks.
"Figures published by the Department for Education (DfE) on Tuesday showed 202,000 pupils were off school on 17 March because of the virus – a dramatic jump from 58,000 two weeks earlier, when attendance was described as returning to “something approaching normal”.
"According to the latest government data, 159,000 pupils were off with a confirmed case of the Covid last week, up from 45,000 on 3 March, with a further 16,000 pupils absent with a suspected case of coronavirus, up from 6,000 earlier in the month."
"Paul Whiteman, the general secretary of the National Association of Head Teachers, said: “These figures are absolutely in line with what we have been hearing from our members. Covid cases have been spiking again in many schools over the past week or so – in line with the rising numbers nationally.”
Italian Study Shows Ventilation Can Cut School COVID Cases by 82%: Study and more via Reuters.
"An experiment overseen by the Hume foundation think-tank compared coronavirus contagion in 10,441 classrooms in Italy's central Marche region."
"COVID infections were steeply lower in the 316 classrooms that had mechanical ventilation systems, with the reduction in cases more marked according to the strength of the systems."
"With applications guaranteeing a complete replacement of the air in a classroom 2.4 times in an hour, infections were reduced by 40%. They were lowered by 66.8% with four air replacements per hour and by 82.5% with six air replacements."
Federal
Madeleine Albright: Has passed away. Statement.
ED: "Awarded a $4 million EIR grant to Transcend to scale and study the powerful student well-being model developed over the past five years by Van Ness Elementary School as part of DC Public School’s (DCPS’s) commitment to educating the whole child."
COVID Supplemental:
"The Health Resources & Services Administration's Uninsured Program stopped accepting claims for testing and treatment at midnight due to insufficient funds. Without additional money, it will only pay on vaccination-related claims through April 5."
COVID-19 Research
BA.2: Is now the dominant COVID-19 strain in parts of the US.
Via the Washington Post: "The CDC reported that BA.2 accounts for 35% of coronavirus infections nationally, up from 22% a week ago. In New England, the CDC reported, BA.2 accounts for 55% of new infections, compared with 39% last week."
Genomic sequencing company Helix estimates that in some parts of the U.S., BA.2 accounts for up to 70% of new COVID-19 cases.
Safety and Efficacy of a Third Dose of Pfizer Covid-19 Vaccine: Large RCT study. "A third dose of the BNT162b2 vaccine administered a median of 10.8 months after the second dose provided 95.3% efficacy against Covid-19 as compared with two doses of the BNT162b2 vaccine during a median follow-up of 2.5 months."
Lessons From the COVID Data Wizards: Via Nature.
"Blauer has been vocal, blogging about the need for greater accessibility and standardization of data, including the use of consistent categories and naming conventions for age, gender, race and ethnicity. “Demographic data is a complete mess,” she says. Racial and ethnic categories are tricky because they are regarded differently in different countries. But even in a single US state, Blauer found category definitions changed depending on whether they were linked to vaccination rates, cases or deaths."
"The Johns Hopkins team was not alone in its struggles. Hannah Ritchie, head of research at the non-profit organization Our World in Data in Oxford, UK, recalls her efforts to copy data from PDFs. She also points to some of the consequences of incomplete and inconsistent data. For example, differences in access to COVID-19 testing data can result in inaccurate comparisons."
"Hadjibagheri and other dashboard architects have also been engaged in a two-year crash course of sorts, on how best to present information to the public. “Science communicators have had about two years now to sort of stress-test all of their methods of communicating to a general audience,” says John Burn-Murdoch, chief data reporter at the Financial Times in London. “And I think there have definitely been improvements.”
The Story Behind Burbio: Via The Grade, the school data company journalists rely on.
"Inspired in part by the COVID Tracking Project at The Atlantic, Burbio’s COVID-19 school tracking process is all manual, without automated web scraping. A team of 15 people works full-time on the tracker, according to Roche. They visit school district websites, social media pages, and other information sources, then log any changes in the districts’ learning modes and COVID-19 policies."
"Each member of the team has an assigned set of school districts that they check every 72 hours, said Julie Roche, Burbio’s co-founder and data team leader. “By now they know their school districts by heart, and they know whether it’s a district that tends to just have pop-up announcements on the homepage, or the superintendent sends out weekly newsletters.”
This Is No Time To Stop Tracking COVID-19: Nature editorial:
"To live with the coronavirus, we cannot be blind to its movements."
"Around the world, the frequency of national reporting has slipped below five days a week for the first time since the early months of the pandemic, according to the publishers of the website Our World in Data."
In the United States, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) is still reporting nationwide data, but there’s less real-time reporting of death and infection figures at the local level. All but eight states have scaled back to reporting data five or fewer days per week."
"Public-health decisions need to be informed by the best available data. Cutting the ability to track and respond to the virus while most of the world remains unvaccinated makes these decisions less reliable. It will also reduce people’s ability make decisions about their own safety."
Ukraine War Delays Approved Travel With Russia’s Sputnik V Vaccine:
"Citizens in dozens of countries — including Argentina, Venezuela, and India — have received Russia’s Sputnik V Covid vaccine. But despite being approved by 71 countries, those who got the vaccine have found it difficult to travel elsewhere."
"Now the war in Ukraine is further complicating efforts to get it approved for entry to more destinations. The World Health Organization, which was planning to examine irregularities found in the Sputnik V plant on March 7, postponed its visit due to Russian invasion of Ukraine
What We Can Learn From America's Most Recent COVID-19 Vaccine Converts: “TIME spoke with several individuals who got vaccinated between late December and early March. All spoke candidly—and sometimes emotionally—about their decisions."
"One of the greatest predictors of a person’s vaccination status is whether those they love and trust are vaccinated. More than 90% of people who report having many vaccinated friends and family also say they are vaccinated, themselves. But among people who only have a few vaccinated family and friends, the rate drops to 55%"
"TIME’s analysis of CDC data found that Black people—particularly those between ages 18 and 49—are the only segment of the U.S. population that has both a below-average vaccination rate (74% compared with 85% for all adults) and, among the remaining unvaccinated population, a majority with some degree of willingness to get the shot."
Seriously, the Pandemic Isn’t Over: Via the New York:
"The virus could exploit weak points in our pandemic armor, like waning immunity, the low uptake of booster shots, and the stubbornly partisan lens through which many Americans view all things pandemic."
"BA.2 is going to creep up on us, as every wave has crept up on us. But at least with Delta and Omicron, a lot of people were getting vaccinated around that time or had just been vaccinated with their second doses. We’re not seeing the same with boosters. I think if you look at the data for people above 65, it’s 60-something percent, which isn’t bad but isn’t great. If you look at ages 18 to 64, it’s 30 percent or lower. I think that’s a problem."
"I don’t think the biggest problem is pulling back mitigation; the problem is that when new cases start to rise exponentially fast, there’s going to be a lag when you put mitigation measures back in place. Once you’re caught in that lag, then exponential spread takes over and it’s too late to do anything about it. Governments can start requiring people to mask again, but they’re going to be weeks behind. The spread is going to be way too fast."
Is Covid Over?: Asks the Dispatch:
"Dr. Monica Gandhi, an infectious disease specialist at the University of California San Francisco, said rather than thinking about the pandemic as “over,” it’s important to realize: “We have the tools now to manage the pandemic—in the scientific community—without having the public make further sacrifices.”
"On a Twitter Spaces event hosted by the New York Times, Harvard University associate professor Bill Hanage said the answer to the question isn’t one science can answer: “The answer is one of values, not one of science because unfortunately, the only way a pandemic ends cleanly is if the virus gets completely eradicated. And I can tell you how many times we’ve seen that in the past: never.” He continued, “So it’s going to be around in some form or other and it’s going to continue to transmit, and that's going to come with some costs. The question is how best we can mitigate them.”
“The only way a new variant of concern could really get a hold and explode in the way that Delta and Omicron did is if it has more ability to evade existing immunities, and that would both be vaccine-induced immunity and natural immunity,” Beyrer said."
Pfizer CEO Pushes Yearly Shots for Covid: "Not So Fast, Experts Say."
"Although FDA and CDC expert panels, and some federal scientists, were hesitant about recommending the first booster for younger populations, the agencies overrode their advice and approved boosters for everyone 12 and older. That continues to be a sore point with many immunologists and infectious disease specialists."
"But others argue there’s enough evidence to show that yearly vaccines, perhaps in combination with influenza vaccinations, would be the best solution. “Given how safe the vaccines are and how effective they are, I think it probably does make sense for people to get a booster, and the most convenient would be once a year,” said Dr. Otto Yang, an infectious disease specialist at UCLA. If covid turns out to be seasonal, peaking in winter months, vaccination in the fall would provide decent protection, he said."
“We are bound to need another booster. We just don’t know when or for which variant,” said Dr. Daniel Douek, chief of the human immunology section at the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases."
“We’re coming off two years where we treated this virus like smallpox, isolating anyone with mild illness, even asymptomatic people,” he said. “That’s going to have to change. Because neither vaccination nor natural infection is going to protect you from mild illness for a longer period of time.”
State
Maryland: The Maryland State Department of Education released results of Maryland’s 2021-2022 Kindergarten Readiness Assessment demonstrating that all 24 local education agencies reported lower “demonstrating readiness” scores than in 2019–2020, when the KRA was last administered.
International
Hong Kong: Schools can resume full-day classes if all staff, 90% of students fully vaccinated.
Resources
School Test Scores Start to Rise With Return of In-Person Classes: WSJ on a Renaissance Learning report.
Performance: Overall, students are performing lower in 2021–2022 compared to 2020–2021, suggesting that the pandemic continues to have a compounding effect on student achievement.
Growth: Fall-to-winter growth in 2021–2022 was stronger than growth during the same period last year, although it remains below typical growth in most grade levels.
Results by Group: Although performance and growth vary between student and school groups, most follow this same overall pattern of lower performance but stronger growth compared to the prior year.
Pre-readers: Concerning results were observed for pre-readers in grade 1, where school disruptions may have interrupted the development of foundational literacy skills.
A Tragic Loss For The Bellwether Community: "We are devastated to share that last Saturday, Bellwether teammate Aurelia Twitty died unexpectedly at 52."
Using Human-Centered Design to Reimagine Community Trust: Via the Centre for Public Impact.
Benchmarking Tool: CivicPulse and ELGL released a first-of-its-kind gender diversity benchmarking tool and report for the more than 21,000 local governments.
School Transportation: Already short on bus drivers, school districts now face soaring diesel fuel costs.
“We have combined routes and doubled up routes... Some kids have been getting home later. Our bus rides, the long end used to be 45 minutes, now it’s over an hour.”
Afterschool: Via Hechinger, $1.5 billion in recovery funds go to afterschool.
Cybersecurity:
Hackers who took responsibility for attacks on Nvidia and Microsoft claim to have compromised Okta, which provides "single sign-on" identity services to thousands of companies, Axios reports. Okta statement. More via TechCrunch
White House Fact Sheet: Act Now to Protect Against Potential Cyberattacks.
This Is Bonkers: A tornado flips a pickup truck but the teen was able to drive away.