Top Three
Novavax Approved: FDA gives emergency use authorization to Novavax’s Covid-19 vaccine.
CNN: "The FDA’s independent Vaccines and Related Biological Products Advisory Committee voted in favor of authorization of the vaccine June 7, saying that the benefits of the vaccine outweigh its risks for adults. It is also being used in 170 other countries."
"Late-stage trials found that the efficacy of the vaccine against mild, moderate and severe disease is 90.4%, according to the company. There is not sufficient evidence to evaluate the impact of the vaccine on transmission of the virus. Novavax also announced in early July that its vaccine shows “broad” immune response to currently circulating variants, including Omicron subvariants BA.4/5."
NYT: "Novavax hopes that its vaccine will appeal to people who have spurned the shots from Pfizer-BioNTech and Moderna, which use messenger RNA technology. About 22 percent of people in the United States have not received a single Covid vaccine dose."
Great explainer from the Washington Post: "How Novavax is different from other coronavirus vaccines."
Engage Every Student: U.S. Department of Education announces Engage Every Student Initiative to ensure every student has access to high-quality learning (Press Release)
"The U.S. Department of Education is announcing a public-private partnership with five coordinating organizations: the Afterschool Alliance, The National Comprehensive Center, the National League of Cities, The National Summer Learning Association, and AASA, the School Superintendents Association who will work with more than 20 allied organizations to ensure that students have access to these critical learning and development opportunities year-round."
As part of the announcement: "A new tool from IES to support states, districts or programs in building and using evidence to implement afterschool and summer learning programs."
Low Demand for Young Kids’ Covid Vaccines is Alarming Doctors: Via Politico
"States where parents have hesitated to inoculate their children against Covid-19 are now ordering fewer doses of the vaccines for children under 5 than others, underscoring the challenge facing the Biden administration as a highly transmissible variant sweeps the nation."
“Never before have we had a vaccine available for young children that has been in billions of people before it was given to a young child,” said Kawsar Talaat, a vaccine expert at the Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health. “The distrust in government, the distrust in public health and the distrust in science is growing and is very, very worrisome.”
"POLITICO contacted each state, the District of Columbia and Puerto Rico to ask how many of the recently authorized Moderna and Pfizer-BioNTech vaccines they ordered and 38 jurisdictions provided that data."
"Mississippi, where the 5-to-11 single-dose vaccination rate is just over 16 percent, ordered enough shots to cover roughly 16 percent of its under-5 population with one dose, while Oklahoma, where the 5-to-11 single-dose vaccination rate is over 20 percent, ordered enough to cover roughly 19 percent."
"But federal health officials expect parents are most likely to get their youngest children vaccinated during a visit to a trusted pediatrician, family doctor, or nurse. The CDC says it is encouraging practitioners to vaccinate more children — and to help correct widely held misperceptions, including that vaccines aren’t safe, or that Covid-19 doesn’t affect young children."
Federal
FDA: "FDA Provides Educational Resources for Parents and Caregivers to Support Confidence for Imported Infant Formula Products"
Covid-19 Research
Children and COVID-19 Research Library: UNICEF Innocenti's curated library of COVID-19 and children research.
Study Finds SARS-CoV-2 Transmission in Children and Adolescents is Lower Than Adults: Study
"There was significantly less virus transmission by children and adolescents compared to adult index cases with a secondary attack rate of 0.29 vs. 0.54."
"Children and adolescents were less likely to infect both household contacts of the same age and adult household contacts, which indicates a lower infectivity in this age group. This is in line with several previous studies while some others found children to be more likely than adults to transmit the virus. However, overall, SARS-CoV-2 transmission rates from children seem to be lower in contrast to other respiratory viruses, for which children were found responsible for most of transmission clusters."
"With the caveat that the results do not necessarily apply to the Delta and Omicron variants, we conclude that children and adolescents are less susceptible for SARS-CoV-2 infection, more frequently show an asymptomatic course of disease and are less infective than adults."
SARS-CoV-2 Infections in Icelandic Children: Study
"During the first 3 waves of the pandemic, SARS-CoV-2 infections in Icelandic children were mild and none were hospitalized. The most common symptoms were respiratory symptoms followed by fever, headache and tiredness."
Researchers Find Similarities Between COVID Brain Fog and 'Chemo Brain': "The study found excessive inflammation caused by COVID-19 and cognitive impairments that can occur after chemotherapy, sometimes referred to as "chemo brain,"both damage the same brain cells and processes."
"The people who were infected with COVID early in the pandemic exhibited a fairly shockingly high rate of cognitive impairment. Many studies have indicated as many as one-in-four patients have some degree of lasting cognitive impairment and so we're trying to understand that."
The Missing COVID-19 Demographic Data: A statewide analysis of COVID-19–related demographic data from local government sources and a comparison with federal public surveillance data.
"As of June 2021, the CDC’s public demographic data set included 80.9% of total cases and 46.7% of total deaths reported by states, with significant variation across jurisdictions."
"Relative to state and territorial data sources, the CDC consistently underreports cases and deaths among African American and Hispanic or Latino individuals and overreports deaths among people older than 65 years and White individuals."
State
DC: School enrollment expected to drop after years of increases.
“School planning may have to be readjusted to reconcile with the realities of lower enrollment,” the report states. “The school system should start anticipating these changes and prepare for hard decisions, especially if enrollment does not show signs of a rebound in 2022-23."
Georgia: SCCPSS bus transportation an issue again for new school year.
Illinois: Gov. Pritzker relaxes COVID-19 vaccine or test mandates for some health care workers, college students.
Kentucky: Bus driver shortages plaguing districts like Bullitt County ahead of school year
Maryland: MCPS teacher resignations, retirements up 38% in past school year.
Economic Recovery
People Have Money but Feel Glum—What Does That Mean for Economy?: Via the WSJ.
"Inflation is melting away the value of household paychecks. Even so, household finances are as strong overall as they’ve been in decades, thanks to money saved during the pandemic, debt paid off over the past decade and a strong job market. The economic outlook now hangs on which of these forces proves greater."
"Cash reserves rose across income groups. JPMorgan, tracking 7.5 million of its own accounts, found that checking-account balances averaged nearly $1,400 among its lowest-income customers in the first quarter, up from under $900 before the pandemic. Among its highest-income accounts, balances rose to almost $7,000 from less than $5,500."
"It is a remarkable finding because another survey, by the Conference Board, finds the share of households who believe jobs are easy to get is near the highest in decades, thanks to historically low unemployment. In this case, inflation, not lack of jobs, is the driving force of household malaise."
"Consumers signaled strong concerns that inflation will continue to erode their incomes,” Joanne Hsu, who runs the Michigan survey, said of the latest reading. “While consumer spending has remained robust so far, the broad deterioration of sentiment may lead [consumers] to cut back on spending and thereby slow down economic growth.”
Related from Jason Furman: “If you're not a little confused about the economy you're not paying attention.”
Resources
Ventilation: COVID variants mean ventilation is more important than ever. So what does 'good' air flow look like?
“Simply put, the more fresh, outside air inside a building, the better,” Shelly Miller, a professor of mechanical engineering at the University of Colorado Boulder, wrote in the Conversation. “Bringing in this air dilutes any contaminant in a building, whether a virus or something else, and reduces the exposure of anyone inside.”
"For common non-medical public spaces like offices and schools, experts say that at least six air changes per hour can help significantly with virus spread."
"Twelve air changes per hour is “a great goal if you could try to get that,” said Brent Stephens, an expert in indoor air quality and building science at Illinois Tech, during a webinar on air quality in schools. “If you could get six air changes per hour or if you can get five air changes per hour or something near that, I think those are still really quite reasonable risk reduction numbers.”
"For extra ventilation, or if opening windows is not an option, portable air cleaners or HEPA filters can also help, experts said. A portable HEPA filter with a clean air delivery rate of 300 cubic feet per minute can increase air changes per hour in a room from just two to five or six, Richard Corsi, the dean of engineering at UC Davis, said."
The Kids Who Lost Parents ot Covid: Via the New Yorker.
"In the United States, there are some two hundred thousand estimated covid orphans—children who have lost a parent or caregiver to the coronavirus. “We’ve likely well surpassed that number,” Dan Treglia, a social-science researcher at the University of Pennsylvania and a contributor to the covid Collaborative, a bipartisan public-health effort to address the pandemic, told me. “This is a problem in every state and every community, yet some groups have been hit harder. Black and Hispanic children lose caregivers at rates more than double those of white children.”
"There is currently no systematic means to identify children who have lost parents to covid. “We don’t know who they are,” Charles Nelson, a professor of pediatrics at Harvard Medical School, told me. “We need a way to find these kids and track how they’re doing.” As with so many aspects of the pandemic, the long-term ramifications have yet to emerge."
A Street-by-Street View of Digital Inequity in the United States: Great resource from Microsoft which should be useful for states in their planning for NTIA funds.
Confidence in Public Schools Turns More Partisan: Via Gallup:
"The percentage of Republicans having a great deal or quite a lot of confidence in public schools fell from 34% in 2020 to 20% in 2021 and 14% today. Since 2020, independents' confidence has declined nine percentage points to 29% and Democrats' has remained fairly high -- currently 43%, versus 48% in 2020."
VELA Education Fund: Announced 294 grant recipients who will receive a total of $2.79 million to support nontraditional education programs that serve families across 44 states, Washington, D.C., and Puerto Rico.
Not Enough Tutors to Go Around? College Students Can Help: Via The 74.
It's Summer: It's good to have friends to go sliding with.