* New York Times…
Open schools. Close indoor dining.
When to keep schools open, and how to do so, has been an issue plaguing the response by the United States to the pandemic since its beginning. President Biden vowed to “teach our children in safe schools” in his inaugural address.
On Tuesday, federal health officials weighed in with a call for returning children to the nation’s classrooms as soon as possible, saying the “preponderance of available evidence” indicates that in-person instruction can be carried out safely as long as mask-wearing and social distancing are maintained.
But local officials also must be willing to impose limits on other settings — like indoor dining, bars or poorly ventilated gyms — in order to keep infection rates low in the community at large, researchers at the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention wrote in the journal JAMA.
School administrators must limit risky activities such as indoor sports, they added. “It’s not going to be safe to have a pizza party with a group of students,” Margaret Honein, a member of the C.D.C.’s Covid-19 emergency response team and the first author of article, said in an interview. “But outdoor cross-country, where distance can be maintained, might be fine to continue.”
* From the JAMA piece…
Preventing transmission in school settings will require addressing and reducing levels of transmission in the surrounding communities through policies to interrupt transmission (eg, restrictions on indoor dining at restaurants). In addition, all recommended mitigation measures in schools must continue: requiring universal face mask use, increasing physical distance by dedensifying classrooms and common areas, using hybrid attendance models when needed to limit the total number of contacts and prevent crowding, increasing room air ventilation, and expanding screening testing to rapidly identify and isolate asymptomatic infected individuals. Staff and students should continue to have options for online education, particularly those at increased risk of severe illness or death if infected with SARS-CoV-2. […]
Nonetheless, some school-related activities have increased the risk of SARS-CoV-2 transmission among students and staff. Numerous media reports of COVID-19 outbreaks among US high school athletic teams suggest that contact during both practices and competition, and at social gatherings associated with team sports, increase risk. […]
Paradoxically, some schools have used a fully online model for educational delivery while continuing in-person athletic programs. Even though high school athletics are highly valued by many students and parents, indoor practice or competition and school-related social gatherings with limited adherence to physical distancing and other mitigation strategies could jeopardize the safe operation of in-person education. While there are likely many factors, the pressure to continue high school athletics during the pandemic might be driven at least in part by scholarship concerns; colleges and universities recruiting athletes for the 2021/2022 academic year should consider approaches that do not penalize students for interruptions to high school sports related to the pandemic to avoid incentivizing activities posing high risk for SARS-CoV-2 infection.
* Related…
* President Biden, asked about Chicago schools’ reopening plan, says buildings need to be ‘safe and secure for everyone’
* Joe Biden supports Chicago Teachers Union COVID safety concerns as AFT president Randi Weingarten briefs senior staff
- Morty - Tuesday, Jan 26, 21 @ 2:51 pm:
Why do I think this won’t sit well with Amy?
- JoanP - Tuesday, Jan 26, 21 @ 3:00 pm:
“Dedensifying classrooms”? How do you do that without the space in the physical plant and additional teaching staff?
“increasing room air ventilation” - hasn’t the lack of proper ventilation been one of the concerns of the CTU?
The problem is that this all sounds good on paper, but it needs to get done *before* the schools re-open.
And note that JAMA says ALL recommended mitigation measures should be followed. You don’t pick one from column A and one from column B.
- ChicagoBars - Tuesday, Jan 26, 21 @ 3:00 pm:
Somebody help me out here, I’ve just read the JAMA article twice and don’t see bars mentioned at all, or “closing indoor dining”.
All I see is at the end is a single mention of “restricting indoor dining at restaurants” which is, I don’t think, the same as banning or closing?
The Israeli outbreak school discussion is good though. Seemingly obvious missteps to avoid.
- Ferris Wheeler - Tuesday, Jan 26, 21 @ 3:02 pm:
MLL staff, March: Nothing could be worse that being on the wrong side of our Democratic Governor when it comes to COVID.
MLL, January: Hold my beer.
- Cool Papa Bell - Tuesday, Jan 26, 21 @ 3:07 pm:
Good. Data has been coming in for months about this matter. Mask and distance in school is very effective. Transmission between children is much lower than between adults. Keep cracking the door open and lets do more things as safe as we can.
The next step will be to identify how many “close contacts” and resulting quarantines from school result in that close contact actually infected with COVID. In my district that number is 0.
- Essential State Employee - Tuesday, Jan 26, 21 @ 3:38 pm:
==Why do I think this won’t sit well with Amy?==
This will also not sit well with the IHSA either.
- thechampaignlife - Tuesday, Jan 26, 21 @ 3:42 pm:
To paraphrase: in-person school, indoor dining, and athletics.
Pick one.
- Oswego Willy - Tuesday, Jan 26, 21 @ 3:43 pm:
=== This will also not sit well with the IHSA either.===
… and yet, I can link to the SD308 high schools and their signing days for high school athletes awarded college scholarships.
The IHSA might be 2-3 press releases away from making itself extinct if it wants to keep pushing or inserting itself.
It’s not like the IHSA has the most stellar impression out there before the pandemic.
- JoanP - Tuesday, Jan 26, 21 @ 3:52 pm:
=Transmission between children is much lower than between adults.=
How about between children and adults? Those kids aren’t teaching themselves.
- SWIL_Voter - Tuesday, Jan 26, 21 @ 3:59 pm:
Yes I think we’d all feel much better sending our kids back to school if they split them into smaller classes, invested in new HVAC systems, enforced mask compliance, and ensured we don’t have community spread. I think most people will focus on the first 6 words of the headline and call it a day though
- Cool Papa Bell - Tuesday, Jan 26, 21 @ 4:03 pm:
@Joan
Only 4% of household clusters caused by children
https://www.cidrap.umn.edu/news-perspective/2020/12/kids-likely-not-driving-household-covid-19-outbreaks
- Oswego Willy - Tuesday, Jan 26, 21 @ 4:06 pm:
- Cool Papa Bear -
Here’s a couple snippets from your cite;
===A number of studies show low rates of pediatric SARS-CoV-2 infection and spread and mild symptoms in infected children, the study authors note. But they also point to studies that show that children shed virus at levels comparable to adults—suggesting that children could be a significant source of community transmission—with households thought to be one of the most common settings for transmission.===
And…
===While the data suggests that children may be less susceptible to SARS-CoV-2 infection than adults, the researchers cautioned that children may be infrequently identified as index cases because of limited interaction outside the home during the study period, a higher probability of adult travel to COVID-19–endemic areas, and datasets that include few children younger than 16 years old.===
Two important takeaways. With respect.
- SWIL_Voter - Tuesday, Jan 26, 21 @ 4:07 pm:
Cool Papa Bell,
I think that study looks at who first develops symptoms, which doesn’t tell you much about who gave it to whom. We have no idea who caused our household outbreak because apparently our county isn’t doing contact tracing. But we know our youngest got sent home with a letter stating secondary contact 10 days before we developed symptoms, and we can only guess at other ways we could have gotten it.
- Cool Papa Bell - Tuesday, Jan 26, 21 @ 4:14 pm:
Thanks folks..
https://pediatrics.aappublications.org/content/146/2/e2020004879
In New South Wales, Australia, 9 students and 9 staff infected with SARS-CoV-2 across 15 schools had close contact with a total of 735 students and 128 staff.10 Only 2 secondary infections were identified, none in adult staff; 1 student in primary school was potentially infected by a staff member, and 1 student in high school was potentially infected via exposure to 2 infected schoolmates.
On the basis of these data, SARS-CoV-2 transmission in schools may be less important in community transmission than initially feared. This would be another manner by which SARS-CoV-2 differs drastically from influenza, for which school-based transmission is well recognized as a significant driver of epidemic disease and forms the basis for most evidence regarding school closures as public health strategy.
Nothing is 100%, I’ve been and remain largely in favor of mitigations. But they have been mostly set in stone since May/June and we know way more now than we did then… I appreciate flexibility in mitigations.
But if you don’t want your kid in school, I’m glad remote options exist.
- Oswego Willy - Tuesday, Jan 26, 21 @ 4:20 pm:
- Cool Papa Bell -
With respect, Australia has a total of 909 deaths, and can you explain the similarities and differences Australia had in regards to the virus versus the United States.
I do, very much so, appreciate you talking facts to an argument. It’s important to have these discussions and further try to move forward as safely as possible and as honest to what can help us be as safe as possible going forward too.
- Precinct Captain - Tuesday, Jan 26, 21 @ 4:28 pm:
- ChicagoBars - Tuesday, Jan 26, 21 @ 3:00 pm:
Try reading for comprehension.
- Cool Papa Bell - Tuesday, Jan 26, 21 @ 4:36 pm:
AUS treated the virus with far more care than we did at the outset and have come out looking much better than we did. Seems like a well built federal/national response can do that for a country…
But in like community settings, schools were mask wearing is pretty much mandatory in the US (at least my school) and in Australia seems to be a good point to being to try and correlate data. But I tread lightly - correlation and causation.
An aside I’ve wondered if some of the success in Australia is the fact they have only been through one winter season with COVID. I’ll be searching for information on that in a few months.
But another report from the CDC in rural Wisconsin..
=Among these 191 cases, seven (3.7%) were attributed to in-school SARS-CoV-2 transmission (Figure 1), and all occurred among students. Five cases of transmission occurred within elementary school cohorts, and two occurred within secondary school cohorts. Three of these seven cases occurred in one class in one elementary school, and the other four occurred at separate schools. No in-school transmission between separate classroom cohorts was reported. =
https://www.cdc.gov/mmwr/volumes/70/wr/mm7004e3.htm?s_cid=mm7004e3_w
Appreciate you to. Its gonna take togetherness to rebuild communities after this is really over and done with…. months and months from now.
- Enviro - Tuesday, Jan 26, 21 @ 4:41 pm:
“With 2 vaccines now being distributed under Emergency Use Authorizations and more vaccine options anticipated to be available in the coming months, there is much hope on the horizon for a safer environment for schools and school-related athletic activities during the 2021/22 school year.”
So, are there any Covid-19 vaccine options that will be safe for the children?
- Eugene P - Tuesday, Jan 26, 21 @ 5:16 pm:
- Cool Papa Bell -
The first two studies you cite use data prior to August, when schools were largely closed in many places anyway.
The third (rural Wisconsin) is different enough that it could hardly be said to apply to urban or even suburban school districts.
All the serious studies acknowledge that where there’s high community spread, closing schools is an effective way to stop spread and keep people from dying.
Those studies are very important, because the school based research and contact tracing ones systematically underrepresent infections, because there are serious incentives from many of those involved to keep quiet about infections, and also because children are more often asymptomatic and less likely to be tested.
And to remind everyone, though infection rates have been trending down, they’re still pretty high, and could certainly go back up.
- Billy The Man - Tuesday, Jan 26, 21 @ 5:32 pm:
-The IHSA might be 2-3 press releases away from making itself extinct-
IHSA’s reputation is no lower than any other major political group in Illinois. After all, this is Illinois where many politicians spend their lives promising other people … other people’s money.
- Oswego Willy - Tuesday, Jan 26, 21 @ 5:35 pm:
=== IHSA’s reputation is no lower than any other major political group in Illinois. After all, this is Illinois where many politicians spend their lives promising other people … other people’s money.===
I have no idea what all that drivel means, but the idea that the IHSA could extinct itself is as true as it was before I read it.
- Cool Papa Bell - Tuesday, Jan 26, 21 @ 6:32 pm:
@Eugune -
Serious studies? Those quoted are serious studies, care to share yours?
To the time frame - they were studies in places were school was open. Can’t study spread in schools where they are closed.
To rural Wisconsin - where I’m sure in general community adoption of mask wearing is as good as it in suburbs or larger cities. But a class room is a class room is a class room. 10 kids = 10 kids. Batavia or Bolder Junction.
Community spread is that, spread of a virus in a community; be it schools, work places, restaurants ect.
Look at Region 3…
August 1 - daily positivity rate 5.2 %,
August 25 - schools open open 5.7%,
Oct 1st - Schools still open - 5.5%.
Weather gets colder, rate climbs -
Nov 15th 17.1%, bars and indoor dining close. (the schools that were open - remain open)
Dec 1st. - indoor ban continues - 11.8%,
Jan 5 back from winter break, full mitigations for bars, indoor dining - 8.3%
Today - 4.4% - schools open. indoor dining back..
- Eugene P - Tuesday, Jan 26, 21 @ 7:11 pm:
- Cool Papa Bell -
Nature Human Behavior article for one: https://www.nature.com/articles/s41562-020-01009-0
Science:
https://science.sciencemag.org/content/early/2020/12/15/science.abd9338
JAMA:
https://jamanetwork.com/journals/jama/fullarticle/2769034
- Cool Papa Bell - Tuesday, Jan 26, 21 @ 7:39 pm:
Quick Take - Two of the three studies at a glance all look at spread during the early part of 2020 when schools were closed. You can’t study spread in a school that is closed.
The Nature composite is troubling because it only talks about “educational institutions”. I’m talking K-12. No breakout there for grade school or colleges and that is too broad a brush to bring in all “institutions”.
The study done from the Science Mag was completed with data between the 22nd of January and the 30th of May 2020. - When schools were closed. Almost no schools were open for even hybrid learning from March to June 2020.
And the JAMA article is again looking at complete and total school shutdowns - during the 1st wave of infections. Those things are not comparable to current hybrid and in person educational settings going on now.
I do agree - Totally shutting down schools and not letting kids go to in person learning does prevent spread of COVID 19 in schools.
- friend of the family - Tuesday, Jan 26, 21 @ 9:02 pm:
These types of articles don’t help me deal with my Trump supporting friends who said as soon as Biden takes office, they will open everything up. COVID will not be an issue.
- dbk - Wednesday, Jan 27, 21 @ 12:56 pm:
Large urban districts have different challenges in terms of aging infrastructure and students who may live in crowded conditions and multi-generational households. Only 19% of Chicago’s preschoolers and special needs students actually returned to brick and mortar schools in the run-up to full re-openings.
It can be done, but to do it right is going to cost a lot -