COVID-19 boomerangs back in reopened schools
For Thursday, July 6, 2020: Schools find new C19 cases in first week open, and the CDC says travel is dangerous -- but dropped guidance saying to stay home and not travel.
The CDC guidelines no longer tell Americans to stay home and not travel. An update was posted today. The accompanying FAQ still caution that “travel increases your chances of getting and spreading COVID-19…. Traveling to visit family may be especially dangerous if you or your loved ones are more likely to get very ill from COVID-19.”
Schools that opened are grappling with COVID-19 cases and quarantine orders among students, staff and teachers almost immediately, according to the Washington Post and other reports from Mississippi, Georgia and other states.
President Trump’s latest executive order requiring more drugs and other supplies to be purchased “only” from American factories will cause “an immediate shortage” of products essential to the COVID-19 response, according to former FDA Associate Commissioner Peter Pitts. The executive order also relaxes environmental and other regulations over chemical or other pharmaceutical factories.
Two new papers estimate that between 15-20% of people who get infected with COVID-19 never develop symptoms, and these are frequently children. One paper, in the Journal of Medical Virology, estimates that about 16% of COVID-19 infected people will not develop symptoms and this is more likely to occur in children. That study also estimates that about half of the people considered “asymptomatic” eventually progress to symptomatic COVID-19. This “pre-symptomatic” period has been shown in other studies to be when the disease is highly contagious. A second paper, published by University of Bern, Switzerland researchers as a non-peer-reviewed pre-print, estimates the asymptomatic rate at 20% and also finds that many who are considered “asymptomatic” go on to develop symptoms.
A University of North Carolina researcher has published how to use storytelling as a tool to confront misinformation.
Pulitzer Prize finalist and prison journalist Rahsaan Thomas wrote a powerful essay about the COVID-19 outbreak at San Quentin State Prison, where now 23 incarcerated individuals have died.
Another useful item:
The Dallas Morning News explains why COVID-19 deaths are almost certainly undercounted everywhere.