If a school claims that it has a certain level of infection control procedures then the system will claim that no cases came from that school.
However, say kid A tests positive one day. for the past two weeks he made out with his girlfriend at school several times a day. contact tracing doesn’t alert the girlfriend since officially she wasn’t at risk due to the school being assessed as safe. When she later tests positive it is declared as getting it outside of school when in reality she caught it at school.
I don’t know. I think families around us contact traced correctly. After a positive case, friends from outside of school would quarantine. The school was serious. If the student was on a sports team, the entire team had to quarantine and usually about six kids from each of their classes also had to quarantine. Each case resulted in a LOT of kids out of school. For many high school friend groups, Covid raged through during summer 2020 or winter break 2021.
K-5 had SO few cases. Middle school had their fair share with the same contact tracing rules as high school.
Many districts in NC are relying on the guidance of the ABC Science Collaborative for this week’s reopening. Our district has dropped screenings, cohorting, and spacing requirements, but requires masks and is strongly encouraging vaccination. No visitors or volunteers in the buildings. Lunch is in classrooms not the cafeteria. Today is day 3, we’ll know within a few weeks how it’s going.
For my rising high schooler, online class was pretty much a disaster. I’m anxious about this year because I think delta still has more to teach us. But I’m more glad they’re in person, glad the kids won’t have their lives on hold like they were last year.
Last years experience has almost nothing to do with this year’s. Our schools were fully open last year, with relatively few cases, few attributed to the schools. This year, yesterday alone, there were 410 new covid cases at public schools. Delta sweeps through classrooms and those kids carry it back to vaxxed community members over age 60 or with weaker immune systems.
Remember that recent Carnival cruise? 96% vaxxed. 27 still got covid, 1 died, almost all had been vaxxed
right. Don’t we need to keep this in perspective? We are continuing to affect the lives of fully vaccinated college kids and their college profs because the professors’ children might get Covid and the chance of them getting really sick is so so small. Where does it end? Professors at Bowdoin can ask students to wear masks. I’m all for that. That should be enough. After that, I want the college kids in highly vaccinated situations to move on.
12 days into the school year, they have just under 1500 reported cases (and presumably thousands more unreported or undetected cases) out of a school population of 66k. I am fully aware that those kids are unlikely to be very sick (though we continue to know little about long covid).
I am also fully aware that our hospitals are overwhelmed, not just with the unvaxxed, but also burdened with breakthrough cases, particularly in those over age 60. I too would like a school year as normal as possible, but I would not expect the high vax rates to guarantee that.
Colleges and schools are delaying opening again. To the degree it’s politically motivated, we’ll just have to decide that for ourselves. One thing is true, if I say one opinion about Coronavirus, I’ll get 100 responses calling me a dumb-dumb. If I say the opposite, I’ll get 100 responses calling me a dumb-dumb.
See the CDC announcement yesterday, posted on the Inside Medicine thread, that mRNA vaccine efficacy against the delta variant is estimated at 66% based on studies of HCW. That is very good, but much less than the 90 plus % efficacy shown against the alpha spread.
That is still very good, is based on only two shots (most vaxxed peeps will be getting #3 over the next few months), and should be enough reason for any unvaccinated person to get vaxxed ASAP.
Agreed, it is an excellent rate, but low enough to expect substantial numbers of breakthrough cases, particularly as most schools are opening well before most people are getting booster shots which would improve the efficacy.
Yes—agree—and we have delta where I am and I have been following regionalhospital data this whole time, and delta is NOT hospitalizing a higher percent of kids than the prior strain—in fact, it may be less. Even in adults, controlling for age and vax status, several studies are showing it is slightly less.
There are way more cases in kids, because it is more contagious and kids are not vaxxd, but not higher severity. It remains far far less likely to hospitalize kids than RSV which is a huge issue right now(and is every fall and winter—just was delayed last year due to distancing and masks: huge surge once some normalcy came back this spring). There is no long covid data on delta yet , BUT, long covid in the under 13s for all prior variants is extremely low. Older teens have some issues with it, folks in their 20s and up have more…but covid in kids remains very mild. The risk of complication from Covid disease in kids will still likely be higher than the risk of significant vaccine complication—so the vaccine will likely get approved. But many folks on here who are not in medicine dealing with covid in kids every day for 18 months now, are way overstating the risk in kids. Of course I agree we need a vaccine and thte data will likely support one, but it is not(Thankfully) a severe disease in the vast vast majority of children.
I fully agree that we should be actively thinking about people in these categories. I have said before: I work with a young adult who had a transplant just before covid. I have continued wearing masks in stores etc because I don’t know if the person next to me is in a similar situation, or in chemo, a caregiver etc.
And, how unbelievably selfish of anti-vaxxers not to consider people in these categories.
By 11 am today the public schools are up another 1k cases from Monday, so 2500. I don’t have kids there, but parents seem quite upset. Actually, at this rate they will all have it by October, so maybe things will be better then
kidding of course!