Detroit Following a meeting today of the COVID-19 Joint Task Force, comprised of the UAW, Ford, General Motors and Stellantis, the Task Force has decided to adopt the new Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) guidance and move to a masks optional policy for employees at U.S. facilities regardless of vaccination status, if those facilities are not in high- risk counties as identified by the CDC. Each company will communicate when these changes will go into effect at their locations.
Facilities located in high-risk counties as identified by the CDC must continue to require masking and physical distancing. A sites COVID-19 county risk level can be checked through the onlineCDC tracking tool.
In making this decision, the Task Force reviewed reports of medical experts and CDC guidelines. The companies will continue to adhere to state and local masking requirements where applicable.
While masks are now optional at sites not in high-risk counties, they will still be available for those who choose to wear one based on personal preference. In addition, the CDC recommends that those who are immunocompromised orhigh risk for severe disease wear a mask or respirator that provides greater protection. People with symptoms, a positive test, or exposure to someone with COVID-19 also should wear a mask and not report to work.
The Task Force will continue to monitor data carefully and make any adjustments necessary to protect the health and safety of employees.
While the UAW and the companies will continue following other protocols that have kept workplaces safe, one of the best ways to fight this virus is by getting vaccinated. The Task Force continues to encourage everyone to roll up their sleeves and get vaccinated against COVID-19, or boosted when eligible, to protect family, friends and communities.
Some of Texas largest public school districts are dropping their mask mandates for students, teachers and other staff as cases of COVID-19 in the state continue to decrease.
The Austin Independent School District decided to make face coverings optional beginning March 7 following a meeting between school board officials and the citys health director, KUT reported.
Our COVID numbers have significantly decreased," Superintendent Stephanie Elizalde said Wednesday. "To be exact .007% [of the school community tested positive] this past week."
Ken Zarifis, the head of Education Austin, AISD's teacher's union, said he hoped the district would have kept the requirement in place until the end of the school year, citing how unpredictable spikes in COVID-19 cases have been in the past.
"We don't have anyone coming up and saying 'hey Ken, why isn't Education Austin helping advocate for getting rid of this mask mandate? he told KUT. Nobody that is doing the work every single day is asking that."
The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) issued new guidelines last week on face coverings based on updated data on hospitalizations and infections. According to the CDC, people residing in about 70% of the country dont need to wear masks to ward off the virus, although they are still recommended in some cases.
With current high levels of vaccination and high levels of population immunity from both vaccination and infections, the risk of medically significant disease, hospitalization, and death from COVID-19 is greatly reduced for most people, CDC officials said when the new guidance was announced.
The Houston Independent School District announced masks were optional as of Tuesday.
"Masks within HISD schools, facilities, [and] our school buses will all be optional with this modification, HISD superintendent Millard House II said during a press conference Monday. Anyone that may need additional layers of protection or are exhibiting symptoms of a communicable disease are highly encouraged to wear a mask regardless of their vaccination status. Anyone wanting to wear a mask can still request one when entering an HISD facility.
House said the district will be prepared to update its guidance in the event of another outbreak of COVID-19.
In the San Antonio area, the North East Independent School District has not had a mask mandate for a while and the Northside Independent School District released a statement earlier in February ending their temporary mask mandate, Texas Pubic Radio reported. Harlandale Independent School District released a statement on Feb. 28 stating masks in school would be optional starting Tuesday, March 1.
The Dallas Independent School also announced on Monday that it was allowing mask use to be optional, though it still recommends face coverings for students and staff. The announcement came after the CDC downgraded Dallas County's level of community spread to medium.
This additional measure gives us greater confidence to adjust some of our protocols. School visitors and volunteers will be allowed on a limited basis and masks are recommended while inside, DISD officials said on their website. Campuses will receive further guidance detailing the specifics on the specific updates.
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Connecticut's daily COVID-19 positivity rate is now 2.12%, down from Wednesday's 2.31%, and there have been additional 72 deaths in the last week, according to Governor Ned Lamont's office.
Officials said 27,761 tests were reported since Wednesday, and 589 were positive.
There are currently 171 patients hospitalized with COVID-19, down 21 since Wednesday. Of those 171 patients hospitalized, 68 (39.8%) are not fully vaccinated.
There is a total of 10,515 COVID-19 associated deaths in the state with an additional 72 reported in the last week, officials said.
For a breakdown of state COVID-19 information click here.
PENNSYLVANIA, USA The Pennsylvania Department of Health confirms 1,219additional positive cases of COVID-19, bringing the statewide total to 2,760,617on Thursday, March 3.
There were 65new deaths identified by the Pennsylvania death registry. The statewide total of deaths attributed to COVID-19 is 43,486, according to the department.
View the CDC COVID data trackerhere.
Watch more stories about the coronavirus pandemic on WNEP's YouTube page.
Ahead of an expected order by county officials easing pandemic health protocols, Universal Studios Hollywood announced it will no longer require guests visiting the theme park to wear masks or show proof of vaccinations or a negative COVID-19 test starting Friday.
The announcement aligns with an order likely to be announced Thursday by Los Angeles County Public Health Director Barbara Ferrer that masks are no longer required in public places such as bars, stores, offices, restaurants, gyms and movie theaters. She is also expected to lift vaccine verification requirements at outdoor mega-events in the county such as at SoFi and Dodger stadiums, L.A. Memorial Coliseum and the Hollywood Bowl.
The theme park, known for its Hollywood backstage tour and Harry Potter-themed land, has required visitors to show proof of being fully vaccinated or a negative COVID-19 test. Inside the park, masks are currently required for guests who are not fully vaccinated. Starting Friday, those guests can go mask-free, just like fully vaccinated visitors.
With COVID-19 cases dropping and health officials relaxing masking mandates, Disneyland announced last month that masks were optional outdoors and vaccinated visitors were no longer required to wear face coverings in many indoor settings at the Anaheim park. Masks are still required for unvaccinated guests ages 2 and older in all indoor areas, including restaurants, stores and attractions. In certain enclosed settings, such as Disney shuttles, face coverings are required for all visitors, regardless of vaccination status.
Universal Studios Hollywood, Disneyland, Knotts Berry Farm in Buena Park and Six Flags Magic Mountain in Valencia were all forced to close for more than a year due to the pandemic and reopened last year under health protocols that have been amended and revised in response to COVID-19 case numbers and orders from county health officials.
Despite the mask mandates and health protocols, the parks have moved forward with many of their most popular events, including Universal Studios Hollywoods Halloween Horror Nights and Disneylands Christmas Fantasy Parade.
If a kid isnt keeping up with peers academically, summer school seems like a no-brainer. Instead of forgetting what they learned during the school year while theyre on vacation for two months, theyre catching up and getting ahead. Which is why it was a surprise when a Rand Corporation study of summer school programs in five urban school districts found that this common-sense solution didnt really solve the problem.
Rands study found that summer school offered modest, short-term improvements in math scores at best, but those improvements faded by the fall. Other metrics performance in language arts, student attendance and overall grades showed no meaningful link to summer school. The effects were pretty underwhelming, said Megan Kuhfeld, a senior research scientist with NWEA, a nonprofit educational testing and research organization.
Overall, summer school programs didnt deliver on their promises. But some subgroups did benefit: the students who regularly attended the programs that were better at navigating hurdles like student retention.
Its perhaps never been so urgent to make educational interventions like summer school work for kids. Two years into the pandemic, children across the nation are behind where they would have been academically if the pandemic hadnt happened. To help bridge the gap, educational theories will have to adapt to the unique realities of actual kids lives and families needs. If they dont, even the best ideas, with tons of evidence behind them, wont work in the real world.
Kids learned plenty during the pandemic, Kuhfeld told me. The problem, she said, is that they arent learning as much or as quickly as they were each year before the pandemic. Nationally, third-graders in fall 2021 were, on average, testing significantly below where third-graders were testing in fall 2019 in reading and math. The NWEA assessments showed these declines extended across third-graders through eighth-graders, too.
Most of the experts I spoke to said the popular term learning loss is a misnomer its not that kids have lost ground, theyre just not progressing as fast. But the slower progression is real, and there are patterns to it. The effects were particularly pronounced among Black, Hispanic and American Indian and Alaska Native students.
In the NWEA data, the median percentile ranks for Black third-graders went down 10 points in reading and 14 points in math. For white third-graders, the median percentile ranks declined by exactly half of that (5 points in reading and 7 in math), while the median percentile ranks for Asian American third-graders fell by 3 points in both subjects.
In addition, theres evidence of declines in attendance and high school graduation rates, something that could signal a broad sense of emotional disconnection from school. Which, in turn, could help explain slowed learning or exacerbate it, said Dan Goldhaber, director of the National Center for Analysis of Longitudinal Data in Education Research.
Slowed learning during the pandemic doesnt necessarily mean kids are doomed, however. In fact, other researchers like Torrey Trust, a professor of learning technology at the University of Massachusetts Amherst, said kids actually learned a lot of things during the pandemic that they might not have learned otherwise. For many, virtual classes meant more time with family, more skills with technology, and for some, even better educational experiences, free from bullying.
The other good news: Research shows that the slower progress documented by these test scores should be able to be fixed with small-group tutoring. Its not rocket science, said Thurston Domina, a professor of educational policy and organizational leadership at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill. You get the kids in small groups and you can really give them customized instruction and focus on them. When Matthew Kraft, a professor of education and economics at Brown University, reviewed several meta-analyses of the effectiveness of various educational interventions in 2021, he found that tutoring in small groups had a significantly greater effect on student test scores than changes in class size, longer school days or summer-school-type programs.
But while its relatively simple for researchers to run studies on classrooms or schools and figure out which interventions produce the best results, its hard for educators to take those findings and put them to work across America. The evidence doesnt produce a solution it just shows you how hard its going to be to craft a wide-reaching solution.
Case in point: those summer school studies. One of the biggest factors affecting the overall failure of summer school programs in the Rand analysis was that only around half the kids who attended one year didnt come back for the next and some kids didnt even attend each day the first year. The kids who attended summer school habitually, for both years, did improve their math and language skills in ways that lasted all school year. But that group represented only about 35 percent of all the kids involved in the study.
So summer school works just fine if you can get kids to actually go. And that sets up a whole other set of logistical complications that have to be studied and analyzed and implemented. It takes hiring the right teachers who have the motivation and specific interest in teaching summer school, Kuhfeld said. It also takes long-term dedicated recruitment of kids into the programs. Unlike with regular school, students dont have to attend summer school, so getting them and their families to choose the programs means you have to build both interest and trust neither of which is a given. And all of this takes money. Theres a big gap between what should work in theory and what works in practice, Kuhfeld said.
This kind of effect is depressingly common. When the George W. Bush administration set up a program to compile evidence-based educational resources in 2002, education specialists told me theyd hoped this program the What Works Clearinghouse would bridge the gap between academia and classrooms. They envisioned it as a way for teachers to get a better handle on how to use evidence-based interventions in the classroom. We thought we would punch in third-grade math and get an answer, said Rachael Gabriel, a professor of literacy education at the University of Connecticut.
But it never worked out to be that simple.
In many cases, researchers I spoke to found that teachers the people tasked with educating students and bringing those test scores up didnt have much control over which interventions they could use and how. Those decisions were made higher up in the chain of administration. A teacher might want to try something and not be allowed. Or they might be excited to try something that was allowed but not be given the funding or staff or bus transport to make it happen effectively.
Making things work in a classroom is different from making things work in a whole district or a whole state or the whole country. Thats something Domina learned when Californias State Board of Education tried to mandate all eighth-graders to take and be tested on algebra. The idea was very much based on evidence, he said. Studies showed that separating some kids into elite math and others into remedial math served to widen inequality and narrow kids futures. Giving kids higher expectations leads them to do better. So expanding access to algebra for all should have reduced test-score gaps between rich and poor, white and Black.
But it didnt. In fact, the opposite happened. Domina sees problems of scale particularly staffing issues at the heart of that failure. Offering algebra to everyone meant that schools needed a lot more algebra teachers, and quickly. But there were only so many fully qualified, highly skilled algebra teachers. A lot of kids, particularly the ones in lower-income schools, ended up with teachers who didnt have as much experience and werent as effective at teaching the material, he said.
That story is particularly poignant now. Small-group tutoring can help students catch up on what they didnt get a chance to learn during the pandemic. But small-group tutoring takes staff and schools are one of many industries suffering from staffing shortages. Experts like Kraft are concerned that schools might create failing tutoring programs by using irregular volunteers or older students in place of dedicated staff.
Much like students, schools themselves arent necessarily functioning at a neutral, pre-pandemic state, either. The biggest trend Ive seen in the last 6-12 months is that schools are struggling to get the basics down. Staying open is hard, said Chase Nordengren, the principal research lead for Effective Instructional Strategies at NWEA. Hes seen many cases where federal funds, which otherwise may have been spent on staffing tutoring programs to mitigate learning loss, were spent instead on things like better ventilation, personal protective equipment and substitute teachers.
I think tutoring is a really promising initiative, Goldhaber said. But we have never tried to do tutoring at the scale that we are trying it today. Because of that, he said, parents should be advocating for real-time evaluation and course-correction to go along with these learning-loss interventions. There should be tools in place to help teachers know when something isnt working for their specific school and allow them to make the kind of personalized adjustments we know are necessary to make any intervention effective. But that, again, takes resources.
In the end, its not kids pandemic test scores that really make researchers feel gloomy about the future of education. Instead, its the way educational systems have been set up to fail those kids. Schools have been running with limited resources and little wiggle room for change for at least the past decade, Domina said. And now weve hit a crisis. And theyre not resilient.
by: Dr. Mary Gillis, D.Ed.
Posted: Mar 3, 2022 / 08:03 PM EST / Updated: Mar 3, 2022 / 08:03 PM EST
INDIANAPOLIS (WISH) Omicron is on its way out, and COVID-19 positivity rates are dropping as are hospitalizations and deaths.
According to the latest poll by The Associated Press Center for Public Affairs, Americans say they are ready to put pandemic panic in the past.
Scientists polled 1,289 adults between Feb. 18 and Feb. 21. When omicron was at its peak in January, 36% of respondents indicated they were extremely or very worried about themselves or a family member getting infected. But, that number has since dropped to 24%.
In this same survey, respondents were asked how concerned they were about the spread of COVID-19. In August 2021, 65% were extremely or very worried. The latest data shows less than 50% are concerned about coronavirus spread.
Other signs also point to the nation is ready to move on. Last Friday, the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention released guidelines lifting indoor mask mandates.
March 3, 2022
Media Contact:Linda Scarborough,linda.scarborough@vdh.virginia.gov
Pittsylvania-Danville Health District to Distribute Free COVID-19 Test Kits this Weekend
DANVILLE, Va. The Virginia Department of Healths Pittsylvania-Danville Health District will return to the local farmers market this weekend to distribute at-home COVID-19 test kits free of charge. A limit of two test kits per person will be available to adults 18 and older on a first-come, first-served basis while supplies last. The free rapid at-home test kits will be distributed Saturday, March 5 from 9 a.m. to 1 p.m. at Danville Farmers Market, 629 Craghead St.
VDH recommends that following people perform a test for COVID-19:
Testing is a critical component for slowing the transmission of COVID-19 and should be administered when you have symptoms, have been exposed to someone with the coronavirus, or before you travel or gather in large groups. It is proven to be an effective method to help decrease spread through preventing further infections.
To anonymously report a positive result or to download COVIDWISE, the free exposure notifications app, visithttp://www.vdh.virginia.gov/covidwise. Forquestionsabout COVID-19 testing or a list of testinglocations, visit the VDHwebsiteor call 877-VAX-IN-VA (877-829-4682), Monday through Friday, 8 a.m. to 6 p.m.
DETROIT (WXYZ) At the popular Cantoro Italian Market & Trattoria in Plymouth, curbside pickup and cross-trained employees have become seamless parts of operating thanks to the pandemic.
Family and friends are able to sit comfortably on the restaurant side, but General Manager Alex Bazzy said things still aren't quite back to normal.
"I do think that the volume is up," he adds. "People are ready to get out, ready to dine out. The restaurant no longer has the spacing issues. Were back to normal in terms of our floor plan."
Restaurants and churches may be some of the best examples of how comfortable people are when it comes to learning to live with COVID-19 and the precautions they take.
"For the most part, it's a no-touch zone," said Bishop Charles Ellis III of Greater Grace Temple in Detroit.
Before the pandemic, churchgoers would greet others with a hug and a handshake.
When case numbers were high, church was held outside on Greater Grace's large campus in Detroit. People could sit in their vehicles and tune to a radio station to hear the sermon.
"It was like a family reunion," said Ellis who plans to incorporate some outdoor sermons during the summer.
So has COVID-19 moved from being a pandemic to being endemic - something that we will just learn to live with? Not yet, according to Dr. Matthew Sims, Director of Infectious Disease Research at Beaumont Health.
But he adds that COVID-19 is still spreading.
"We have way less people in the hospital, but it's still out there," he said.
While restrictions are easing, Dr. Natasha Bagdasarian, Michigan's Chief Medical Executive, said it's likely that we will still see concerning variants so we can't think of the pandemic as a straight line to the finish.
"We're going to continue to see times where things are relatively higher risk with COVID and then relatively lower risk with COVID," she continues. "And we just need to be able to communicate that with the public that this is a time of relatively lower risk."
Dr. Bagdasarian says, "don't throw all of your mitigation strategies out of the window. You still may want to keep some of those mitigation strategies, depending on your individual risk profile. And then we'll communicate again when things get a little bit more risky, and when we want people to dial up those mitigation strategies."
Brazzaville, 3 March 2022 Disruptions to essential health services due to the COVID-19 pandemic are being felt broadly. As the world marks International Womens Day, a new World Health Organization (WHO) analysis finds that womens health services are far from being fully restored, with 40% of African countries reporting disruptions to sexual, reproductive, maternal, newborn, child and adolescent health services.
The WHO Global Pulse Survey on Continuity of Essential Health Services during the COVID-19 pandemic carried out between November and December 2021 shows that the majority of the 36 African countries that provided full data reported up to 25% disruption of services. The extent of the disruption remained largely unchanged from the first quarter of 2021.
Another WHO survey in 11 African countries found that maternal deaths in health facilities in six of the 11 countries rose by 16% on average between February and May 2020 compared with the same period in 2019. The figure dropped slightly in 2021 to 11%. However, the estimate is likely to be far higher as maternal deaths tend to occur mostly at home rather than in health facilities. Data show that facility-based births reduced in 45% of countries between November and December 2021 compared with the pre-pandemic period.
Two years on, the COVID-19 burden still weighs heavily on women. Africas mothers and daughters are struggling to access the health care they need. The pandemics disruptive force will be felt by women for many years to come, said Dr Matshidiso Moeti, WHO Regional Director for Africa. Countries must look beyond short-term measures to restore services to pre-pandemic levels and make major investments for stronger systems capable of withstanding health emergencies while ensuring continuity of key services.
During the pandemic, women and girls are facing a rising risk of sexual violence due to lockdowns, economic uncertainties, decrease in access to key support and health services, and increase in stress in households. Globally, from the latest analysis done in 2021, WHO estimates that 245 million women and girls aged 15 years and above are subjected annually to sexual and/or physical violence perpetrated by an intimate partner. Unfortunately, in Africa, due to the pandemic, services to women who have experienced sexual violence declined in 56% of countries between November and December 2021 compared with the period before the pandemic.
The disruptions also affected the uptake of essential reproductive health supplies. Between June and September 2021 contraceptive use fell in 48% of countries, according to a rapid WHO survey in 21 African countries. Teenage pregnancies also rose in some countries. A 2021 report by the British Medical Journal found that adolescent secondary school girls who were out of school for six months due to the COVID-19 lockdown in Kenya were twice as likely to become pregnant and three times as likely to drop out of school compared with those graduating just prior to the pandemic. In South Africa, a study by the Medical Research Council in five provinces showed that teenage pregnancies have increased by 60% since the start of the pandemic.
Beyond the health impacts, COVID-19 is also inflicting deep economic damage on women and girls. The pandemic is poised to push more women and girls into extreme poverty. Poverty rates rose from 11.7% in 2019 to 12.5% in 2021 and it may take until 2030 to revert to pre-pandemic levels, according to a report by the International Monetary Fund, the UN Development Programme and the UN Women.
Globally in 2021, 247 million women aged 15 and above were projected to live on less than US$ 1.90 per day due the economic impact of COVID-19, with an estimated 53% (132milion) of them from sub-Saharan Africa.
The pandemic has also worsened existing gender inequities in key spheres of life and development. Even though women constitute 70% of the health and social workers in Africa and are on the frontlines of COVID-19 response, few of them are in top pandemic management positions, according to the UN Development Programme and the UN Women Global Gender Response Tracker. In the African region, 85% of national COVID-19 task forces are led by men and only 15% by women, and the overall participation by women is only 30%.
Dr Moeti spoke during a virtual press conference today. She was joined by Dr Francine Ntoumi, President and Director-General, Congolese Foundation for Medical Research, and Dr Eleanor Nwadinobi, President, Medical Womens International Association.
Also on hand from the WHO Regional Office for Africa to respond to questions were Dr Adelheid Onyango, Director Universal Health Coverage/Healthier Populations, Dr Richard Mihigo, Coordinator, Immunization and Vaccines Development Programme, Dr Thierno Balde, Regional COVID-19 Incident Manager, Dr Leopold Ouedraogo, Regional Adviser for Sexual and Reproductive Health.
