A coronavirus outbreak linked to a wedding reception has infected at least 87 people in Maine, according to the state Center for Disease Control and Prevention. Robert F. Bukaty/AP hide caption
A coronavirus outbreak linked to a wedding reception has infected at least 87 people in Maine, according to the state Center for Disease Control and Prevention.
A coronavirus outbreak originating from a wedding reception in Maine earlier this month continues to grow. Health officials say cases linked to the event have spread to a rehabilitation center and a jail.
At least 87 coronavirus cases are associated with an outbreak from the Aug. 7 wedding at a church in Millinocket and a reception at the Big Moose Inn, Dr. Nirav Shah, director of the Maine Center for Disease Control and Prevention, said Thursday.
"What concerns me in this situation is the fact that the number of individuals who were affected from that initial setting ... was higher than we would have anticipated," he said during virtual press briefing. "It suggests that there was already community transmission happening in Penobscot County by the attendees, and when they came together, it was kind of like a powder keg that was giving off sparks, and generated a higher-than-expected number of cases."
The risk now is that this outbreak could "spiral," and these 87 cases could keep growing, Shah said. State data show that so far, Maine has recorded 4,436 cases of the coronavirus and 132 deaths.
The outbreak affected those who attended the wedding events, and also nine cases at the Maplecrest Rehabilitation & Living Center in Madison and 18 cases associated with the York County Jail complex, Shah said. At least one person has died after contracting COVID-19 from someone who attended the wedding, Millinocket Regional Hospital said in a statement.
"Because we have identified an epidemiological link between and among all of these cases, they constitute a single outbreak," Shah said.
Of the 65 people who attended the wedding, 30 people contracted COVID-19, Shah said. They infected 35 other people, and those people infected 22 more people. Among the 87 people total who were infected, 59 of them have shown symptoms.
The state suspended the Big Moose Inn's business license on Wednesday, said Jeanne Lambrew, commissioner of the Maine Department of Health and Human Services. The inn's license was reinstated on Friday, according to a local media report.
State authorities initially issued a health hazard citation to the venue for hosting the wedding reception that exceeded the 50-person limit on indoor gatherings in the state, Lambrew said.
Officials said health inspectors discovered additional public health violations on a follow-up visit to the inn, which led to the suspension. Dining room tables were placed indoors within 6 feet of each other, and employees were not wearing face coverings.
"We are working with the Big Moose Inn to bring them into compliance because all of our public health emergency enforcement tools is less about punishment and more about prevention," Lambrew said.
Shah urged Maine residents and businesses to comply with restrictions on indoor and outdoor gatherings to prevent the spread of the virus. He said the duration and density of an event are the two factors that drive the potential for an outbreak.
"What we saw here was an event a wedding and then a reception so a long-duration event with a fair number of individuals, greater than the 50 that are allowed," he said. "When we see those two factors combine, time and time again, not just in Maine, but across the globe, we see the potential for outbreaks."
Maine's positive rate for the virus remains less than 1% on average over seven days, Shah said. Testing volume in the state has also jumped by 53% in the past 30 days, with 44% of that growth happening over the past seven days.
Shah emphasized the importance of testing in tracing the virus. Despite new guidance from the federal Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, Shah said Maine will continue to test asymptomatic patients who were potentially exposed to the virus.
"Our view is that you don't stop the plows in the middle of the storm, you keep plowing," he said. "Or in this setting, you keep testing."
Find developments on the coronavirus pandemic and the plan for recovery in the U.S. and Washington state.
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The number of confirmed coronavirus cases globally has topped 25 million.
Thats according to a tally kept by Johns Hopkins University.
The U.S. leads the count with 5.9 million cases, followed by Brazil with 3.8 million and India with 3.5 million.
The real number of people infected by the virus around the world is believed to be much higher perhaps 10 times higher in the U.S., according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention given testing limitations and the many mild cases that have gone unreported or unrecognized.
Global deaths from COVID-19 stand at over 842,000, with the U.S. having the highest number with 182,779, followed by Brazil with 120,262 and Mexico with 63,819.
The coronavirus has upended everyday life in ways big and small. What happens when those disruptions overlap with voting? Thousands of state and local election officials across the U.S are sharing ideas and making accommodations to try to ensure that voters and polling places are safe amid an unprecedented pandemic.
Some are finding ways to expand access to voter registration and ballot request forms. Others are testing new products, installing special equipment or scouting outdoor voting locations.
As summer starts to wind down and more state coronavirus restrictions are lifted, people may be more inclined to meet up with family and friends who they haven't seen in months.
Public Health King County - Seattle officials say they've seen an increase in coronavirus cases with parties and gatherings at homes.
Dr. Jeff Duchin, the public health officer at King County, said that social events are particularly risky to spread the virus. However, that doesn't mean you need to forgo them completely.
Earlier this summer, Maines top public health official offered some advice for any young people who might have been thinking it was safe to hold a large party or get-together.
While they might feel safe to do so, Nirav Shah said, such gatherings could result in them catching COVID-19 and spreading the disease to their parents, grandparents or others with less robust immune systems.
When Shah broadcast that warning on July 30, Maine hadnt traced any outbreaks to house parties or large social gatherings, although that kind of transmission was happening in many other states that had already loosened their coronavirus restrictions on bars, night clubs and gatherings.
We havent identified a singular one yet, said Shah, who heads the Maine Center for Disease Control and Prevention.
But just a week later, a young couple got married at a church in East Millinocket. Afterward, they celebrated the milestone with a 62-person dinner at an inn outside Baxter State Park.
Now, after a summer in which Maine controlled the coronavirus better than almost every other state, that couples fateful decision has spawned the states most far-reaching outbreak of COVID-19 yet.
It has infected at least 123 people and caused secondary outbreaks at a rehabilitation center in Madison and, more than 200 miles to the south, at the York County Jail in Alfred. One woman who did not attend the wedding has now died from the disease.
So far, the outbreak has not erased Maines progress in flattening the COVID-19 curve. Despite recent growth in daily case numbers, Maines infection rate throughout the pandemic exceeds only that of Vermont. But the wedding outbreak has caused a growing number of ripple effects, including many hours of work by state health investigators who must trace the spread of the disease, a delayed opening for schools in the Millinocket area and the states reassessment of whether its safe for schools in Penobscot and York counties to reopen full-time in person.
It has also created fear in the Katahdin region, which had seen few coronavirus cases in recent months. Following the outbreak, East Millinockets infection rate the number of cases for every 1,000 residents shot to fourth in the state, according to the states town-by-town case data. As of Sunday, its rate was 11.7 cases for every 1,000 residents. Medway, which had an earlier wave of 12 cases in the spring, now has the seventh highest rate in the state.
On a deeper level, the outbreak also has provided Mainers with a reminder of the rapid way in which COVID-19 can spread, even between people who dont show any symptoms. During the early part of the pandemic, the most dramatic examples of that spread came in nursing homes, homeless shelters and other congregate living settings.
Now, the state has a sobering example of how the same rules can apply when people get together for more festive reasons and how it can spread even when no one feels sick.
Before the wedding guests entered the Big Moose Inn the Millinocket Lake venue which hosted the reception on Aug. 7 they all were given temperature checks that came back normal, a state health inspector later found. Some of the guests who came from out-of-state may have also provided documentation that they had tested negative for COVID-19.
Then, about a week after the wedding, guests started to feel sick, Shah said this week. But of the 87 people who had tested positive as of Thursday in connection with the outbreak, just 59 were showing symptoms.
But while the outbreak may have started with a celebration, it has now reached more vulnerable populations.
State investigators have found that an employee of the York County Jail attended the Katahdin-area wedding and was one of the first people to test positive in the jails outbreak, which has spread to at least 54 workers and inmates. Until now, Maine had avoided large outbreaks in correctional facilities, where some of the nations largest coronavirus outbreaks have happened.
Investigators have also determined that a wedding guest passed the virus to a parent, who passed it to another child who is an employee of Maplecrest Rehabilitation and Living Center in Madison. There are now five cases among residents and four among the centers staff.
The outbreak has also driven home the importance of measures that public health experts have long recommended for preventing the spread of COVID-19 including wearing face masks, avoiding large gatherings and staying at least 6 feet away from others but that apparently were ignored when the guests went to the Big Moose Inn for the reception, according to the health inspector who visited the inn on Aug. 18.
The wedding stood out in a year when many couples have chosen to postpone or dramatically scale back wedding plans or even drop elaborate plans in favor of eloping.
On Thursday, Maine Health and Human Services Commissioner Jeanne Lambrew acknowledged the special nature of weddings where people converge on a single place from all over to celebrate a couple. But for anyone who is still planning a wedding in the coming days and weeks, she said that there are important reasons for the states rules limiting large gatherings.
As weve seen in the last few weeks, there are deadly consequences associated with uncontrolled gatherings, she said.
A week passed, then another, and Mr. Loaiza still did not know if the aid had arrived. On June 23, the landlord texted him. Jhon, u said u were vacating the home last weekend. Is the home vacant now?
Mr. Loaiza felt emptied out and powerless; impotent, he told me. He began to lose sleep, and the stress snaked through his body like poison. Mr. Loaiza thought seriously about killing himself. He had never before entertained that obliterating thought, but the sheer hopelessness of the situation was suffocating. Marshals that carry out evictions are full of suicide stories: the early morning rap on the door followed by a single gunshot from inside the apartment, the blunt sound of giving up. From 2005 to 2010, years when housing costs were soaring across the country, suicides attributed to eviction and foreclosure doubled.
Mr. Loaiza pushed through it, the pull to sleep, to bury himself, and with the rent assistance seemingly stalled, he began calling friends in San Antonio, asking if they would consider taking his family in. No one had room. Finally, friends in Florida offered two rooms in their home and storage space in their garage. Mr. Loaiza and Ms. Bedoya began packing and scrubbing the apartment, hoping to receive their security deposit back. To afford the U-Haul, Mr. Loaiza jumped at the first job opportunity he found, joining a construction crew working inside a large building.
Jhon, Is the home now vacant? Mr. Acosta again texted on July 1. It was. At dawn, the family had begun their trek east. Mr. Loaiza drove the U-Haul, while Ms. Bedoya and the girls followed in the family car. A few hours in, Mr. Loaiza began to feel sick, feverish. It got so bad that Ms. Bedoya took to keeping her husband on the phone to make sure he was lucid.
A legal aid lawyer from St. Marys volunteered to represent Mr. Loaiza and Ms. Bedoyas case in their absence. The day before the eviction court hearing, the lawyer called the Neighborhood and Housing Services Department to inquire about the familys stalled rental assistance payment. She learned that $3,000 had in fact been issued to the landlord, and that he had cashed the check weeks earlier, on June 19, days before he texted Jhon about vacating the house. (Mr. Acosta did not consent to an interview, despite multiple requests, but he did tell me by text that the tenant vacated the home in order to find work elsewhere. The court records will show that. Mr. Loaiza told me that he moved because he felt forced from his home and that he had never told Mr. Acosta that he was moving for job opportunities.)
All this pain the stress so crippling that suicide begins to appear as relief, the severing of church and school ties, friendships; uprooting a family from community and work it wasnt for $3,190. If it was for anything, it was for $190. The lawyer tried calling Mr. Loaiza, over and over, but she couldnt reach him. By that time, he was already in Florida, lying in a hospital bed with Covid-19.
Rent its the greediest of bills. For many families, it grows every year, arbitrarily, almost magically, not because of any home improvements; just because. Demand, they say, when they hand you a new lease with a stiff rent hike. Or costs are rising. What they mean is: Because I can. And unlike defaulting on other bills, missing a rent payment can result in immediate and devastating consequences, casting families into poverty and homelessness. If you cant afford enough food, you can usually qualify for food stamps. If you miss a mortgage payment, you typically have 120 days before your bank can initiate the foreclosure process. But if you cant pay your rent, you can lose your home in a matter of weeks. During the first half of July, landlords collected 37 percent of total rent from families living in Class C properties typically older stock, home to low- and moderate-income workers compared with 80 percent during the first three months of the year.
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Thousands of people gather for an electronic music festival at a water park in Wuhan, China, on Saturday, August 15. The novel coronavirus was first reported in Wuhan late last year.
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A health worker administers a Covid-19 test in the Indian village of Kusumpur on Monday, August 17.
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People gather in Little Venice on the Aegean Sea island of Mykonos, Greece, on Sunday, August 16.
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Funeral workers in Peru's Uchumayo District bury a coffin in a massive burial ground for low-income people and unidentified victims of Covid-19.
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A man receives an injection while taking part in a vaccine trial in Hollywood, Florida, on August 13.
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Election officials sort absentee ballots in Atlanta, where there were several runoffs taking place on August 11.
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Gravediggers bury a coronavirus victim at the Pondok Ranggon cemetery in Jakarta, Indonesia, on August 10.
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Kindergarten students wear face masks and play in screened-in areas at the Wat Khlong Toey School in Bangkok, Thailand, on August 10.
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Medics wait to transport a woman with possible Covid-19 symptoms to a hospital in Austin, Texas, on August 7.
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A coronavirus victim is lowered into the ground during her funeral in New Delhi on August 7.
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Resident doctors and interns attend a rally in Seoul, South Korea, on August 7. They were protesting the government's plan to expand admissions to medical schools a policy meant to address a shortage in physicians.
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A health worker performs a Covid-19 test at a gymnasium in Navotas, Philippines, on August 6.
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A worker disinfects a public school in Brasilia, Brazil, on August 5. The local government has begun preparations for the reopening of schools in early September.
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Cemetery workers carry the coffin of a Covid-19 victim at a graveyard in Comas, Peru, on August 5.
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Elementary school students walk to class in Godley, Texas, on August 5. Three rural school districts in Johnson County were among the first in the state to head back to school for in-person classes.
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Poll worker Debra Moore sanitizes her workspace during a primary election in Detroit on August 4.
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A stylist from Grey Matter LA cuts a client's hair on a rooftop parking lot in Los Angeles on August 4.
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Paul Adamus, 7, waits at the bus stop for his first day of school in Dallas, Georgia, on August 3.
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Beds are seen at a temporary field hospital set up in Hong Kong on August 1. AsiaWorld-Expo has been converted into a makeshift hospital that can take up to 500 patients.
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Medical workers in Yogyakarta, Indonesia, showcase designs during a fashion show of personal protective equipment on August 1. The fashion show was held as a form of gratitude for all medical personnel who have been fighting Covid-19.
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A volunteer disinfects a rooftop area in Rio de Janeiro on August 1.
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Volunteer health workers disinfect a mosque prior to Eid al-Adha prayers in Kabul, Afghanistan, on July 31.
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A casket carrying the body of coronavirus victim Lola M. Simmons is placed into a hearse following her funeral service in Dallas on July 30.
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Relatives of Covid-19 patients line up to recharge oxygen cylinders in Villa Maria del Triunfo, Peru, on July 29.
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People watch the film "The Prestige" from a gondola boat in Venice, Italy, on July 28. Around the world, many films are being shown outside so that people can practice social distancing.
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A health worker tests a child for Covid-19 at a school in New Delhi on July 27.
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Portraits are taped onto seats to help theatergoers spread out in Nicosia, Cyprus, on July 27.
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The casket of a coronavirus victim is carried from a funeral home in Johannesburg on July 26.
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Worshippers of Legio Maria attend a prayer at their church in Nairobi, Kenya, on July 26. Places of worship have reopened in Kenya under strict guidelines.
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A casket containing the remains of a coronavirus victim waits to be removed from a mortuary in Soweto, South Africa, on July 24.
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Commuters wear face masks and face shields while traveling on a public bus in Lima, Peru, on July 22. Peru has mandated masks and shields on public transportation.
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Undertakers push the casket of a coronavirus victim during a funeral in Soweto, South Africa, on July 21.
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A worker measures a man's temperature before allowing him to enter La Vega market in Santiago, Chile, on July 19.
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Indigenous nurses in Santarem, Brazil, administer a Covid-19 test on Chief Domingos from the Arapium tribe on July 19.
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People watch a video projection in Avignon, France, on July 18. Since the Avignon Theatre Festival has been canceled because of the coronavirus pandemic, the festival's organization has been projecting plays that made its history.
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Doctors from the Palestinian Ministry of Health take blood samples in Hebron, West Bank, on July 15.
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Health workers in Mumbai, India, screen residents for Covid-19 symptoms on July 14.
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Ultra-Orthodox Jews gather for a July 13 protest over lockdown measures in Jerusalem.
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Members of the Bungoma County Isolation Team stand by the coffin of Dr. Doreen Lugaliki during her funeral in Ndalu, Kenya, on July 13. Lugaliki, 39, died from complications related to the novel coronavirus.
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The boxed cremated remains of Mexicans who died from Covid-19 are covered before a service at St. Patrick's Cathedral in New York on July 11. The ashes were blessed before they were repatriated to Mexico.
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Cars line up in the Hard Rock Stadium parking lot so drivers could be tested in Miami Gardens, Florida, on July 6.
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Peruvian migrant Jose Collantes cries as he watches cemetery workers bury his wife, Silvia Cano, in Santiago, Chile, on July 3. She died of coronavirus complications, according to Collantes.
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Within the span of about five days in March, our nations school system moved from the unthinkable to the inevitable. To prevent the spread of the coronavirus, schools closed, and millions of students from kindergartners to high schoolers moved to a fully remote learning model. Now, as a new school year begins, districts are grappling with how to reopen, while remote learning has left students, especially the most vulnerable learners, even further behind.Its a crisis for education, but its also an opportunity to put everything on the table and consider ideas that would have been impossible before COVID. Outdoor school, long relegated to the Waldorf fringe, is getting a serious look. The pandemic is forcing conversations about equity in education, and both parents and teachers are asking how we can reimagine the school day to prioritize student well-being and mental health.In other words, as schools adapt to COVID, what changes could actually transform education for the better?
COVID-19 is an airborne pathogen, meaning that one of the best ways to mitigate risk is to step outside into the open air. Yet, rather than move in-person school outdoors, districts have doubled down on virtual learning.
On Monday of the week everything shut down, 100% distance learning seemed preposterous. By Friday, it was inevitable, says Vanessa Carter, an environmental literacy content specialist at San Francisco Unified School District. The pivot was, lets get everyone in front of a screen. Is it any crazier to try to get kids 100% outside?
(Carter notes that the ideas here are her own, and not meant to represent SFUSD decisions or current planning.)
Research shows that spending time in nature builds resilience and self-confidence in kids; reduces obesity and attention deficit disorder symptoms; and improves focus, behavior and learning. During the pandemic, it would also mean giving students in-person instruction rather than teaching via screens.
Just to get kids back to in-person learning would be huge, for our youngest learners especially, says Carter. To start, use what you have. Move whiteboards and tables and chairs outside. Dont reinvent the wheel.
Carter acknowledges that there are challenges to taking learning outside. Not all schools have outdoor campuses or parks nearby, not all parks are created equal, and not all neighborhoods are walkable.
To make outdoor learning sustainable, schools would need infrastructure like tents and outdoor furniture, as well as more staff.
Dont leave it to schools to figure out how to pay for this, says Carter. Could a government stimulus program support outdoor learning? Corporate sponsorships? With so much philanthropy being directed to COVID response right now, perhaps districts could appeal directly to environmental nonprofits and donors.
Hopeful: Given the renewed attention education has received in recent months, these potential fixes dont feel as fictional as they once did.
And if outdoor learning starts by moving the classroom model into a yard or a park, it can grow beyond teaching regular curriculum in a new environment.
We have this pretty remarkable workforce of environmental and outdoor educators and science educators in the Bay Area, says Carter, pointing to staff members from childrens museums, science museums and organizations like the YMCA and NatureBridge who are cleared to work with children. What if some of the funding to support education during COVID was routed through these organizations to redirect staff to schools, to support teachers with outdoor learning?
Then the question becomes: How do we get kids outdoors? For schools near the Presidio, its easy; for campuses in the Tenderloin or Chinatown; its more challenging. Given that many tech companies have announced they will work from home for at least the next year, could there be a way to redeploy the fleet of tech buses that shuttles city dwellers to Silicon Valley? There are a mountain of obstacles to this making sure buses are certified to transport kids, finding the funding to hire more drivers, especially since SFUSD just laid off all its bus drivers. But if this would allow in-person learning to take place, and potentially enable the district to rehire essential bus drivers, its a challenge worth tackling.
And when school finally goes back to normal, we should still think twice before herding kids back into the classroom all day.
Being outside more I think youll see students are more calm and that there are tremendous mental health benefits, says Carter, who also believes that truancy rates would decrease.
Weve tried the more, more, more approach, she says of the conventional classroom. Its not working.
That may be the strongest argument for a long-term shift to more outdoor learning that it actually improves outcomes for kids. After the pandemic, lets try to remember that.
We wont know the full mental health toll of the pandemic on children for years to come, but we do know this: As millions of families face financial hardship, the illness or loss of loved ones, prolonged uncertainty and the complete obliteration of normal routines, its a recipe for increased rates of anxiety and depression in kids and adolescents.
Its also an opportunity for schools to rethink how they support students mental health.
Some schools are already doing this by building social-emotional learning (SEL) lessons focused on how to manage and regulate emotions, build relationships and show empathy into their curricula. But the pandemic is a chance to try bolder ideas. Especially since there is evidence that for some kids, getting a break from the pressure cooker of academic expectations and after-school commitments has been better for their mental health.
Even as we long to get back to before, its important to ask if before was really that great. We already had an epidemic of anxiety among children, teens and college students in the United States. This forced pause could be a time for educators and school administrators to reconsider how we support mental health at school.
Wendy Mogel, clinical psychologist and author of the parenting book The Blessing of a Skinned Knee, suggests an approach that is radical in its simplicity: Talk to the children. If the question is, How can we redesign the school day or focus on social-emotional learning to make kids less stressed? talk to them and see what they have to say.
Mogel offers a set of questions that focus on student well-being: What do you miss most about school? What are you relieved about not having to do? What was the hardest part about the school shutdown, and what did you enjoy? What did you discover about the way you like to learn? You need someone who is really good with kids a youth pastor, the school psychologist to ask the questions, she says.
In Mogels experience, one of the biggest contributors to anxiety and stress in students is schools focus on conventional academic learning over creative intelligence, experiential learning and citizenship.
Ideally, art, science and SEL would be woven into an integrated curriculum, says Mogel. And adding SEL to the Core Curriculum would give it both pride of place and legal standing.
She also advocates for more time outdoors and in nature, more hands-on learning through all five senses and learning through fellowship. Weve taken this whole complicated, rich creature, which is a child, and distilled it into numbers and rankings. It causes so much anxiety and depression in both kids and parents.
Leyla Bologlu, a pediatric neuropsychologist in San Francisco, notes that for children with learning differences, anxiety and self-doubt are heightened in classroom settings, and for some, during remote school as well. However, distance learning has forced educators to pace differently and shorten instruction periods for younger students. The benefits of that suggest better ways to support differentiated learners when in-person classes restart.
We need to rethink how scheduled children are, she says. How many adults work more than 8 or 10 hours? We ask our children to work those hours.
Because motor skills and cognitive skills develop in tandem (Its not uncommon to see language bursts follow a major motor milestone, Bologlu says), Bologlu has been excited by the increase in physical activity on her street. In some ways we are getting back to important developmental basics, she says. She suggests schools add more body breaks into the school day and longer transition times between academic subjects.
To pull all of this together and create accountability, Mogel says schools should create a position of director of mental health. Think of it as a sanity czar.
This person would need to be really adept at interviewing kids and handling parents, she says, and to show that the position is truly valued, pay them a lot of money.
From access to high-speed internet to proximity to outdoor space to the scramble to form learning pods, almost every COVID adaptation has exposed inequities in education.
Lately, the conversation has turned to an uncomfortable question: How do we feel living in a country where private schools can potentially reopen with heating, ventilation and air conditioning systems, as well as COVID consultants while public schools cannot?
This is an opportunity for everyone public schools and independent schools to rethink how we educate, teach and learn, says Deborah Sims, a former Bay Area school administrator and superintendent, who now works as an education consultant. She notes that all the things that disadvantage kids during remote learning not having a private place to work, access to WiFi or an adult at home able to help also make regular school harder.
Schools were already starting to have these conversations around equity, but the pandemic has accelerated them, says Sims. When schools return in-person, it could be an opportunity to rethink how much work students are asked to do at home now that we are more aware of the ways that privilege plays a role.
Just consider the inequity baked into a school rite of passage: the elaborate science or history project. One childs parents go out and get all sorts of supplies and help their kid build a pyramid that could go in a museum, says Sims. The other child doesnt even have access to materials or an adult at home during the day to help.
The solution is not to stop doing projects. Its to restructure the school day so that more of the work can be collaborative and done during school hours.
Heres the good news: Local districts are already thinking hard about how to tackle many of these challenges. SFUSD is working to make sure that every student in the district has a device and hot spot for remote learning. Educators are recognizing that outdoor education and a stronger focus on SEL may be key to getting through the pandemic, and when its over, well have what amounts to data from thousands of mini pilot programs.
At that point, schools will need to ensure that the changes that have positive benefits for kids more unstructured time during the day, outdoor learning, SEL and wellness as part of the curriculum dont fall away as soon as we go back to normal. This is a chance to rethink education for the better. For all kids.
Anna Nordberg is Bay Area feelance writer. Email: Culture@sfchronicle.com
Although scientists are racing to develop treatments that will fight the coronavirus, only a handful are considered promising, and all need further study. No drugs have been found to be safe and effective treatments for Covid-19, the disease caused by the coronavirus, by the Food and Drug Administration.
The president declared, We developed a wide array of effective treatments, including a powerful antibody treatment known as convalescent plasma, which he claimed will save thousands and thousands of lives.
In fact, convalescent plasma has been used by doctors for decades, and with coronavirus patients since the early days of the outbreak. Its effectiveness, however, is still in question and has most likely been exaggerated by the administration, and because it must be made from blood donations from Covid-19 survivors, its availability is expected to be limited.
As for a vaccine, it is impossible to predict when one will become availability with certainty. A few drug makers are far along in testing their vaccines, but the process then includes securing F.D.A. approval, ramping up manufacturing and setting up a distribution system an awful lot to pack into the next four months.
Paul Mango, an official at the federal Department of Health and Human Services who is helping to lead the vaccine effort, told reporters Friday that while hundreds of millions of doses of vaccine will indeed be manufactured by the end of the year, what is uncertain is whether or not they will be F.D.A. approved.
Nevertheless, Mr. Trump sounded an optimistic note, saying that there would be a vaccine before the end of the year or maybe even sooner.
The coronavirus pandemic shows little sign of abating in the United States, with nearly six million total cases and an average of 42,000 new daily cases. The campaign of former Vice President Joseph R. Biden Jr. noted Friday that at least 3,525 Americans had lost their lives to the coronavirus since the Republican convention began on Monday. (The New York Times counted 4,037.)
Lock down the village, test everybody, and isolate the positives. It really works, Andrea Crisanti says.
By Douglas StarrAug. 27, 2020 , 12:00 PM
Sciences COVID-19 reporting is supported by the Pulitzer Center and the Heising-Simons Foundation.
Andrea Crisanti was on a 30-hour flight from Italy to Australia for a conference on 22 February when some disturbing news appeared on his phone. Italy had just had its first COVID-19 death, and more cases were accumulating fast. He asked conference organizers to move his talk to the first day, and made the grueling trip back home after that. Its something I do not recommend, he says.
Crisanti, head of the microbiology department at the University of Padua, already knew trouble was coming and had geared up his lab to do large-scale testing for the new coronavirus. As it began to devastate his nation, Crisanti put his university and region at the forefront of the fight with an all-out campaign of testing and quarantine, even when that meant defying conventional wisdom.
A soft-spoken 65-year-old with graying hair and soft brown eyes, Crisanti has a matter-of-fact way of stating his opinionseven when he opines that something is bullshit. Hes an innovative person who knows his own worth and has confidence in his judgments, says Jules Hoffmann, a Nobel Prize winner and professor of integrative biology at the University of Strasbourg. His decisiveness helped rein in his regions outbreak and show the rest of Italy how to tame the virus, which hit the country early and hard.
Crisanti, who trained in immunology and biotechnology in Rome before spending 25 years at Imperial College London, was used to fighting another scourge: malaria. Last fall, the University of Padua recruited him to continue his research on genetic strategies to block mosquito reproduction. But when news about the coronavirus began to emerge from China, Crisanti immediately shifted his focus.
In late January, when Chinese scientists published the genetic sequence of the new coronavirus, Crisanti began to test university students returning from China, symptomatic or not. He had conducted a few hundred tests when the regional health department told him to stop. Guidelines from the World Health Organization and Italys National Institute of Health said to test only patients with symptoms, he was told. Crisanti says the restriction made no sense: I know very few infectious diseases where asymptomatic people do not play a major role.
Thats where things stood when he got word of the first Italian COVID-19 fatality. The patient was from Vo, a prosperous village in the region of Veneto, about 50 kilometers west of Venice. The regions governor ordered a 2-week quarantine of the town and testing of almost all 3300 residents. Anyone who tested positive was put on lockdown.
At the time, anecdotal reports were emerging from China about asymptomatic transmission, but no one had produced definitive evidence. Crisanti saw Vo as an ideal place to conduct an epidemiological experiment: a small population, universally tested, whose progress could be monitored closely. He got approval to retest everyone in the village 9 days after the first round of testing.
The numbers confirmed his thinking about asymptomatic transmission. In the first round of testing, 73 residents were positive for the virus. More than 40% of them had no symptoms yet had levels of the virus similar to those who were visibly ill. The Vo study also confirmed that isolating people helps stem transmission. Everyone who had tested positive was confined to their home, regardless of whether they had symptoms. By the second round of testing, a week and a half later, the number of positives had dropped to 29; they, too, were isolated. A third round of tests 2 months after the second found no positive cases.
If you want to eliminate a cluster you have to lock down the village [or neighborhood], test everybody, and isolate the positives, Crisanti says. It really works.
Crisanti persuaded the regional government of Veneto to test anyone with even the mildest of symptoms, and to trace and test their contacts as well. The effort targeted medical personnel and essential workers, such as supermarket cashiers. It helped that Veneto has a long tradition of taking strong public health measures, dating back to the invention of the quarantine during the 14th century plagues. (The word quarantine is derived from the word for 40 days in an old Venetian dialectthe period for which incoming ships had to anchor in the harbor to avoid bringing in plague.) The regions infrastructure was ready for a pandemic, with a health care policy that emphasizes decentralized primary care. In this case,that meant sending well-equipped nurses to test people at home or admitting them to small local hospitals with dedicated COVID-19 units.
In contrast, neighboring Lombardy, the prosperous region in which Milan is located, has emphasized large, urban hospitals offering first-rate surgical and specialty care. That system backfired in the pandemic, funneling sick people into the hospitals, which in turn became sources of infection. Lombardy became the worst affected region of Italy, with 2.5 times the number of cases and four times the number of deaths per capita as Veneto.
From the beginning, Crisanti was prescient. In late January he ordered enough reagent to process half a million swabs; then had his lab analyze the reagents and begin to produce its own. Thus, when other regions were running short, Veneto had a surplus of reagents. Later he ordered a piece of equipment that could process tests at high speed, tracking down a demo machine in London when he couldnt procure one through the usual means because of heightened demand from the pandemic. We got the only one in Italy, he says. The machine quadrupled his laboratorys throughput to more than 6000 swabs per day. Along the way, Veneto became an example of the value of extensive testing, tracing, and isolationand ensuring the means to do it.
Newspapers hailed Crisanti as the father of the swabs, and the rebel scientist, for his defiance of official policy in the early days of the pandemic. He received the Lion of Veneto award for his service to the region, the seal of the city of Padua, and was honored by a special concert in Vo. Yet it hasnt all been smooth. As the outbreak began to abate, the regions governor, Luca Zaia, downplayed Crisantis contribution in comments to the press and claimed that he and his government deserved credit for taming the virus. Eager to reopen Veneto for tourism, Zaia became irritated by Crisantis insistence to go slow and turned to other scientists for advice. The freeze-out became so severe that in July, Crisanti said he would resign from the regions advisory board, only to be talked out of it by colleagues and admirers.
Now, theres a truce between the scientist and the politician. It may have been a joint effort, says Antonio Cassone, professor emeritus of medical microbiology at the University of Perugia. But Andrea proved essential.
Moving forward, Crisanti is analyzing the genetic and blood samples his team collected during the Veneto outbreak to learn more about individual susceptibility and antibody response. He remains undaunted by his encounter with politics. The most important thing is to convey simple, clear, and honest messages, he says. And if you dont know something just say it openly. People need to know the truth.
Phones rang across Pinellas County late Monday afternoon, all receiving the same message from the school district.
Please remember: If anyone in your household has tested positive for COVID-19, no members of your household should come to school until you have received direction from the Department of Health or the School District, said Sara OToole, the districts health services manager.
And if your student has been tested for COVID-19, but is awaiting test results, your student and all other members of the household must not come to school until they receive a negative test result.
The reminder was critical for all families and not just in Pinellas as thousands of masked children are returning to their classrooms this week and next during the coronavirus pandemic. But it particularly resonated for those attending Northeast High in St. Petersburg, where a student attended classes all day before getting a call with positive test results.
A quarantine order quickly followed for the students and staff who had been exposed. A separate email alert arrived soon after.
Chatter ensued on social media, where the order of the day was annoyance.
Its irritating that parents would send a student to school while they were still waiting for results, said Julie Campbell, whose daughter, Cassidy, is a Northeast junior. That just seems irresponsible. Youve now clearly brought it to school, and there are staff members with underlying medical conditions.
Questions also cropped up about how decisions get made regarding who gets sent home, and why, when cases are discovered. Why, for example, did a single case at Clearwater High cause no quarantine while a single case at Carwise Middle lead to seven classrooms being told to isolate?
In Pinellas, as with other Tampa-area districts, the answer lies in the details uncovered through contact tracing.
The student at Clearwater High never came in contact with anyone at school, the district reported, while the one at Carwise Middle attended seven classes.
Its critical that we know every single place the student has been, including whether or not theyve been in the media center, whether or not theyve been in the cafeteria, which hallways theyve been in, said Tracye Brown, chief of climate and culture for Hillsborough County schools, which return to classrooms on Monday. We will look at each situation individually.
Each local district is defining exposure as being 6 feet or closer to a person with the virus for 15 minutes or longer, a guideline set by the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.
But, to allow for flexibility, theyre not setting specific rules, such as closing a school after a certain number of cases arise or a designated percentage of students and staff are exposed, said Ray Gadd, Pasco County deputy superintendent.
Were doing it on a case-by-case basis, and it really has to do with containment, Gadd said.
At the same time, he added, everyone has to be reasonable in their reactions. A student who becomes ill from over-exertion during athletic training is not the same as one who is sick from the virus, Gadd noted. If a child exhibits momentary symptoms from explainable events and quickly recovers, then they need to come back to school, he said.
Health department officials play a critical part in determining the response, district officials in Hillsborough, Pinellas and Pasco said. But equally important is the role of students, parents and staff members.
They need to understand that their actions make a difference in how widespread, or how limited, the virus can be in the schools, Pinellas superintendent Mike Grego stressed at a recent School Board meeting.
For us to be successful, every single person in this community has got to chip in, Grego said.
That means staying home if you are running a temperature of 100.4 degrees or higher, feel sick, live with someone who has COVID-19, or are waiting for test results. It also means wearing a mask, washing hands and following instructions after youve tested positive or been exposed.
In advance of students return Monday, the Hillsborough district sent parents a letter explaining the basic quarantine and isolation plans for when incidents arise. The Pinellas district rolled out a chart from the state that details the process it will follow. It also waived its attendance rules for exam exemptions, to eliminate incentives for coming to class when ill.
The Pasco district set up its own one-page chart to help its leaders make decisions.
The districts also have started to release basic information about the cases that are reported, school by school. These include instances where students or staff have not made contact with anyone else.
Its better to over share, Gadd suggested, than to under report at a time when everyone is anxious and trying to make good decisions.
Well give you all the information we have, he said. You make the call.
Times staff writer Sharon Kennedy Wynne contributed to this report.
The Oregon Health Authority reported Friday that a 29-year-old Multnomah County man with no underlying conditions died of coronavirus on Aug. 22 at Oregon Health and Science University.
The agency also reported 301 new confirmed or presumptive cases of COVID-19 Friday -- up from 212 cases reported Thursday -- and a total of nine new deaths.
The total number of reported cases in Oregon now stands at 26,054.
Multnomah County had the most reported cases Friday -- 72 -- followed by Marion county with 43 cases, Malheur County with 37 cases, Clackamas County with 27 cases and Umatilla and Washington County with 20 cases each.
As of Friday, 447 people were confirmed to have died from the virus in Oregon.
State officials also reported an outbreak of 25 cases at Milgard Windows and Doors in Washington County. According to a press release from OHA, the case count may include household members and close contacts of employees.
Where the new cases are by county: Baker (1), Benton (1), Clackamas (27), Coos (4), Deschutes (7), Douglas (3), Jackson (14), Jefferson (3), Josephine (1), Klamath (4), Lane (10), Lincoln (4), Linn (5), Malheur (37), Marion (43), Morrow (9), Multnomah (72), Polk (9), Umatilla (20), Union (2), Washington (20), and Yamhill (5).
New fatalities: The states 439th reported COVID-19 death was an 84-year-old Marion County man who died at Salem Hospital. He tested positive on Aug. 20 and died on Aug. 27. He had unspecified underlying conditions.
A 50-year-old Washington County man was the states 440th reported death from the virus. He tested positive on June 4 and died on Aug. 23. OHA is still confirming his place of death. He had unspecified underlying conditions.
A 73-year-old Umatilla County man in Umatilla County who tested positive on Aug. 9 and died on Aug. 23 was the 441st death. He died at Kadlec Regional Medical Center in Richland, Washington. OHA has not confirmed the presence of any underlying conditions.
Oregons 442nd death was also in Umatilla County. On Aug. 26, 54-year-old man from that county died at St. Anthony Hospital. He tested positive on Aug. 23. OHA has not confirmed the presence of any underlying conditions.
A 94-year-old man in Polk County died in his residence on Aug. 25 after testing positive on Aug. 11. He is Oregons 443rd death and he had unspecified underlying conditions.
The states 444th COVID-19 death is a 73-year-old Malheur County woman who died on Aug. 1. According to OHA, her death certificate listed COVID-19 disease or SARS-CoV-2 as a cause of death or a significant condition contributing to death.
A 78-year-old man in Multnomah County died in his residence on Aug. 15 after testing positive on July 26. He had unspecified underlying conditions and was the states 445th death.
Oregons 446th COVID-19 death was a 97-year-old Malheur County woman. She died at at St. Alphonsus Regional Medical Center in Boise, Idaho. The woman tested positive on Aug. 11 and died on Aug. 13 and she had unspecified underlying conditions.
A 29-year-old Multnomah County man with no underlying conditions died of coronavirus the same day he tested positive, Aug. 22, at Oregon Health and Science University. He was the states 447th death from COVID-19 and had no underlying conditions.
-- Lizzy Acker
503-221-8052, lacker@oregonian.com, @lizzzyacker
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