Category: Covid-19

Nov. 10, 2021Updated: Nov. 10, 2021 11:32a.m.

Children age 5-11 are now eligible to get the COVID-19 vaccine.

The hot topic in text message threads, on social media and among parents on the sidelines at kids' sporting events is the COVID-19 vaccine now being available for elementary-age children.

Will your child get the shots?

Reach Kristi Gustafson on

Kristi Gustafson Barlette is a features writer who writes about what is trending in your life and in hers. You can reach her at kbarlette@timesunion.com.

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Poll: Parents, will you have your young children vaccinated against COVID-19? - Albany Times Union

After March Madness had to be canceled in 2020, fans were undoubtedly excited to see its return in 2021, just a few months after the first COVID-19 vaccines had become available.

But the vaccines werent available to everyone by March 2021, so venues hosting the NCAA mens basketball tournament games required masks, encouraged social distancing, and capped attendance at lower limits to reduce the risk of COVID transmission.

Alas, a new study in JAMA Network Open reveals that the tournament still played a role in transmission upticks, at least in the counties where participating teams were from. The jump in local infection rates for those counties didnt last long about a month but the new research shows that big indoor events like March Madness games remain superspreader threats without widespread vaccination, even when officials are doing their best to reduce infections with other mitigation measures.

The new study couldnt show whether the increased infections occurred because of game attendance where mask-wearing compliance wasnt great, according to another study or because of private gatherings, such as home viewing parties and sports bar get-togethers. Most likely, it was a bit of both, and both can be prevented when nearly everyone is vaccinated.

Basically, the researchers compared infection rates in counties that had a university team playing in the NCAA tournament with those in counties of the same state that didnt have a team playing in March Madness.

They looked at infection rates per 100,000 people before and after the tournament from Jan. 28 through May 25, 2021 and considered the countys date of exposure to be the date of that countys university teams last game in the tournament. For example, the last game played by the Michigan Wolverines was March 30, so that would be the date of exposure for Washtenaw County, the county where the University of Michigan is.

Starting eight days after the last game date of a countys participating team, that county saw a 13% increase in COVID cases that nearby counties without a participating team didnt see. In other words, if the county had a team playing, their infection rates rose 13% higher than the rates of other nearby counties starting just over a week after the game. Eight days makes sense since thats how many days after exposure most people begin to experience symptoms from an infection.

Counties with competing teams saw a continued rise in cases until just over three weeks (24 days) after the game, when infection rates were 22% higher than other counties. Then infection rates for those counties began dropping back to levels similar to nearby counties. By a month after the game, counties with a participating team didnt have significantly higher rates of COVID than other counties did.

To make sure the increase really was related to gatherings for the NCAA tournament, the researchers also compared infection rates of counties that had universities whose teams werent playing in March Madness. Those counties infection rates didnt rise above rates of other nearby counties, confirming that only counties that were home to a March Madness team were seeing a jump in infections during March Madness.

The bottom line is that March Madness led to increases in infections among spectators, whether they were gathering in private or at the games themselves. While young college students attending these games have a low risk of severe disease and hospitalization, the risk isnt zero, and those students can pass infections on to more vulnerable members of society.

The study findings dont mean people shouldnt gather for exciting events like March Madness that help us feel like were gradually getting back to normal. Instead, people attending those events, or going to watch parties at homes and sports bars, need to be vaccinated and wearing masks.

In March 2021, the vaccines werent widely available for everyone yet, so many people didnt have an opportunity to get a vaccine, especially if they were in younger, healthier groups as most college students are. That means mask-wearing would have been even more important to reduce transmission rates. Yet a study from mid-August in JAMA Network Open examined mask-wearing at the NCAA mens basketball tournament, and what they found wasnt encouraging: about one in four spectators was not correctly wearing a mask during the games.

The researchers attended five March Madness games in Indianapolis between March 30 and April 5 to count how many people wore face masks. At the time, the indoor stadium had a 22% capacity cap for attendance only about one in five seats could be filled. The stadium required masks, as did the county and state, and signs and speaker announcements reminded attendees of the requirement to wear masks.

Six observers counted who was and wasnt wearing masks at the entrance gates, concession areas, arena seating, upper-deck seating, and exit gates. If the person had a cloth face mask or disposable surgical mask covering their mouth and nose including their nostrils and extending below their chin, the observers considered that appropriate mask wearing.

From observing 21,355 spectators, only 74% of them were correctly masked. Masks were more common among women, 81% of whom were correctly wearing masks. Among men, only 70% were correctly wearing masks. Those least likely to wear masks were fans in the upper decks, where only one in three people wore masks correctly. In the arena seating, only two out of three people wore masks. Mask-wearing was most evident at concession areas, where 83% of people wore masks correctly, and at entrances, where 80% wore masks.

Public health experts have estimated that at least 80% of people need to wear masks correctly to effectively reduce spread of COVID-19, the authors note in their study, and 74% falls well short. Rates in the upper deck and arena areas were even lower, and people were able to take off their masks to eat and drink in their seats. Yet people also cheer from their seats, and yelling is a sure-fire way to spew germs into the air that could be carrying the virus.

While the more recent study looking at county rates didnt consider who attended games, its a pretty good bet that people from those counties who attended the games were among those contributing to infection spread, given those low rates of mask-wearing. Mask-wearing quite possibly could have been even lower in private gatherings at homes or in sports bars and restaurants to watch the games.

Together, these studies have a clear message: Gatherings are prime opportunities for the virus to hop from person to person, even when hosting authorities, such as officials at the venues, are doing what they can to mitigate spread by requiring masks and social distancing. Back in March 2021, it wasnt possible for everyone to be vaccinated yet, but now that it is, it makes sense that so many concert and sports venues are now requiring attendees to show proof of vaccination to attend big events.

Tara Haelle is a Dallas-based science journalist who specializes in reporting on vaccines, pediatric and maternal health, parenting, public health, mental health, medical research and the social sciences. Her most recent book, Vaccination Investigation: The History and Science of Vaccines, is a starred Kirkus book. This piece was originally published in Medium, and many of Haelles stories can be found at tarahaelle.medium.com.

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Study: March Madness 2021 played a role in COVID-19 transmission upticks - The Dallas Morning News

(CNN) - Covid-19 is here to stay.

It's highly unlikely that the United States, let alone the world, will be able to completely eliminate the coronavirus that causes Covid-19.

But there will come a day when it's no longer a pandemic, when cases are no longer out of control and hospitals aren't at great risk of overflowing with patients. Many experts predict the spread of coronavirus will look and feel more like seasonal influenza.

What's less clear is how and when that will happen.

"There's not even a measurement to say that something is an epidemic or pandemic. All of this is in the eye of the beholder -- and that's part of the issue," Dr. Arnold Monto, a professor of epidemiology at the University of Michigan and acting chair of the US Food and Drug Administration's Vaccines and Related Biological Products Advisory Committee, told CNN.

"So, all of this is not based on rules. It's based typically on what you have to do to control the outbreak," Monto said. "What is so different here is that our vaccines are much more effective than what we usually see."

The good news, according to Monto, is the power of vaccines. The bad news comes with the power of the virus to change and evolve.

No one can predict what the future of Covid-19 could look like -- and the emergence of coronavirus variants, like Delta, has shifted the trajectory, he said.

"With the change in transmission patterns, as the variants have emerged -- I call it a parade of variants -- we now see much more extensive transmission and much more uniform spread globally. This makes declaring the end of the pandemic more difficult," Monto said. "Because the whole pattern of spread has changed, and there may still be pockets that really haven't gone through the kind of waves that the rest of the world has gone through."

Monto and other public health leaders anticipate that in the future, the world could track the spread of SARS-CoV-2, the coronavirus that causes Covid-19, in ways similar to how the seasonal flu is monitored.

"We have no idea whether we're going to see that kind of seasonal pattern with SARS-CoV-2, but it does remind us that most of our respiratory viruses start behaving as seasonal events," Monto said.

"There is the precedent for a very seasonal pattern for some of the coronaviruses that have been infecting people," he added. "Whether SARS-CoV-2 starts to behave like that, we don't know, but at least it gives us one scenario that it might start to behave like that."

As Monto put it, we have to "wait and see and hold our breath" to unlock what an endemic phase of the coronavirus might look like.

Endemic means that a disease has a constant presence in a population -- but it's not affecting an alarmingly large number of people as typically seen in a pandemic. Even in early 2020, as the pandemic was ramping up, officials at the World Health Organization predicted that the novel coronavirus "may become another endemic virus in our communities" and never go away.

"When you think about pandemics, you're in the pandemic phase and then you have a deceleration phase, then you have a control phase, then hopefully you'll have elimination and maybe eradication," Dr. Anthony Fauci, director of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases, told the US Senate Committee on Health, Education Labor & Pensions in a hearing on Thursday.

"What we hope to get it at is such a low level that even though it isn't completely eliminated, it doesn't have a major impact on public health or on the way we run our lives," Fauci said. "So, if we get more people vaccinated globally and more people vaccinated now, hopefully within a reasonable period of time we will get to that point where it might occasionally be up and down in the background but it won't dominate us the way it's doing right now."

While the US Department of Health and Human Services last month renewed its determination that a public health emergency still exists in the United States due to Covid-19, federal health officials already are thinking about how to measure the end of the pandemic and how to continue to track the coronavirus once it becomes endemic.

To transition from pandemic to endemic, the nation has to build up immunity to the coronavirus -- which means many more people need to get vaccinated, Dr. Philip Landrigan, a pediatrician and epidemiologist at Boston College, told CNN.

With some Americans still refusing to get their Covid-19 shots and some refusing to wear masks, the transition could take more time.

Currently, about 58% of the total US population is fully vaccinated against Covid-19.

"We have to get somewhere well north of 80%, possibly even well north of 90% of the population with immunity either through having had infection or through having had vaccinations," said Landrigan, who worked at the CDC for 15 years.

To control the spread of the measles virus in the US population, for instance, "we had to get the immunity rate up above 95%, and even then, we've had sporadic outbreaks. These outbreaks typically occur when you have a cluster of people in a particular place who are not immunized and all of a sudden the virus gets introduced because a traveler has come in with the virus -- and bang, you've got 20 cases of measles in some town," Landrigan said. "But that's not an epidemic. It's an outbreak against a background of almost no cases or scattered endemic cases."

For now, the CDC says there's much work to do to control the current spread of the virus.

"We know there is still much to be done to stop the spread of COVID-19 and end the pandemic. We are still seeing far too many new cases, hospitalizations, and deaths. The daily average of cases is over 70,000 a day with more than 1,000 deaths. This is why we're encouraging everyone 5 years and older get vaccinated to protect them against COVID-19," CDC spokesperson Kristen Nordlund wrote in an email to CNN last week.

"As we look forward to the fall and winter, it's important to continue practicing prevention measures that we know work -- vaccinating, wearing a mask in public, indoor settings, staying home when you are sick, and washing your hands frequently."

Health officials are familiar with the work needed to improve vaccination rates.

The CDC recommends that almost everyone 6 months and older should get a flu shot every year. But during the 2019-2020 flu season, only about half of those people -- 51.8% -- did, according to the CDC. The agency estimates that flu has caused about 12,000 to 52,000 deaths each year between 2010 and 2020.

The coronavirus has killed more than 750,000 people in the United States so far.

The battle to corral coronavirus every year may look very much like the annual fight against the flu.

"We've been thinking a lot about what an endemic phase looks like and the data that we're needing to collect during that phase. Certainly right now we are collecting data on cases, hospitalizations, deaths," Dr. Rochelle Walensky, director of the US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, said in Thursday's Senate committee hearing. "The question is: What are going to be our best metrics moving forward? And probably modeling it on flu."

The CDC collaborates with health departments, laboratories, hospitals and health care providers to track diagnosed flu cases, determine what influenza viruses are circulating and measure the impact those viruses are having on hospitalizations and deaths.

One idea is that when the coronavirus becomes endemic, a similar tracking system could be used to monitor the pathogen.

"We could handle the cases just like we do with seasonal flu -- where we're able to say we know we're going to see a number of cases in the winter season, and we can have the right staffing, we can have the right supplies ready and we're ready to handle it, as opposed to the surges that we've been dealing with here," Dr. Stephen Parodi, national infectious disease leader for Kaiser Permanente, told CNN.

"I'm still on phone calls talking about what's our ICU bed capacity? What's our supplies chains that we need to provide care to patients? Do we have enough medication? Do we have enough monoclonal antibodies?" Parodi said. "We have a lot more work to still do to get to where we want to be, and I think we're going to see this transition over year 2022. But for some locales, where there's less immunity, it's going to be a longer run."

Even flu is unpredictable, and doctors have seen a lot of flu over the years.

"We know there are going to be cases," Monto said. "With the flu, we've had experience with flu pandemics before. So we know typically the way they behave. This has been an evolving situation with a totally novel pathogen."

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What the end of the Covid-19 pandemic could look like - WFSB

Any C-suite executive looking to lure workers back into the office has likely spent more time thinking about indoor air quality and ventilation over the past year-and-a-half than at any other point in their pre-pandemic life.

That's because healthy buildings have become the latest enticement to bring employees back into the office. As people slowly return to in-person work, they're naturally concerned with how safe they'll be. Companies continue to reassure workers that desks, computer keyboards, elevator buttons, and every other public surface are being sufficiently sanitized.

But now they're also paying closer attention to how healthy the air is inside those buildings and the impact this can have not only on preventing the spread of Covid-19 and other respiratory ailments but how air quality can affect cognitive function.

"I don't think business people realize the power of buildings to not only keep people safe from disease but to lead to better performance," said Joseph G. Allen, Harvard's T.H. Chan School of Public Health associate professor and director of the Harvard Healthy Buildings program at the CNBC Workforce Executive Council summit on Wednesday. "Greater ventilation leads to significantly better cognitive function performance of employees. It's good for worker health and productivity."

Allen said the increased interest in the air quality inside buildings stems from a better understanding of how Covid-19 spreads. Cleaning surfaces and obeying the six-foot distancing rule made sense when the belief was that the virus spread through droplets emitted when we coughed or sneezed and these droplets couldn't travel further than six feet.

The reality is that Covid-19 is spread through respiratory aerosols that travel well beyond six feet, Allen said. "When we're talking, coughing, sneezing, or just breathing, we're constantly emitting respiratory aerosols of different sizes," he added. "If we're infected, those particles carry the virus and can travel across any room and stay aloft for hours. The droplet dogma is over."

An under-ventilated room or building means these respiratory aerosols will build up and can infect someone well beyond that six-foot distance. "All of the big outbreaks we've seen have the same characteristics," Allen said. "Time indoors in an under-ventilated space. It doesn't matter if it's spin class, choir practice, or a restaurant. It's the same fundamental underlying factors that are driving transmission."

Businesses can take action to counter this, Allen said. "Just like we've made great gains in public health around sanitation, water quality, and food safety, indoor air quality is going to be part of that conversation moving forward," he said.

Employees wear protective masks at a JLL office in Menlo Park, California, U.S., on Tuesday, Sept. 15, 2020.

David Paul Morris | Bloomberg | Getty Images

The first step is for building managers to determine what systems are in place and if they are operating as they were designed to do. "It seems obvious, but oftentimes we put equipment in and then leave it for 10 or 15 years and never give it a tune-up like we do our cars," Allen explained.

Maximizing the amount of outdoor air coming into the building is another step to take. And finally, Allen said air filters should be upgraded to what's called MERV 13. (MERV stands for minimum efficiency reporting value.) He explained that a typical building has a MERV 8 filter that captures about 20% of airborne particles. A MERV 13 filter will capture closer to 90% or more of those particles.

Not only will these higher-grade filters improve air quality to help reduce the spread of viruses, but they can also help workers improve their performance.

Allen's team at Harvard recently released a study looking at workers from around the world for a year. Each had air quality sensors placed at their desks. A custom-designed smartphone app enabled these workers to take brief cognitive function tests. Allen found that the people with better air ventilation and lower particle levels performed significantly better on these tests than people working in areas where the air quality is worse.

"The beautiful thing about all this is that healthy building strategies help protect against infectious disease, but they're also good for worker health, productivity, and performance," Allen said.

In his 2020 book, "Healthy Buildings: How Indoor Spaces Drive Performance and Productivity" which he co-wrote with Harvard Business School lecturer John D. Macomber, Allen said they show how better air quality and ventilation can lead to bottom-line gains for businesses. His Harvard research and financial simulations found that the benefits of higher ventilation alone are estimated to be between $6,500 and $7,500 per person, per year. In an April 2020 Harvard Business Review article that he co-authored with Macomber, Allen cites researchers at Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory estimating that improving indoor air quality in offices could add as much as $20 billion annually to the U.S. economy.

"Since the late 1970s, in response to the global energy crisis, we started to tighten up our buildings and in the process choked off the air supply in an effort to conserve energy," Allen said. In doing so, we ushered in the sick building era.

"It's no surprise that we have high levels of indoor air pollution and sick buildings where people can't concentrate in conference rooms and constantly feel sleepy at work," he said.

And contrary to what many think, it's not just new, modern buildings that can be health-focused. "Any building can be a healthy building and it's not hard to do and it's not that expensive," he added. "In fact, I would argue that healthy buildings aren't expensive. Sick buildings are what's expensive."

To join the CNBC Workforce Executive Council, apply at cnbccouncils.com/wec.

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Healthy buildings can help stop Covid-19 spread and boost worker productivity - CNBC

News 12 Staff

Nov 08, 2021, 11:37am

Updated on: Nov 08, 2021, 11:53am

Infections in New York are back on the rise.

The latest numbers released from Gov. Kathy Hochul's office Sunday show the positivity rate at 2.65%. That's up from Friday. Across the state, 25 new deaths were reported.

In the Mid-Hudson region, the infection rate was up slightly to 1.85%. Two deaths were reported in our area - both in Dutchess County.

Meanwhile, the CDC says 80% of all Americans ages 18 and up have received at least one dose of the COVID-19 vaccine, and 70% of adults are fully vaccinated.

In New York, that number is slightly higher. The CDC reports that more than 79% of New Yorkers 18 and over are fully vaccinated.

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COVID-19 infection on the rise in New York - News 12 Bronx

NEW MEXICO(KRQE) Monday will be another nice day after a gorgeous weekend. Temperatures are cool as usual this morning, but daytime temperatures will warm back into the 70s and 80s, with near-record daily highs. Rounds of high clouds will move in throughout the day, and winds will be breezy around the higher terrain. WSW winds around 5-15 mph are expected for most. However, the high terrain will see winds up to around 20-25 mph with some occasional gusts over 30 mph.

The next storm will move into the southwest Tuesday through Thursday. Moisture will arrive in the form of cloud cover Monday and Tuesday, with a slight chance for a stray shower in the northern and western high terrain Tuesday afternoon through the night. The state will likely stay completely dry, due to lack of moisture. Winds will be gusty on Wednesday and breezy on Thursday. Temperatures will cool down throughout the week behind the cold front.

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Pfizer COVID-19 sales on track to hit $36 billion - KRQE News 13

LITTLE ROCK, Ark. Hospitalizations due to COVID-19 in Arkansas went up Sunday. Active cases, though, are down after two days of increasing.

The number of hospitalizations from COVID-19 in Arkansas went up by 10 in the last 24 hours, rising to 290. Of the hospitalized patients, 73 are on ventilators, a decrease of three.

The Arkansas Department of Health released data Sunday showing that active cases went down, falling by 52 to 4,580.

Health officials say there were 266 new cases of the virus, moving the states total so far during the pandemic to 516,245.

Health officials also reported 14 more deaths from the virus, raising the states total to 8,497. The number of total deaths in Arkansas is now greater than the population of Montgomery County, which has a population of 8,484.

ADH reported 6,627 new COVID-19 vaccine doses were administered in Arkansas in the last 24 hours. Fully immunized Arkansans increased to 1,409,098 while Arkansans partially vaccinated are at 291,894.

We continue to see a lower level of COVID throughout Arkansas today compared the past few months, Gov. Asa Hutchinson said in a Tweet. Our vaccine efforts are critical to preventing another increase in cases.

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COVID-19 in Arkansas: Hospitalizations increase, active cases go down - KNWA

Clayton County Schools to host Wednesday virtual town hall on COVID-19   The Atlanta Journal Constitution

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Clayton County Schools to host Wednesday virtual town hall on COVID-19 - The Atlanta Journal Constitution

NEW YORK New York City is giving children a chance to get the COVID-19 vaccine while at school as vaccine clinics open at city schools all week.

As long as a students parent gives permission, children ages 5 to 11 can get inoculated.

From Monday, Nov. 8 through Monday, Nov. 15, vaccination sites will pop up in every city school that serves kids ages 5 to 11, Mayor Bill de Blasio announced last week.

Over the course of a week, 1,070 school vaccination sites will be set up, with over 200 school sites open each day.

No appointments will be necessary.

Those interested in getting their child vaccinated at their school can find the schedule at Schools.NYC.GOV/COVID19.

Mayor-elect Eric Adams made headlines over the weekend, saying he is hopeful students will be able to stop wearing masks in school by the end of the year.

Schools Chancellor Meisha Ross Porter, however, said masks are a part of our layered approach to safety, especially with some students unvaccinated and under the age of five. Were still leaning into what the science is telling us.

Last weeks panel of doctors and experts from the Food and Drug Administration and the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention signed off on the Pfizer dose for school-age children, making way for a hopeful new era in the 20-month long pandemic.

Side effects have been mild in the kids trials, and to entice families during the holiday season, the city is offering $100 to each child who gets vaccinated at city-run sites.

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NYC schools host pop-up vaccination sites this week - WPIX 11 New York

DENVER (KDVR) New modeling estimates 1 in 48 people in Colorado are infected with COVID-19, continuing a trend of worsening case transmission in the state.

The number of people currently infected is approaching the highest levels of the pandemic, according to the modeling report released Friday evening by the Colorado Department of Public Health and Environment and Colorado School of Public Health.

Colorado is among just 11 states with a rising number of cases, showing the second-steepest rise among them, the report states. Infections and hospitalizations have increased here for the last two-and-a-half months.

The report found the growth in COVID cases is concentrated in regions with low vaccination and adults 65 and older.

This pattern suggests that both pockets of unvaccinated populations and waning immunity are drivers of the current increase, the report states.

The news comes on the same day the state said it has just 815 hospital beds available throughout the entire state.

The report shares the same message health officials have repeated over and over again: More people need to get vaccinated to reverse this trend.

An increase in the rate of booster vaccinations in eligible adults and vaccinations in children ages 5 to 12 who are now eligible for vaccination will prevent hundreds of deaths and thousands of hospitalizations in Colorado, Dr. Jon Samet, professor of epidemiology and dean of the Colorado School of Public Health, said in a press release.

The modeling report estimates 62% of Coloradans are immune by vaccination or by prior infection.

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1 in 48 infected with COVID-19 in Colorado - FOX 31 Denver