Category: Covid-19

Science's COVID-19 reporting is supported by the Pulitzer Center and the Heising-Simons Foundation

Until this year, Akiko Iwasaki's lab had never handled so many tubes of human blood. We were mostly working with mouse models, says the Yale University immunologist, who speaks precisely and thoughtfully. We used to look at the data and contemplate it. Then COVID-19 struck, and such unhurried musings flew out the window. In a matter of weeks, Iwasaki overhauled her research to launch a slew of studies on how the new virus, SARS-CoV-2, takes its toll on patients. She and her nearly two dozen lab members know their discoveries could impact people falling sick right now. Every minute counts.

In the months since, she has produced a string of high-profile papers by redirecting her expertise in the immune system, honed in mice, to questions such as why men are more likely to get severely ill and how immune responses in hospitalized patients can help predict their prognosis. Now, she is turning her attention to long-haulers, people who suffer a bout with the virus and don't fully recover.

Iwasaki has had decades of practice adapting to new circumstances. As a child growing up in rural Japan, she dreamed of becoming a poet, turned off science by her physicist father's immersion in his profession. We'd go on vacation and he'd bring papers with him, she says, laughing. I thought, What kind of life is this? But when a high school teacher hooked her on math, she began to reconsider. Soon after, 9 months as an exchange student in Canada left her itching to escape the expectations for a woman in Japanese societymarry a nice man and have a family. Her mother, who worked at a local radio station, had endured jeers from co-workers for sticking with the job while raising three children. Knowing how much she stood up for always has stayed with me, Iwasaki says.

So she reimagined her future, embracing science and leaving Japan. She enrolled as an undergraduate at the University of Torontofalling hard for immunology her senior year thereand stayed on for graduate school. Twenty years ago she founded her lab at Yale, where she studies how the body responds to and combats viruses. Having to adapt to different situations throughout my life, she says, prepared me [for] a different virus.

The shift called for new science, new collaborations, and new skills. In February, Iwasaki's lab joined a universitywide testing effort for SARS-CoV-2 led by Albert Ko, Nathan Grubaugh, and Anne Wyllie at Yale's School of Public Health. Alice Lu-Culligan, a graduate student of Iwasaki's who had been studying the immune system during pregnancy in mice, recalls the scramble. Lab members scouted for supplies such as swabs and equipment. We were going around our floor, to the neighboring labs, seeing how many PCR [polymerase chain reaction] machines they had, Lu-Culligan says. It was full-on sprint mode, collaboration and chaos.

Having to adapt to different situations throughout my life prepared me [for] a different virus.

Akiko Iwasaki, Yale University

Iwasaki's lab began to help Grubaugh's group sequence viral genomes from early patients in Connecticut to map the spread there and across the United States. She also launched a separate study to examine patients' immune responses, recruiting 113 people with COVID-19 at Yale New Haven Hospital and redeploying skills in her lab to make the project happen. Postdoctoral fellow Carolina Lucas had been studying the mosquito-borne chikungunya virus, and her project was housed in a biosafety level 3 lab at the university, the kind used for hazardous pathogens. Akiko asked me to coordinate this, says Lucas, who quickly agreed.

Every few days, the team collected samples from the nose, throat, and blood of patients. There were all these weird immune responses being engaged, Iwasaki says. In severe cases, the immune system churned out a flood of cytokine proteins. Lucas, Iwasaki, and others found four immune signatures that appeared to correlate with later outcomes. That paper appeared in Nature in July.

Swiftly, the scientific questions mushroomed. In mid-March, the Yale hospital treated a woman with COVID-19 who was in her second trimester of pregnancy. The woman lost her fetusand a private tragedy became interwoven with urgent questions about whether the virus could infect the placenta and pose a danger to a pregnancy. A collaborator of Iwasaki's secured permission to collect the placenta, and late one night, Lu-Culligan retrieved it. Until that moment, the only placentas Lu-Culligan had seen belonged to mice. This is big and bloody, she says, and as she stared at it under a biosafety hood, I'm thinking, I don't know what I'm doing here.

In that case, the virus had indeed infected the placenta, and Lu-Culligan began to collaborate with Yale obstetricians to recruit women delivering at the hospital who were positive for the virus to study their placentas, too. That paper is nearing completion.

Meanwhile, Iwasaki began to investigate sex differences and found the male immune system is more likely to spark a harmful inflammatory response to the virus, whereas in women, T cells that fight it off are activated more robustly. These distinctions, she reported in an August paper in Nature, might help explain why men who are infected tend to fare worse than women.

Iwasaki's juggling act impresses her colleagues. She's made it seem so effortless, even though I know it's probably not effortless at all, says Angela Rasmussen, a virologist at Columbia University's Mailman School of Public Health. Iwasaki's husband, Ruslan Medzhitov, is also a well-known Yale immunologist (they discuss COVID-19 while walking their dog), and the pair has two daughters, ages 11 and 13. Iwasaki fears the pandemic is widening the gender gap in science as women face disproportionate pressure to support their children when schools are closed. Her husband drives their daughters to in-person school each morning, but with COVID-19 cases climbing, she wonders how much longer schools will be open.

Solutions to a COVID-19fueled gender gap in science are elusive, she says, other than to really have a different mindset about evaluating progress in science during this time. Iwasaki has long advocated for female and minority scientists on Twitter, where she has 80,000 followers. In one post, she minced no words in advising female scientists who worry about pregnancy torpedoing a job interview: If they don't welcome you with open arms and offer child care options, they don't deserve you.

Her advocacy goes beyond rhetoric. Lu-Culligan met Iwasaki at a luncheon for women in science at Yale, while struggling with bullying and harassment in another lab. Iwasaki said, We have to get you out of there, Lu-Culligan recalls. A few months later, the young scientist abandoned more than 2 years of graduate work to start over with Iwasakilater learning that she wasn't the first person her new mentor had rescued from a miserable experience elsewhere.

Some 8 months into the pandemic, lab life has settled downsomewhat. Iwasaki's latest passion is long-haulers who can't shake symptoms like fatigue and brain fog. Volunteers find her via word of mouth. The project faces hurdles, though: Iwasaki is hunting for a facility to draw blood from her volunteers, who are still symptomatic and potentially contagious. With many competing studies, such space is at a premium and she hasn't yet been able to secure any. She's also racing to apply for grants to fund the project.

We really want to get to the bottom of what's going on, she says impatiently. Until thenalong with so many other researchersshe'll be in overdrive.

Read more:

How an immunologist pivoted to tackle COVID-19 - Science

International climate talks are just more hot air. That is a common running narrative that lies beneath a decade of coverage, whether reporters criticize weak emissions targets, expect only a spirit of cooperation, or note failure to even agree on timelines. But this year, something is different. COVID-19 has led to the postponement of next months annual Conference of the Parties (COP) to November 2021. A year without a COP has people asking: What will the impact be on future climate action? How do we facilitate more climate discussion? Suddenly, we want more climate talks.

This may seem like a contradiction of sorts, but the reality is that international agreements are only one product of these negotiations. Many of the successes of COP are difficult to quantify or hidden in national climate policies. Informal conversations between international stakeholders at COP can become leverage for policy change at home, as seen in the case of Chiles ambitious voluntary coal retirement scheme. Based on 24 interviews with senior Chilean officials and decisionmakers, and members of the private sector and civil society groups, we were able to uncover some of how these talks influenced Chiles own climate policies.

In 2017, at COP23 in Bonn, efforts to combat coal were front and center. The U.K. and Canada had just launched the Powering Past Coal Alliance, a coalition of countries that commit to phase out coal power by 2030. Despite the high-profile launch, many countriesincluding Chilenever signed on to the pledge. But just over a year later, Chile announced its own plan to retire its entire fleet of coal-fired power plants. What happened?

There were a handful of key developments in the aftermath of COP23. As it turns out, Marcelo Mena, the Chilean minister of environment, was interested in the Powering Past Coal Alliance (PPCA). Mena had been focused on air pollution during his tenure at the ministry, and phasing out coal would hit two birds with one stone: local air pollution and global climate change. However, when representatives of Chiles electricity generation companies heard that Mena wanted to move forward with a coal phaseout following the PPCA model, they were not supportive. In their view, which was widespread, Chile was not ready to take on such a bold commitment without further analysis. But the generators were ready to start talking about a transition. The Association of Chilean Power Generators, a trade association of private power generation companies, also argued that such a transition needed buy-in from the private sector and other stakeholders. Instead of the Chilean government signing on to the PPCA at COP23, the electricity generators offered an alternative: They would work with the Ministry of Energy and the Ministry of Environment to find a way for Chile to phase out coal on its own terms.

Mena and Minister of Energy Andres Rebolledo had only a few months before the end of the administration, so they had to work quickly. Together Mena and Rebolledo reached an agreement with Chiles major electricity generators without public spending or specific legislation attached to it. They were able to strike a deal, in part because none of the major power companies were invested exclusively in coal, and Chiles low solar costs and high solar potential made renewables a much more attractive prospect. Increasing public pressure from civil society organizations worried about air pollution had also led to a series of judicial rulings that increased scrutiny of coal power plants. In January 2018, the government of Chile and the member companies of the Association of Chilean Power Generatorsagreed that no new coal plants would be developed without carbon capture and storage, and that they would establish a roundtable to discuss the phaseout of existing plants. And when the new minister of energy, Susana Jimnez, took up her post in March, she held electricity generators to this agreement.

In June 2019, Chile officially announced that power generation companies with coal assets would commit to halt all coal generation by 2040, starting by retiring eight of its oldest plants by 2024. It is also part of a larger initiative to generate all power from renewables by 2040 and make the country carbon neutral by 2050. Chile is not a large emitter in global terms. But for a country that relies on coal for over 30 percent of its electricity generation, this is no small feat. Critics of the plan griped that it was only a voluntary agreement with the four companies that own coal assets and not nearly as ambitious as the PPCAs original goal of retiring all coal plants by 2030. But this August, the lower house of Chiles congress pushed forward a proposal that would make the voluntary agreement into a government regulation and shut down coal-fired plants by 2025.

It is unclear whether this plan will be enshrined into law, but one thing is clear: The PPCA was the catalyst. Its true that the PPCA was missing major signatories, such as Germany, Australia, the United States, and China. And yet its very existence was used as leverage to bring Chiles energy companies to the table. There are certainly other factors that enabled Chile to reach this coal retirement planfew domestic coal reserves and a shift away from coal by multinational energy corporations helpedbut Minister Menas interactions with the Powering Past Coal Alliance may prove to be the inflection point in Chiles decarbonization process.

Next month was supposed to see the kickoff of COP26 in Glasgow. It would have run from November 9-19, and there undoubtedly would have been a lot of discussions that led nowhere and promises that went unfulfilled. Given the increasingly dire climate situation, the public and experts are justified in being jaded about climate talks and climate inaction. International agreements are difficult to formalize because countries ultimately need to respond to the political economy of their respective nations when crafting ambitious climate policy. But its important to appreciate what conversations at COP can mean for climate policy at home. Because of the COVID-19 pandemic, these conversations have been postponed, along with the opportunities that they represent. Lets hope we have a year to spare.

This article draws on original research conducted with partners at the Duke University Energy Access Project and Universidad Diego Portales in Santiago. The full story of Chiles transition from coal will be published in mid-2021 as part of a forthcoming book on the political economy of coal transitions, led by the Mercator Research Institute on the Global Commons and Climate Change in Berlin.

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What COVID-19 has cost the climate - Brookings Institution

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Alaska on Thursday reported six deaths and 355 new cases of COVID-19, according to the Department of Health and Social Services COVID-19 dashboard.

An Anchorage man in his 40s died recently, according to the state health department. The five additional deaths reported on Thursday were identified during a standard death certificate review, and they involved two Anchorage men in their 70s, one of whom died out of state; an Anchorage woman in her 80s; a Fairbanks woman in her 80s; and a woman from the Prince of Wales-Hyder Census Area in her 70s.

In total, 77 Alaskans with the virus have died since the start of the pandemic.

While Alaskas death rate per capita remains among the lowest in the country, six deaths is the most reported in a single day by the state. The last time this many deaths were recorded in a single day was Sept. 25, but DHSS said at the time that several of those deaths had not occurred recently and were identified by the National Center for Health Statistics.

Thursdays daily new case tally follows more than a month of triple-digit daily increases, including a record 526 cases reported Sunday and 381 on Tuesday.

A record 67 people were hospitalized with the virus in Alaska as of Thursday, up from the previous record of 63 on Wednesday. An additional 22 people suspected of having COVID-19 were also hospitalized.

Of the 349 new cases reported among residents on Thursday, there were 129 cases in Anchorage; 44 in Wasilla; 20 in Eagle River; 20 in Palmer; 15 in Soldotna; 14 in Kenai; 13 in Chevak; 13 in Kodiak; 11 in Fairbanks; seven in Juneau; five in Chugiak; five in Sterling; four in North Pole; four in Utqiagvik; four in Delta Junction; three in Ketchikan; three in Bethel; two in Petersburg; two in Hooper Bay; two in Sitka; one in Homer; one in Nikiski; one in Big Lake; and one in Meadow Lakes.

Among communities smaller than 1,000 people that are not named to protect privacy, there were 11 in the Bethel Census Area; five in the northern Kenai Peninsula Borough; four in Yukon-Koyukuk Census Area; one in the southern Kenai Peninsula Borough; one in Southeast Fairbanks Census Area; one in the Matanuska-Susitna Borough; one in the Aleutians West Census Area; and one in Bristol Bay plus Lake and Peninsula boroughs.

There were also six nonresident cases reported Thursday: four in Fairbanks, one in Wasilla and one in Anchorage.

Of the new cases, it wasnt clear how many patients were showing symptoms of the virus when they tested positive. While people might get tested more than once, each case reported by the state health department only represents one person.

The states testing positivity rate continued to rise and on Thursday reached 8.1% over a seven-day rolling average a record high. A positivity rate over 5% can indicate high community transmission and not enough testing, health officials have said.

The test positivity rate was highest in the North Slope Borough at 50%, in the Kusilvak Census Area at 21.82% and in the Mat-Su Borough at 17.64%.

See more here:

Tracking COVID-19 in Alaska: 6 deaths and 355 cases reported Thursday - Anchorage Daily News

Private colleges in Florida, New York and Minnesota announced this week that they would complete the rest of the fall term with all-virtual instruction.

Bethune-Cookman University, in Daytona Beach, Fla., said in a letter to students and employees Monday that Wednesday would be the last day of in-person instruction and that it would complete the last three weeks of the fall term virtually. Officials cited a spike in COVID-19 and a desire to "begin reducing the on-campus density for the remainder of the fall semester." Bethune-Cookman's president, E. LaBrent Chrite, encouraged the historically Black institution's students to "expedite their planned departure from campus beginning this week," if they are able to, but said they could remain on campus through Nov.20. Those who remain will operate under a shelter-in-place order and a curfew.

Bethune-Cookman also became the first institution in the National Collegiate Athletic Association's DivisionI to cancel competition for the rest of the 2020-21 academic year.

"The recent spike in COVID-19 positivity rates in the state, across Volusia County and on our campus, provides clear and unambiguous evidence, in our view, that now is simply not the time to resume athletic competition," Chrite wrote. "While the decision to opt out of spring competition is the only responsible one for us at this time, it was not made lightly. We know that this decision greatly impacts our student athletes, our coaching staff, our Marching Wildcats and others."

Keuka College, in New York's Finger Lakes region, began the fall semester with in-person instruction but shifted to virtual learning three weeks ago when COVID cases emerged after a "non-sanctioned off-campus gathering," the college said in a notice Monday.

Although officials said that the number of cases had fallen from a high of 70 on Oct.15 to about a dozen now, they "decided continuing the remote-learning model is the safest course of action," the announcement said.

Keuka said that students who return home will be eligible for a room and board credit for the rest of the term, and that students who can't leave can remain.

On Tuesday, Martin Luther College, in Minnesota, announced that it would end in-person instruction this week. President Rich Gurgel said that a rising number of positive test results "and the rapidly growing number of close contacts that puts more students into quarantine have brought the day when we cannot continue in face to face instruction and still maintain our safety protocols."

On Wednesday, El Paso Community College became the latest institution to suspend in-person instruction for two weeks, hoping to slow the spread of the coronavirus. President William Serrata said the college had taken the action even though it had been exempted from a stay-at-home order issued this week by a county judge.

The coronavirus continues to wreak havoc on some college sports programs, whether they are high profile or not.

Wednesday morning, the University of Wisconsin at Madison announced that a rash of positive COVID cases among its ninth-ranked football team would force it to cancel its game this weekend with the University of Nebraska at Lincoln. The matchup of Big Ten Conference squads is one of the highest-profile college games to be called off because of the coronavirus, and one of a few to be canceled outright rather than postponed, according to a list maintained by CBS Sports.

Cuyahoga Community College, in Cleveland, announced that it would cancel its spring sports season. The college had canceled its fall and winter seasons in June, but officials said Wednesday that the renewed spread of the coronavirus in Ohio and elsewhere required this decision. "The risk of spreading COVID-19 during team activities is simply too great at this time. It would be challenging -- if not impossible -- to implement the precautions and protocols needed to ensure a safe environment during competition, practices and other aspects of athletics," a spokesman, John Horton, said.

Speaking of athletics, a report published by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention examines a COVID-19 outbreak that affected more than a third of the 45 members of an unidentified Chicago-area university's men's and women's soccer teams this fall.

The report found that the university brought athletes back to its campus in June and required two negative tests before they could participate in team activities. In August one member of the men's team reported COVID-like symptoms to a coach and said he had attended a birthday party and an unsanctioned soccer match involving the men's and women's teams in the preceding two weeks.

The CDC interviewed all 45 athletes and concluded that there had been 18 social gatherings (in addition to the coed soccer game) during the two-week period. Several of the gatherings were seen as the likely spreading incidents, at which relatively little mask wearing was reported.

"This outbreak highlights challenges to implementation of prevention strategies associated with persuading students at colleges and universities to adopt and adhere to recommended mitigation measures outside campus," the CDC report said. "University protocols mandated mask use during training sessions, and coaching staff members reported universal compliance. However, multiple students reported inconsistent mask use and social distancing at social gatherings, which quickly negated the benefits of pretraining testing, on-campus mask use, and social distancing prevention measures."

Excerpt from:

COVID-19 roundup: Finishing the fall term virtually; sports cancellations into the spring - Inside Higher Ed

A local resident arrives to cast her ballot during early voting for the general election on Oct. 20 in Adel, Iowa. A new analysis by NPR, the Center for Public Integrity and Stateline reveals that since 2016, 261 polling places in the state have been closed, most due to COVID-19. Charlie Neibergall/AP hide caption

A local resident arrives to cast her ballot during early voting for the general election on Oct. 20 in Adel, Iowa. A new analysis by NPR, the Center for Public Integrity and Stateline reveals that since 2016, 261 polling places in the state have been closed, most due to COVID-19.

This story was co-reported by Iowa Public Radio News, the Center for Public Integrity and NPR.

The New Hope Missionary Baptist Church in Waterloo. The senior high school in Fort Dodge. The Masonic Temple in Council Bluffs.

Iowa voters won't be able to cast their ballot at any of those polling places this Election Day because of hundreds of closures and consolidations that have rippled across the state due to the coronavirus pandemic.

"All of us, we are going to have to look up where we need to go. I mean, I'm not sure which place I would go," said Sheena Thomas, a voter in Des Moines. "That's going to be an issue for everybody."

Thomas wasn't able to vote at her usual polling site this year, a senior care center on the west side of the city. She decided it would be easier to vote absentee instead.

"There's precinct numbers and House district numbers and there's Senate district numbers and which one of those is used for my polling place?" she asked. "I am pretty sure of its precinct number, but even so, that's not readily available in your head."

Everything about the act of voting in 2020 has been shaken by COVID-19. A record number of ballots have been cast early, either by mail or in person. All over the country, sports teams are turning over their arenas to be used as large-scale, socially distanced polling places.

But in some states, the pandemic has also meant a reduction in the number of polling places, a potential roadblock for voters amid a period of already-heightened stress and confusion. (Find your polling place anywhere in the U.S. here or use Iowa's tool to find polling places in that state.)

Since the 2016 general election, Iowa has lost 261 polling places, according to an analysis by the Center for Public Integrity, Stateline and NPR. The polling place changes vary across the state; while some counties are able to keep all of their sites open, others must close or consolidate half.

Overall, this affects some 670,000 Iowans, 30% of the state's registered voters. Those affected by the changes overwhelmingly live in the state's urban areas, which reliably vote Democratic. And the closures are happening at a time of multiple competitive races in the state, including the presidential contest.

Chris Helps of Earlham, Iowa, makes his way to the ballot box during early voting on Oct. 20 in Adel, Iowa. Charlie Neibergall/AP hide caption

Chris Helps of Earlham, Iowa, makes his way to the ballot box during early voting on Oct. 20 in Adel, Iowa.

Pandemic sparks polling place consolidations

This spring, the pandemic prompted unprecedented polling place consolidations during the primaries in jurisdictions across the U.S., sparking an outcry over images of voters standing in hours-long lines in places such as Milwaukee and Atlanta.

The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention called for election administrators to "maintain or increase the total number of polling places available to the public on Election Day to improve the ability to social distance." The guidance also says to avoid increasing the number of potential registered voters assigned to each polling place "unless there is no other option."

The pandemic-related closures follow a scaling back of polling places across the country in recent years as some communities have begun voting primarily by mail or using larger "vote centers," and in the wake of a U.S. Supreme Court decision that limited federal oversight of election administration.

In 2013, the court's Shelby County v. Holder decision struck down a provision of the Voting Rights Act that required jurisdictions with a history of racially discriminatory practices to seek permission from the federal government before making changes to voting policies and procedure. Since then, voting rights advocates have expressed alarm about how polling place closures and relocations may impact communities of color in previously covered states and jurisdictions. Iowa wasn't covered.

In general, "on Election Day, we can anticipate to see long lines in areas where there have been mass closures," said Leigh Chapman, director of the voting rights program at the Leadership Conference on Civil & Human Rights, which has issued reports on polling place closures in places affected by Shelby.

Despite advocates' efforts, local election officials in Iowa have struggled to find poll workers and been kicked out of churches and community centers that don't feel comfortable hosting voters during a pandemic.

"That's just the reality. Insufficient poll workers means less polling places," said Joel Miller, the top election official in Linn County, the state's second largest.

Miller has closed or consolidated 37% of his polling places this year.

"I know that may create additional hardships on it, but you know, there's a lot of people that could be volunteering to work the polls that are choosing not to and I understand," Miller said, "but when we said that we need younger people to get involved and stand up this year, we weren't kidding."

Many, if not most Iowans are expected to vote early or absentee this cycle and voters have already broken at least one turnout record.

But for those who want to vote in person on Election Day, research has shown that polling place closures, consolidations and relocations can depress turnout.

University of Northern Iowa political scientist Chris Larimer says that's a concern this cycle.

"If there's that big of an increase in those other forms of voting, absentee or early, is that enough to offset the consolidation of polling places? Or the closure of certain polling places?" Larimer asked. "I just don't think we know yet."

Finding a new site can be time-consuming and confusing for voters. People with low incomes and people of color may be less able to overcome those barriers. Across the country, Black voters have faced longer wait times at the polls even before the pandemic.

"That's the concern, is voter suppression," Larimer said. "And/or just adding costs to the act of voting, which is something we don't want to do, because it's already hard enough to get people to the polls."

Diverse communities among those affected

The analysis by the Center for Public Integrity, Stateline and NPR found that in Black Hawk County, one of the state's most diverse areas, census tracts with more people of color lost a larger share of polling places than whiter census tracts.

Black Hawk County Auditor Grant Veeder said he didn't account for demographics when he closed or consolidated 30% of his sites. His county includes the city of Waterloo, which is home to the state's largest Black population, proportionally.

"We really didn't use that kind of demographic information," Veeder said. "We were just looking for the places that we needed to make combinations and tried to make as few of them as we could and spread them out as much as we could."

Veeder, like many local election officials, is hoping Iowans take advantage of early and absentee voting, to prevent overcrowding and longer lines at the pared-back polling places.

The prospect of decreasing access to the polls in Black communities isn't exactly surprising for Vikki Brown, chair of the Black Hawk County Democrats.

"It seems that things have always been made harder for us. But we're resilient. And we always find a way to do what we need to do," Brown said. "We overcome."

Iowa voters do have other ways to cast their ballot. Early voting in the state began on Oct. 5 and every county has at least one early voting site. Additionally, no-excuse absentee voting is much more established here than in other states, with 40% of Iowa voters casting an absentee ballot during the 2016 election.

Overall, Iowans tend to vote at higher rates than residents of other states, with turnout often hitting 70% during presidential elections.

Despite everything, Brown is optimistic that voters will find a way, even during a pandemic.

"I'm certain that it's going to make it harder for people to vote. But I am seeing a resolve right now, where people are determined," Brown said. "Whatever you do, we're going to counteract it."

As of Friday, the state had received a record number of absentee ballots.

But how these polling place changes affect turnout could have effects beyond Iowa. Races for the White House, U.S. Senate and multiple House districts in Iowa have all been labeled toss-ups.

The races are so close, Larimer says the polling place changes could affect the outcome, especially down the ballot.

Payne is a reporter for Iowa Public Radio News, Rebala is a news developer for the Center for Public Integrity, Levine is a senior reporter at the Center for Public Integrity and Talbot is a news apps developer for NPR.

See the rest here:

Hundreds Of Iowa Polling Places Shuttered Due To COVID-19 - NPR

In the familiar nursery rhyme, Humpty Dumpty fell off a great wall and couldnt be put back together again. After being broken apart by COVID-19, will public education be like Humpty, or can it be put back just as it was? The latter possibility seems simple enough: Wait until the pandemic is over and then, after a year of coping, bring all the students and teachers back into schools as if the shutdown had never happened.

But it wont be so simple. The shutdown has caused new conflicts among and between parents, teachers, employers, and district leaders, as all negotiate the details of remote learning and whether schools should begin to offer in-person instruction. The crisis has also amplified long-brewing conflicts about inequitable funding and access to quality teachers and effective instruction, as the differences between educational haves and have-nots have widened.

For now, public education is in chaos, with different schooling combinations of in-person hybrid, fully remote, and plain homeschooling evidentsometimes all in one locality. The politics now and in the foreseeable future will be fierce, just as we predicted in an earlier Chalkboard post. Even when the health crisis wanes, there will be pressures in two directions: one to put the old arrangements back into place just as they were before the pandemic hit, and the other to keep the crisis adaptations that have worked, at least for some students and their families.

We think a return to the pre-coronavirus status quo will prove impossible. Yes, there are strong pressures for a complete return to the pre-pandemic normal. According to CIVIS Analytics, of the families whose children enrolled in new options as a result of the pandemic, 82% say they would like to return to their pre-COVID-19 school once the crisis is over. States, by holding school districts harmless against enrollment losses suffered this year, are making sure the old arrangements dont collapse. Some crisis adaptations, such as learning pods for children who need help and supervision when schools are not open, depend on private investments that might dry up once the crisis is over.

But there are serious barriers to putting everything back just as it was. The pre-COVID-19 school system was a product of years of small deals, governing everything from curriculum textbook contents to district budgets to the choice of holidays. These deals reflect the politics of days gone by. Todays politics are very different.

No longer are school districts and teachers unions the only arbiters of instruction. Left without safe supervision and effective teaching, advantaged families are turning to private schools, homeschooling, and pandemic pods to fill the gaps. Families, long relegated to the outside of education, are by necessity playing a central role in shaping their childrens education. School leaders and teachers have adapted to the demands of remote learning by identifying new strategies to engage parents and students. Long-standing assumptions about when, where, and how instruction must occur are shifting in ways that make it impossible to simply return to normal.

Coronavirus-based disruptions to schools could continue until at least 2024, and worries about contagion will not go away. Lack of trust among parents about vaccinations and health practices, and worries about especially vulnerable children and teachers, will persist beyond this school year. When students do eventually return to the classroom, parents, teachers, and school systems will confront the reality of missed learning and trauma that will necessitate something other than a simple restart. Advantaged and disadvantaged families alike could demand new investments in small learning communities like pods, tutoring, and emotional support they have come to trust.

At the same time, districts will be struggling with declining enrollment and revenue losses due to the recession. If large numbers of advantaged families who have fled to schooling options outside of public education dont return, districts wont have the money to return to normal. Larger urban districts, in particular, will face mismatches between their central office structures and teacher corps as well as the demands and expectations of families.

Teachers unions have been strong opponents of a quick return to in-person schooling, but they also have a strong stake in continuing arrangements that leave negotiations over schooling behind closed doors and protect traditional uses of funds and teachers. Unions will eventually want a return to the old normal, but their memberships will likely be divided, with some teachers fearing a return to in-person schooling, some preferring new methods of instruction developed during the pandemic, and others favoring a return to in-person school. Whether teachers unions can hold together will depend upon school systems mounting effective responses to the crisis in the years to come that meet the changing needs of students, parents, and even teachers themselves.

State and local leadership also have a role to play in what happens next. States that are now requiring schools to reopen, largely led by Republicans, provide some political cover to local district leaders fighting unions resistance to in-person instruction. But partisan pressures might weaken after the election posturing ends. Even if partisan state pressures continue, these cant bypass conflicts among parents and teachers, or prevent enrollment losses. Nor will state pressures stop families, teachers, and school leaders from testing new approaches to deal with day-to-day realities and learning from the results.

Horses and men couldnt put Humpty back together, but good, new things can be built from parts. Forward-looking districts are using this moment to develop creative new possibilities, such as expanding access to their most-effective teachers via remote learning, building new learning communities to serve small groups of students in person, and expanding access to services like tutoring, mentoring, counseling, and enrichment. Some families, left with few options, have charted new paths by forming pods, joining microschools, and taking a much bigger role in ensuring their children have access to adequate instruction and social-emotional supports. Some are assembling their own combinations of in-person and online learning experiences. These efforts could supplement traditional schools or in some cases replace them.

Local leaders who can use this moment to test new approaches to delivering instruction and build new sources of political support will be better positioned to build on these approaches after the COVID-19 crisis.Regardless of how long or short a time the current pandemic lasts, the normal in politics and schooling is unlikely to return anytime soon.

More:

Can public education return to normal after the COVID-19 pandemic? - Brookings Institution

QUINCY (WGEM) -- Gov. Pritzker announced Thursday that resurgence mitigations will be implemented in Region 3 at 12:01 a.m. on Sunday November 1st.

Region 3 includes Adams, Brown, Calhoun, Cass, Christian, Greene, Hancock, Jersey, Logan, Macoupin, Mason, Menard, Montgomery, Morgan, Pike, Sangamon, Schuyler, and Scott counties.

On Tuesday the Illinois Department of Public Health (IDPH) reported a 7-day positivity rate of 8% for Region 3. That increased to 8.1% on Wednesday and 8.8% on Thursday.

According to IDPH if a region has three consecutive days averaging greater than or equal to an 8% 7-day positivity rate, the region will be placed under restrictions.

Region 3 is currently seeing an 8.8% positivity rate, an increase from 4.6% in September, a summer peak of 6.2% in August, and a low of 0.9% in June. While most regions are seeing sustained increases in both positivity and hospitalization rates, as of Thursday Region 3 is experiencing triple the amount of COVID-related hospital admissions since early September.

IDPH said it will continue to track the positivity rate in Region 3 to determine if mitigations can be relaxed, if additional mitigations are required, or if current mitigations should remain in place. If the positivity rate averages less than or equal to 6.5% for three consecutive days, then the regions will return to Phase 4 mitigations under the Restore Illinois Plan. If the positivity rate averages between 6.5% and 8%, the new mitigations will remain in place and unchanged. If the positivity rate averages greater than or equal to 8% after 14 days, more stringent mitigations may be applied to further reduce spread of the virus.

Mitigation measures taking effect Sunday November 1st in Region 3 include:

Bars

Restaurants

Meetings, Social Events, Gatherings

These mitigations do not currently apply to schools or polling places.

As of Thursday 9 of the state's 11 regions were either scheduled to be, or were currently placed under mitigation restrictions.

Something has got to give, and these mitigations aim to cut down on those high-risk activities until we bring down the positivity rate in an area once again," Gov. J.B. Prtizker said. "Because lets be clear: well-meaning and reasonable people can have fair disagreements about how and where to draw lines and connect dots, but when every single metric in every single corner of the state is trending poorly, we have to take meaningful action to keep our people safe.

This is the first time a Central Illinois region has needed to implement mitigation measures because of increasing positivity, said IDPH Director Dr. Ngozi Ezike. For those residents living in regions and communities where the virus didnt seem to be that bad, things are changing with positivity rates steadily increasing. Weve seen regions move into and then out of mitigation, so we know the measures work. The more people adhere to the measures, the quicker we can move out of mitigation.

For more information on Illinois regional COVID-19 resurgence criteria,click here.

RELATED:Pritzker: much of west central Illinois (Region 3) will likely begin mitigations over the weekendCOVID-19 restrictions starting Saturday in Lake and McHenry Counties (Region 9)Illinois Region 3 hits 7-day positivity rate of 8%2 more regions in Illinois to face COVID-19 restrictionsHalf of all Illinois counties at warning level for COVID-19Pritzker announces more restrictions for Northwestern Illinois (Region 1)Pritzker: Illinois State Police now alerted to patrol regions with heightened mitigationsResurgence mitigations to take effect in Illinois Regions 7 and 8

More:

Region 3, including Quincy and West Central Illinois, to begin COVID-19 restrictions - WGEM

ContentsIntroduction

The United States has entered a third peak of the COVID-19 pandemic, with cases spiking across the country. Many experts anticipate that the winter months will be the worst yet, and a new study projects that the U.S. could surpass 500,000 COVID-19 deaths by the end of February. As we begin this even deadlier phase of the pandemic, the countrys 50 million frontline essential workers are among the most vulnerable. Are they receiving fair compensation for the worsening hazards they face on the job?

In this report, we look at the state of hazard pay for COVID-19s frontline essential workers. We follow up on the recommendations we made in our April report, which called on Congress to pass federally mandated hazard pay. At the beginning of the pandemic, the prospects of hazard pay were bright; in April, the House of Representatives passed legislation to create a $200 billion hazard pay fund, while dozens of large companies were offering small, temporary hourly pay bumps and bonuses to frontline workers.

Seven months later, those hopes have largely been dashed. While the hazards of COVID-19 are growing worse, few frontline essential workers are receiving any hazard pay at all. Most large retail employers ended temporary pay bumps months ago, despite many companies earning record sales, eye-popping profits, and soaring stock prices. After facing strong resistance in the Republican-controlled Senate, House Democrats dropped their hazard pay proposal from their revised legislation in September. Innovative hazard pay initiatives by state governments have been among the few bright spots, but the scale of these efforts is small compared to the need.

The failure of the federal government and most employers to provide hazard pay is especially detrimental to low-wage workers, who comprise nearly half of all frontline essential workers. As the pandemic-fueled recession deepens, many of these low-wage workers face additional financial hardship on top of elevated risks of infection. Nearly half of these low-wage frontline workers are nonwhite, with Black and Latino or Hispanic workers overrepresented among critical jobs that pay less than a living wage.

Deeply rooted policy failures and structural problems underpin these inequitiesfrom a woefully inadequate minimum wage, to systemic racism, to the long-term erosion of worker power. Hazard pay is an immediate stopgap measure to ensure frontline workers earn a living wage as they shoulder extreme burdens. Its a down payment on what should be permanent, lasting change through an increased minimum wage. Heres how it can be done.

The COVID-19 pandemic has upended traditional notions of what jobs are considered dangerousand essentialas well as what workers who hold those jobs deserve to earn. Hazard pay is additional pay for performing hazardous duty or work involving physical hardship; previously, it was associated with dangerous jobs in military service, construction, or mining. Today, jobs as diverse as bus driving, warehouse jobs, and grocery work now expose employees to the deadly risks of COVID-19. Our colleagues Adie Tomer and Joseph W. Kane calculated that there are 50 million frontline workers who are in essential jobs and must physically report to work, making them vulnerable to COVID-19.

Hazard pay is a popular response to the risks that frontline essential workers face. In a May survey, more than three-quarters of Americans surveyed supported providing hazard pay or additional compensation to workers in essential jobs.

Hazard pay is also popular among frontline essential workers themselves. I believe that people who have sucked up their fear every day and marched through that door, not knowing whether today would be the day they would catch it, deserve recompense for that, said Lisa Harris, a 32-year-old cashier at a Kroger supermarket outside Richmond, Va.

Since the start of the pandemic, we spoke with dozens of frontline essential workers from a range of industries who expressed a strong desire for hazard pay while putting their lives on the line every shift. Many workers said they deserved hourly wage increases, and preferred predictable pay increases in each paycheck similar to overtime or holiday hours, rather than occasional bonuses that fail to compensate workers for each additional hour worked.

It should be an hourly raise for the duration of the pandemic, said one Walmart associate who preferred to remain anonymous, reflecting on the periodic bonuses Walmart workers receive. Because for a lot of these people working out there, four or five days a week, eight hours a day, risking their lives so much given how the virus is spreading in the country, $2 to $3 extra an hour is a start. I dont know if it is the answer, but it is a lot better than what we are getting now.

*

The case for hazard pay is especially urgent for the millions of frontline essential workers who earn low wages. From certified nursing assistants to housekeepers to farm laborers, the essential jobs that are vital to the country and require workers to risks their lives are disproportionately low-paying. We calculate that, as of 2018, nearly half (47%) of all frontline essential workers earned less than a living wage that can sustain a family.

Daryll Cox, a poultry plant worker in Virginia, is one of the nearly 19 million frontline essential workers who earn less than $15 an hour. In an interview this summer, Cox, who is Black, discussed the hardships of his job during the pandemic.

Its been a challenge for everybody, Cox said. We work around 600 people a night in a packed environment. You just have to pray and believe and hope that the person that youre working next to is not infected. He said the fear of not knowing causes great anxiety, wondering if the person working just inches away from you has it, being scared if somebody coughs or sneezes.

Cox said he enjoys his job, but laments the low wages he earns. Workers at his plant typically make $12 to $14 an hourconsiderably less than a living wage. After paying taxes and insurance, Cox said there is little left to pay bills and support a family. He said that even a small hazard pay increase would make a difference.

Were not making much, Cox said. If you add $2 to $3 an hour, youd get at least $15. To be in this environment with all the money that we know the company makes, I dont think it would set back the company at all to at least show us appreciation by giving us a $2 to $3 raise. This is the sentiments of at least 85% of other employees.

Hazard pay is one way to immediately correct the financial injustice for frontline essential workers who risk their livesand their families liveswithout the dignity of wages that can support them. But it is ultimately a stopgap measureessential workers low wages reflect long-standing policy failures and illustrate the need for permanent reforms.

For over a decade, the federal minimum wage has remained stuck at $7.25 per hour, a wage so low it would put workers earning it below the poverty line. Meanwhile, there is overwhelming public support to raise it to $15 per hour. Frontline workers earning paltry wages deserve permanent pay increases and lasting changes to these policy failures. In the interim, hazard pay can make an immediate difference in their lives during the pandemic.

33%

Source: Brookings analysis of Department of Homeland Security, Bureau of Labor Statistics, and Emsi data

During our national reckoning over structural racism and inequality, hazard pay can also help address racial equity. Black and Latino or Hispanic workers are overrepresented among low-wage frontline essential workers. In 2018, Black workers comprised 13% of all U.S. workers, but made up 19% of all low-wage frontline essential workers. Latino or Hispanic workers comprised 16% of all U.S. workers, but 22% of low-wage frontline essential workers.

Millions of Black and Latino or Hispanic essential workers hold critical but undervalued jobs in caregiving and health care, cleaning, and other services, often earning poverty wages with few (if any) benefits. Hazard pay targeted to low-wage essential workers would disproportionately benefit workers of color, who too often are excluded from decent-paying work.

*

The COVID-19 recession has pummeled workers with the lowest wages, especially Black and Latino or Hispanic workers. Low-income workers have suffered the worst job losses in the pandemic. More than half (51%) of households earning under $50,000 have experienced employment loss during the pandemic. These job losses have further strained already limited household finances and increased food insecurity. In a recent survey, nearly half of low-wage workers reported having trouble paying bills and about a third had trouble paying their rent or mortgage.

This is the case for Yvette Beatty, a 60-year-old home health aide in Philadelphia, who is Black. Two of her children lost their jobs in the pandemic recession. One moved back in with her. Now, Beatty is the sole provider for her family of seven. Even though she is scared as heck working during the pandemic and fears bringing the virus back home to her family, she feels she has no choice but to keep working. But she is barely surviving on just $12.75 an hour.

Its very hard, Beatty told us. Thank God for noodles. We are eating just what we can right now. Like a disproportionate share of low-income workers, Beatty has several underlying health conditions that put her at greater risk from COVID-19. Due to her financial struggles, her health has suffered during the pandemic. She said she sometimes skips a day of her medicine to stretch it further, and cant afford to eat the healthy foods recommended for her diet. I know I am supposed to eat certain things, but I would rather give to my family than to myself, she said.

Beatty wishes the federal government would come to the aid of frontline workers like herself: Youre telling me, before you pushed out trillions of dollars, you couldnt push out money for us? You couldnt push it out for these people who are on trash trucks, mopping floors, picking up biowaste, who are home health aides? Even for some of the nurses and doctors?Its time to wake up and recognize us.

Back to top

In Congress, Democratic and Republican proposals for federal hazard pay started ambitious, but languished in the Republican-controlled Senate, with little prospect of being passed into law.

In April, Democrats in Congress proposed hazard pay legislation to provide generous compensation to essential workers across the public and private sectors. This $200 billion Heroes Fund was part of the original $3 trillion HEROES Act passed by the House on May 15. Through the fund, eligible workers would receive up to $25,000 in pandemic premium pay through the federal governmentequivalent to an extra $13 per hourfrom the start of the public health emergency until the end of the year. The eligibility requirements of the fund were expansive, including even highly paid essential workers such as doctors. Essential workers earning up to $200,000 a year (or approximately $100 per hour) would be eligible for the full amount of up to $25,000, while workers earning over $200,000 would be eligible for a smaller amount of $5,000.

In May, Senator Mitt Romney (R-Utah) proposed a narrower Patriot Pay proposal for a temporary bonus of up to $12 per hour. Compared to the Democrats proposal, Sen. Romneys proposal included a lower income cap (annual incomes up to $50,000 could receive the full amount and incomes up to $90,000 would receive a smaller amount), a shorter timeline (May 1 through July 31), and only some of the money (three-quarters) coming from the government and the rest from employers. Sen. Romney explained that the legislation would address the risks that frontline essential workers face as well as the anomaly of some essential workers earning less money than unemployed workers receiving enhanced unemployment benefits.

Many Republicans in Congress expressed little interest in either hazard pay proposal, and neither has been passed into law. After House Democrats passed their $3 trillion HEROES Act, Senate Republicans introduced a smaller, $1 trillion HEALS Act in July. That bill did not include any hazard pay for essential workers. It also excluded new state and local aid, which would shore up struggling state and local government budgets with the funds necessary to keep public sector frontline essential workers employed. The result was dimmed prospects for any federal hazard pay. On September 28, House Democrats introduced an updated, leaner version of the HEROES Act which did not include the original Heroes Fund for hazard pay for essential workers.

*

While hazard pay from the federal government has stalled, several state governments have leveraged federal relief funds to introduce innovative hazard pay programs. Most of these state-level programs have a strong equity focus and prioritize frontline workers who earn low and moderate wages. While their approaches are promising and can serve as a model for national scale, the reach of the state programs is relatively modest compared to the need. A typical state-level hazard pay program benefits tens of thousands of workers out of a total of 50 million frontline essential workers nationwide.

Three statesPennsylvania, Vermont, and Louisianaleveraged federal CARES Act relief funding to finance hazard pay for a broad swath of essential frontline workers in their states, including both private and public sector workers. All three states leveraged $50 million in federal CARES Act funding to finance the pay increases.

Pennsylvania

One-time payment up to $1,200 per worker

Funded by $50 million from CARES Act

Public and private employees in seven critical industries

Full-time and part-time employees earning less than $20 per hour

Employers apply, equity focus

41,587 workers supported through grants to 639 employers

More than 5,000 employers were eligible, totaling $900 million in costs; less than 10% of that need was met

Vermont

One-time payment of $1,200 or $2,000 per worker

Funded by $50.5 million from CARES Act

Public and private employees in essential services that deal with the public. First-round eligibility limited to mostly public sector workers.

Second-round eligibility was expanded to include grocery, retail and other private sector workers

Employees earning $25 per hour or less and working in a job with an elevated risk

Employers apply; first-come, first-served

15,650 workers supported through first-round grants to 370 employers

Second round of grants opened on October 28

Louisiana

One-time $250 payment

Funded by $50 million from CARES Act

Public and private employees in critical industries

Adjusted gross income of $50,000 or less

Worked at least 200 hours from March 22 to May 14

Individuals apply

Checks sent to 100,000 workers as of September 4

Nearly 114,000 more applicants waiting as of September 4

Pennsylvanias COVID-19 PA Hazard Pay Grant Program is an especially promising model. To date, the grant funds provided more than 40,000 frontline workers with the equivalent of a 10-week, $3 per hour raise. Eligibility was limited to workers earning less than $20 an hour in essential industries. The $50 million program was only able to meet about 10% of the needs of the applicants, so it applied a strong equity lens to focus the limited funds on the greatest need. The program prioritized workers that are the lowest-paid, face the highest COVID-19 risks, and have the least opportunity for other federal support. Home health aides, nursing home workers, and other care providers were among the biggest beneficiaries. Pennsylvania Governor Tom Wolf recently called on state legislators to provide additional funding from the states federal relief money to expand the program. (Gov. Wolf has also advocated unsuccessfully for the state legislature to raise Pennsylvanias minimum wage from the current $7.25 per hour.)

Several other states leveraged federal relief dollars to provide hazard pay to a narrower set of frontline essential workers in public-sector-funded industries such as first responders, home health aides, and caregivers.

$3.13 per hour pay raise

Costs about $3.7 million every two weeks

Public employees in 24/7 jobs such as law enforcement, correctional officers, and hospital employees

15,000 employees eligible originally

Read the original post:

The COVID-19 hazard continues, but the hazard pay does not: Why Americas essential workers need a raise - Brookings Institution

The more people who are in this, the more people who add their phone to the fight against COVID, the more protection we all get, she said. So everyone should do it. And the sky's the limit or the population is the limit.

The service exchanges tokens with nearby phones that also have the program running and are within six feet of one another for at least ten minutes. The app uses push notifications and Bluetooth to share the token information, which do not contain personal identifying information, according to the health department.

If a person tests positive for COVID-19, theyre able to share that information through the app which will then notify others about possible exposure, but will not indicate who the person is with COVID-19.

People cant lie about their test results, Tuneberg said. After receiving a positive test result they will get a link from a public health professional that allows them to access the app, answer a few questions and the app will notify people who may have been exposed. That link only works once.

Because of privacy concerns, Tuneberg said the state has opted out of collecting certain data points like user locations or demographic information.

We felt it was much more important to protect privacy first and have less data on the state's side because we really want more people to enable the service, and the research we did found that the less tracking data, actually no tracking data, was the way to facilitate the highest level of adoption, Tuneberg said. It was a trade-off we really wanted because we'd rather save lives than have great data.

Read the original here:

10% Of Coloradans Are Already Using The COVID-19 Tracking App. Will It Help? - Colorado Public Radio

Having to adapt to different situations throughout my life prepared me [for] a different virus, saysAkiko Iwasaki of Yale University.

By Jennifer Couzin-FrankelOct. 27, 2020 , 10:40 AM

Sciences COVID-19 reporting is supported by the Pulitzer Center and the Heising-Simons Foundation.

Until this year, Akiko Iwasaki had never had tubes of human blood delivered to her lab. We were mostly working with mouse models, says the Yale University immunologist, who speaks precisely and thoughtfully. We used to look at the data and contemplate it. Then COVID-19 struck, and such unhurried musings flew out the window. In a matter of weeks, Iwasaki overhauled her research to launch a slew of studies on how the new virus, SARS-CoV-2, takes its toll on patients. She and her nearly two dozen lab members know their discoveries could impact people falling sick right now. Every minute counts.

In the months since, she has produced a string of high-profile papers in which she has redirected her expertise in the immune system, honed in mice, to questions such as why men are more likely than women to fare poorly if infected and how immune responses in hospitalized patients can help predict their prognosis. Now, she is turning her attention to long-haulers, people who suffer a bout with the virus and dont fully recover.

Iwasaki has had decades of practice adapting to new circumstances. As a child growing up in rural Japan, she dreamed of becoming a poet, turned off science by her physicist fathers immersion in his profession. Wed go on vacation and hed bring papers with him, she says, laughing. I thought, What kind of life is this? But when a high school teacher hooked her on math, she began to reconsider. Soon after, 9 months as an exchange student in Canada left her itching to escape the expectations for a woman in Japanese societymarry a nice man and have a family. Her mother, who worked at a local radio station, had endured jeers from co-workers for sticking with the job while raising three children. Knowing how much she stood up for always has stayed with me, Iwasaki says.

So she reimagined her future, embracing science and leaving Japan. She enrolled as an undergraduate at the University of Torontofalling hard for immunology her senior year thereand stayed on for graduate school. Twenty years ago she founded her lab at Yale, where she studies how the body responds to and combats viruses. Having to adapt to different situations throughout my life, she says, prepared me [for] a different virus.

The shift called for new science, new collaborations, and new skills. In February, Iwasakis lab joined a universitywide testing effort for SARS-CoV-2 led by Albert Ko, Nathan Grubaugh, and Anne Wyllie at Yales School of Public Health. Alice Lu-Culligan, a graduate student of Iwasakis who had been studying the immune system during pregnancy in mice, recalls the scramble. Lab members scouted for supplies such as swabs and equipment. We were going around our floor, to the neighboring labs, seeing how many PCR [polymerase chain reaction] machines they had, Lu-Culligan says. It was full-on sprint mode, collaboration and chaos.

As Iwasakis lab was helping Grubaughs group sequence viral genomes from early patients in Connecticut to mapthe spread there and across the United States, she launched a separate study to examine patients immune responses. She recruited 113 people with COVID-19 at Yale New Haven Hospital and redeployed expertise in her lab to make the project happen. Postdoctoral fellow Carolina Lucas had been studying the mosquito-borne chikungunya virus, and her project was housed in a biosafety level 3 lab at the university, the kind used for hazardous pathogens. Akiko asked me to coordinate this, says Lucas, who quickly agreed.

Every few days, the team collected samples from the nose, throat, and blood of patients. There were all these weird immune responses being engaged, Iwasaki says. In severe cases, the immune system churned out a flood of cytokine proteins. Lucas, Iwasaki, and others found four immune signatures thatappeared to correlatewith later outcomes. That paper appeared inNaturein July.

Swiftly, the scientific questions mushroomed. In mid-March, the Yale hospital treated a woman with COVID-19 who was in her second trimester of pregnancy. The woman lost her fetusand a private tragedy became interwoven with urgent questions about whether the virus could infect the placenta and pose a danger to the pregnancy. A collaborator of Iwasakis secured permission to collect the placenta, and late one night, Lu-Culligan retrieved it. Until that moment, the only placentas Lu-Culligan had seen belonged to mice. This is big and bloody, she says, and as she stared at it under a biosafety hood, Im thinking, I dont know what Im doing here.

In that case, the virus had indeed infected the placenta, and Lu-Culligan began to collaborate with Yale obstetricians to recruit women delivering at the hospital who were positive for the virus to study their placentas, too. That paper is nearing completion.

Meanwhile, Iwasaki began to investigate sex differences and found themale immune system is more likely to spark a harmful inflammatory responseto the virus, whereas in women, T cells that fight it off are activated more robustly. These distinctions, she reported in an August paper inNature, might help explain why men who are infected tend to fare worse than women.

Iwasakis juggling act impresses her colleagues. Shes made it seem so effortless, even though I know its probably not effortless at all, says Angela Rasmussen, a virologist at Columbia Universitys Mailman School of Public Health. Iwasakis husband, Ruslan Medzhitov, is also a well-known Yale immunologist (they discuss COVID-19 while walking their dog), and the pair has two daughters, ages 11and 13. Iwasaki fears the pandemic is widening the gender gap in science as women face disproportionate pressure to support their children when schools are closed. Her husband drives their daughters to in-person school each morning, but with COVID-19 cases climbing, she wonders how much longer schools will be open.

Solutions to a COVID-19fueled gender gap in science are elusive, she says, other than to really have a different mindset about evaluating progress in science during this time. Iwasaki has long advocated for female and minority scientists on Twitter, where she has 80,000 followers. In one post, she minced no words in advising female scientists who worry about pregnancy torpedoing a job interview: If they dont welcome you with open arms and offer child care options, they dont deserve you.

Her advocacy goes beyond rhetoric. Lu-Culligan met Iwasaki at a luncheon for women in science at Yale, while struggling with bullying and harassment in another lab. Iwasaki said, We have to get you out of there, Lu-Culligan recalls. A few months later, the young scientist abandoned more than 2 years of graduate work to start over with Iwasakilater learning that she wasnt the first person her new mentor had rescued from a miserable experience elsewhere.

Nearly 9 months into the pandemic, lab life has settled downsomewhat. Iwasakis latest passion is long-haulers who cant shake symptoms like fatigue and brain fog. Volunteers find her via word of mouth. The project faces hurdles, though: Iwasaki is hunting for a facility to draw blood from her volunteers, who are still symptomatic and potentially contagious. With many competing studies, such space is at a premium and she hasnt yet been able to secure any. Shes also racing to apply for grants to fund the project.

We really want to get to the bottom of whats going on, she says impatiently. Until thenalong with so many other researchersshell be in overdrive.

See the rest here:

'Every minute counts.' This immunologist rapidly reshaped her lab to tackle COVID-19 - Science Magazine