TOMORROW'S LEADERSHIP CONVERSATIONS 

with International School Leaders Around the World: 

All international school senior leaders are welcome.  A Weekly CONVERSATION  between School Heads and Senior Leaders– #27. Our discussions continue to be contemporary, important and a time we teach each other.  

 

With thanks to Will Richardson who has facilitated our Thursday CONVERSATIONS since the very beginning. 

The weekly Thursday CONVERSATIONS between Latin America school heads and senior leaders resumes in collaboration with Tri-Association and AASSA. All are welcome to join the discussion and we will also include guest speakers, specific to the Latin America circumstance and needs.  Our sessions, as before, are hosted by Sonia Keller and Dereck Rhoads.   

Lessons for Effective Remote and Hybrid Learning

TWO EXAMPLES: Charts That Tell a Story of Differentiated Practices

A chart that characterizes differentiated need:  LESSON #1

Designing for age levels and mitigating against learning loss: Lesson #2

THE HARVARD T.H.CHAN SCHOOL OF PUBLIC HEALTH:

Risk Reduction Strategies for Reopening Schools

–From the Executive Summary

 

Schools will eventually need to reopen.

 

Keeping schools closed comes with massive, long-term individual and societal costs. Many children cannot effectively learn, grow, engage, socialize, be active, eat healthy food, or get support until schools reopen. Parents and caregivers cannot go back to work until children go back to school.

 

Knowing that schools will reopen at some point, we set out to answer this question: what strategies should schools consider to reduce risk of COVID-19 transmission?

 

Note that a risk reduction strategy is different from a goal of achieving zero cases. There is no such thing as ‘zero risk’, in anything we do, and certainly not during a pandemic.

 

However, scientific evidence indicates that risks to students and staff can be kept low if schools adhere to strict control measures and dynamically respond to potential outbreaks.

 

We recognize there are immense challenges. There is no perfect plan to reopen schools safely, only ‘less bad’ options. There is no ‘one size fits all’ strategy that works for every school. Schools have limited budgets and staff. Compliance will be imperfect. Learning will be different. There will be disruption. Schools may need to reclose unexpectedly depending on local conditions. No one knows with certainty what the fall will bring in terms of this pandemic.

"Schools should err on the side of caution when it comes to health and safety. Children generally have less severe COVID-19 symptoms than adults, but they are not immune. Children can become severely ill with COVID-19, and they are capable of transmitting the virus among themselves and to family members or teachers. Older adults are at greater risk of severe COVID-19 illness. On the other hand, schools, teachers, administrators, and parents must also recognize that there is no ‘zero risk’. Reopening schools will require accepting that the goal is risk and harm reduction."

A Look at the Harvard Report's

Table of Contents

 

INTRODUCTION AND BACKGROUND

THE CHALLENGE BEFORE US

GUIDING PRINCIPLES

UNDERSTANDING COVID-19

RISK REDUCTION STRATEGIES

HEALTHY CLASSROOMS

HEALTHY BUILDINGS

HEALTHY POLICIES

HEALTHY SCHEDULES

–THE NEWS of COVID-19–

25,854,546

Cases Worldwide (Johns Hopkins CSSE)

…Opening up without having control is a recipe for disaster. It’s not one size fits all, it’s not all or nothing. We believe there are four essential things that all countries, communities and individuals must focus on to take control.

 

First, prevent amplifying events. COVID-19 spreads very efficiently among clusters of people.In many countries, we have seen explosive outbreaks linked to gatherings of people at stadiums, nightclubs, places of worship and in other crowds.

 

Second, reduce deaths by protecting vulnerable groups, including older people, those with underlying conditions and essential workers.By protecting those who are most at risk, countries can save lives, prevent people becoming severely ill, and take the pressure off their health systems.

 

Third, individuals must play their part by taking the measures we know work to protect themselves and others – stay at least one meter away from others, clean your hands regularly, practice respiratory etiquette, and wear a mask. Avoid the “three Cs”: closed spaces, crowded places and close-contact settings.

 

And fourth, governments must take tailored actions to find, isolate, test and care for cases, and trace and quarantine contacts. Widespread stay-at-home orders can be avoided if countries take temporary and geographically-targeted interventions.

 

• First, prevent amplifying events.
• Second, reduce deaths by protecting vulnerable groups.
• Third, take the individual steps to protect yourself and others.
• Fourth, find, isolate test and care for cases, and trace and quarantine contacts.

And above all, national unity and global solidarity are essential. This virus thrives when we’re divided. When we’re united, we can defeat it."

 

–Dr, Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus

Duration of SARS-CoV-2 Infectivity:

When is it Safe to Discontinue Isolation?

Defining the duration of infectivity of SARS-CoV-2 has major implications for public health and infection control practice in healthcare facilities. Early in the pandemic, most hospitals required two negative RT-PCR tests before discontinuing isolation in patients with Covid-19. Many patients, however, have persistently positive RT-PCR tests for weeks to months following clinical recovery and multiple studies now indicate that persistently positive RT-PCRs generally do not reflect replication-competent virus. SARS-CoV-2 appears to be most contagious around the time of symptom onset and infectivity rapidly decreases thereafter to near-zero after about 10 days in mild-moderately ill patients and 15 days in severely-critically ill and immunocompromised patients. (August 25– Oxford Academic)

CLICK HERE for full article

 

Steroids Can Help the Sickest Patients

International clinical trials published on Wednesday confirmed the hope that cheap, widely available steroid drugs can help seriously ill patients survive Covid-19, the illness caused by the coronavirus. The World Health Organization is expected to release new guidelines on Wednesday encouraging the use of steroid drugs in critically ill patients. The new studies include an analysis that pooled data from seven randomized clinical trials evaluating three steroids in over 1,700 patients. The study concluded that each of the three drugs reduced the risk of death. That paper and three related studies were published in the journal JAMA, along with an editorial describing the research as an “important step forward in the treatment of patients with Covid-19.” (New York Times)

 

More on Inexpensive Steroids Reducing Deaths 

Use of inexpensive, readily available steroid drugs to treat people hospitalized with Covid-19 reduced the risk of death by one-third, according to an analysis encompassing seven different clinical trials conducted by the World Health Organization and published Wednesday in the Journal of the American Medical Association. The positive steroid findings — the result of a pooled look at data known as a meta-analysis — confirm a similar survival benefit reported in June from a single, large study. Corticosteroids are the first, and so far only, therapy shown to improve the odds of survival for critically ill patients with Covid-19.

Based on the newly published data, the WHO on Wednesday issued new treatment guidelines calling for corticosteroids to become the standard of care for patients with “severe and critical” Covid-19. Such patients should receive 7-10 days of treatment, a WHO panel said. But it cautioned against use of the steroids in patients with non-severe illness, saying that “indiscriminate use of any therapy for COVID-19 would potentially rapidly deplete global resources and deprive patients who may benefit from it most as potentially life-saving therapy.”

“The consistent findings of benefit in these studies provide definitive data that corticosteroids should be first-line treatment for critically ill patients with COVID-19,” said Hallie Prescott and Todd Rice, professors of medicine at the University of Michigan and Vanderbilt University, respectively, in an accompanying JAMA editorial. (STATnews)

 

A Bus in China and Airborne Spread

In late January, as the new coronavirus was beginning to spread from China’s Hubei Province, a group of lay Buddhists traveled by bus to a temple ceremony in the city of Ningbo — hundreds of miles from Wuhan, center of the epidemic. A passenger on one of the buses had recently dined with friends from Hubei. She apparently did not know she carried the coronavirus. Within days, 24 fellow passengers on her bus were also found to be infected. It did not matter how far a passenger sat from the infected individual on the bus, according to a study published in JAMA Internal Medicine on Tuesday. Even passengers in the very last row, seven behind the infected woman, caught the virus.

 

The incident adds to a large body of evidence indicating that the coronavirus can be transmitted by tiny particles that linger in the air, and not just through large respiratory droplets that fall quickly to the ground. The new study “adds strong epidemiological evidence that the virus is transmitted through the air, because if it were not, we would only see cases close to the index patient — but we see it spread throughout the bus,” said Linsey Marr, a professor of civil and environmental engineering at Virginia Tech and a leading expert on airborne viruses. The potential for airborne transmission in close confined spaces raises concern about the winter months, when people will be spending more time indoors, Dr. Marr said. Her advice: “Avoid crowded indoor spaces where people are not wearing masks and the ventilation is poor.” (The New York Times)

 

Health Care as Indonesia Surges

As the number of new virus cases in Indonesia surges, the virus has taken a heavy toll on medical professionals. The Indonesian Medical Association said on Tuesday that 102 doctors and nine dentists had died from Covid-19, and the Indonesian National Nurses Association said 70 nurses had died. As of Wednesday, Indonesia had reported 7,505 deaths and 177,571 cases, including about 20,000 cases in the past week, according to a New York Times database. Independent experts say the actual number could be much higher because Indonesia lags behind in testing and its positivity rate is nearly 15 percent. (The New York Times)

 

Hungary reported a daily record on Wednesday, with 365 new cases. The number is higher than even what it reported in April, when the pandemic was worsening in many countries. Last week, several members of the government entered quarantine after coming into contact with someone who later tested positive for the coronavirus. Hungary has barred most foreign travelers and is making returning citizens isolate themselves. It has had relatively few cases, 6,257, and just over 600 deaths, according to a New York Times database. (NYT)

 

September Ushering in a Fifteen Minute COVID Test?

The pharmaceutical giant Roche, in Switzerland, announced that new antigen tests would be going on sale in several countries in Europe by the end of September. The tests are advertised as giving reliable results in 15 minutes. The company will have 40 million tests available for the launch, it said in a statement. (NYT)

 

India Sees Nearly Two Million Cases in August

India has reported nearly two million Covid-19 cases in August, the highest monthly tally in the world since the pandemic began.August was also the worst month for fatalities with 28,000 virus deaths. With 3.6 million confirmed cases, India has the third-highest caseload in the world, after the US and Brazil. The government continues to lift restrictions to try to boost an economy that lost millions of jobs because of a strict lockdown which began in March. In August, India saw an average of 64,000 cases per day - an 84% hike from average daily cases in July, according to official data. This number is the highest in the world - for example, the US, which has the most number of cases, saw 47,000 daily cases on average last month.

The spike in numbers comes as the country expands its testing amid concerns that the virus has started to spread in many rural areas as well. (BBC)

 

US Passes Six Million Covid-19 Cases

The US has now surpassed six million cases of Covid-19 - almost a quarter of the world's total, according to data collated by Johns Hopkins University.

It said the country added one million new infections in less than a month. More than 183,000 people have now died.

In the UK, France and Spain, the infection rate dropped compared with Sunday's figures - but the tallies may be readjusted later on. (BBC)

 

 

Scientists are Reporting Several Cases of Covid-19 Reinfection —

but the implications are complicated

Following the news this week of what appears to have been the first confirmed case of a Covid-19 reinfection, other researchers have been coming forward with their own reports. One in Belgium, another in the Netherlands. And now, one in Nevada. What caught experts’ attention about the case of the 25-year-old Reno man was not that he appears to have contracted SARS-CoV-2 (the name of the virus that causes Covid-19) a second time. Rather, it’s that his second bout was more serious than his first.

Immunologists had expected that if the immune response generated after an initial infection could not prevent a second case, then it should at least stave off more severe illness. That’s what occurred with the first known reinfection case, in a 33-year-old Hong Kong man.

 

Still, despite what happened to the man in Nevada, researchers are stressing this is not a sky-is-falling situation or one that should result in firm conclusions. They always presumed people would become vulnerable to Covid-19 again some time after recovering from an initial case, based on how our immune systems respond to other respiratory viruses, including other coronaviruses. It’s possible that these early cases of reinfection are outliers and have features that won’t apply to the tens of millions of other people who have already shaken off Covid-19.

 

“There are millions and millions of cases,” said Michael Mina, an epidemiologist at Harvard’s T.H. Chan School of Public Health. The real question that should get the most focus, Mina said, is, “What happens to most people?” (STATnews)

 

What is the COVID ‘Bubble’ Concept, and Could it Work?

The concept of a COVID-19 “germ bubble” refers to close contacts with whom we don’t practice mask use or keep physical distancing. In strict lockdown, this generally means just the members of your own household. But several countries, such as New Zealand and the United Kingdom, have experimented with bubbles larger than a single household. Victorian Premier Dan Andrews will unveil a roadmap out of restrictions on Sunday. Many will be keen to see if a bubble strategy is part of this, after Chief Health Officer Brett Sutton confirmed the concept is under “active consideration”. Extended bubbles mean your household can nominate other people or households with whom you could have close contact. These would need to be exclusive, so the infection risk is contained, and your nominated households would be required to live in the same town or city. It’s a way of balancing the risk of exposure to COVID-19 with our need for social interaction, allowing vulnerable and isolated people to have social connections to help cope with the stress of a pandemic. 

 

While the idea undoubtedly comes with risks, it’s crucial for governments to implement restrictions with compassion. A pandemic is a marathon, not a sprint, and if people feel that policies are crafted with compassion they may be more likely to adhere to restrictions in the long run. (The Conversation, Australia)

–Tracking the Virus– 

The WHO has a new reporting protocol: 

We will capture the most up-to-date figures using the revised format

–FROM JOHNS HOPKINS CSSE–

The Cultures of Dignity Resources for Supporting

Social-Emotional Wellness 

A Final Note: The AAIE COVID-19 Briefing is provided to support your leadership for the school community you serve. We encourage you to use these resources in any way, shape or form that helps you, your communications and toward furthering close relationships across your community.  – The AAIE Board