The Next AAIE LEADERSHIP MASTERMINDS 3.0 Cohort Begins

QUICK LINKS for Busy People

–THE REST OF THIS WEEK'S CONVERSATIONS–

with International School Leaders from Around the World

AAIE'S NEW SCHOOL PROJECT: Friday 12 February– EQUITY (Part II)

We encourage you to join us next Friday at our usual time, 8 am US ET when we continue the Equity conversation, kicked off by our curatorial team, Joel Llaban, Emily Meadows and Anna Sugarman.

How the Pandemic Will Unfold in the Months Ahead and One School’s Ongoing Safety Protocol to Keep Onsite Learning Going

Dr. "O's" Executive Summary on pandemic predictions

EVOLUTION OF THE VIRUS: 

Dr. "O's" comments on the evolution of the pandemic and herd immunity

 

"Herd immunity serves to completely stop the pandemic. It is achieved when a sufficient portion of the population is simultaneously immune to the current strain to prevent sustained transmission. Herd immunity renders the virus unable to find a host because all of the hosts or a sufficient number of hosts are vaccinated and the virus is immediately destroyed. At this point, significant public health measures are not needed to prevent future spikes in infection and mortality. Based on the example, more likely than not, we will not achieve a complete eradication of SARS-Covid-2. If that's the case, SARS-Covid-2 will persist and will most likely be like the seasonal flu for some time."

The prediction is for the chart on the far right to become more of the norm, where virus mutations will reduce longer-term protection and where ongoing vaccinations will be required.  

EFFICACY OF VACCINES AND NEW STRAINS: 

Dr. "O's" comments on virus mutations and vaccine viability to protect and to prevent severe illness.  

 

"The more realistic scenario today is that although efficacy is still as is, we actually have mutations which may stop or significantly reduce the protection. Even though theoretically we have protection of 95%, the actual protection will be less because there'll be more of the new strains in the population. Not 100% probably, but some countries are projecting that up to 50% of infections will come from the new strains by mid year. If that is the case, then the resulting efficacy of the vaccine will drop by half because the vaccine will be much less efficacious toward the new strain. This means that we may need to achieve herd immunity every year and get vaccinated every year -  not over the course of 24 months but over the course of 3 months. We would then need to play with these new mutants and really discover them quickly to ensure that the new vaccine is effective for future strains. The next holy grail for SARS-Covid-19 is to find a 'strain agnostic vaccine' which will work independent of whatever mutation we have."

The good news is that current vaccines can prevent severe disease.  

 

VACCINES PREVENTING SERIOUS ILLNESS: 

Dr. "O's" comments on virus mutations and vaccine viability to protect and to prevent severe illness.  

 

"Most vaccines show a 90-95% efficacy in preventing severe disease. Efficacy has a broad range and we care a lot about preventing severe disease when mechanical intervention becomes necessary. In looking at the Swiss cheese or multi-layered defense model, it is still valid until the entire school population including household members reaches herd immunity."

PREPARE FOR ANOTHER "SPECIAL" ACADEMIC SCHOOL YEAR:

Dr. "O's" comments on continuing the use of the Swiss Cheese Model for school safety.

 

"To be honest, not that much changes with the Swiss cheese strategy, which has many layers of defense. No single layer is perfect by itself but all of them taken together are good enough. The 4 layered system is called, STOP, PROTECT, REACT, COMMUNICATE. Communication is very, very important. Jon sends a daily email to the community and with every case that is discovered, another email is sent to the community explaining what they need to do."

Is the American School of Warsaw Community Safe?

 

Evidence of ASW community support for the Surveillance Testing Protocol for Safely Re-opening School During the COVID-19 Pandemic (83% of respondents indicating 8-10 rating)

Jon messages with his school community each day, discussing the daily Covid events, underlining the need to work together and to effectively respond to community data. ASW has identified cases within the school community, including evidence of a few in-school transmission infections.  The goal of stopping infections at the door has been remarkably successful, with the highest number of identified infections caught at the asymptomatic stage. 88% of a total of 49 school community infected were caught and stopped at the school door.  

STAYING UP-TO-DATE ON CORONAVIRUS SCIENCE

Herd immunity is the hazy, long-promised end of the pandemic, but its requirements are quite specific. Jennie Lavine, a biologist at Emory University, likens it to wet logs in a campfire. If there’s enough water in the logs—if there’s enough immunity in a population—“you can’t get the fire to start, period,” she says. To be more technical about it, a population reaches herd immunity when the average number of people infected by a single sick person falls below one. Patient zero might infect another person, but that second person can’t infect a third. This is what happens with measles, polio, and several other diseases for which vaccines have achieved herd immunity in the United States. A case might land here, but the spark never finds much dry fuel. The outbreak never sustains itself.

 

For COVID-19, the herd-immunity threshold is estimated to be between 60 and 90 percent. That’s the proportion of people who need to have immunity either from vaccination or from prior infection. In the U.S., the countdown to when enough people are vaccinated to reach herd immunity has already begun.

 

But what if we still can’t get the logs wet enough? What if they are drying out faster than we can douse them? A number of signs now point to a future in which the transmission of this virus cannot be contained through herd immunity. COVID-19 will likely continue to circulate, to evolve, and to reinfect. In that case, the goal of vaccination needs to be different.

To explore what the emergence of new variants might mean for reinfections, vaccines and the pandemic, Science News spoke to Aubree Gordon, an epidemiologist at the University of Michigan in Ann Arbor. 

 

Researchers are grappling with understanding the threat the known mutations pose. Even if someone has antibodies to the coronavirus — through a natural infection or a vaccine — some mutations can stymie the antibodies’ ability to latch onto the virus and prevent it from infecting cells. Though antibodies make up only one part of the immune system’s arsenal to eliminate viruses from the body, the variants’ ability to dodge the immune proteins could put people who have already recovered from a bout of COVID-19 at risk of getting infected again.

–THE NEWS of COVID-19–

107,166,785 Cases Worldwide (Johns Hopkins CSSE)

 

CDC Emphasizes Proper Mask Fit to Protect Against Coronavirus Variants, Urging Double Masks in Some Cases

Amid the threat of more-contagious variants of the virus, federal health officials are urging Americans to protect themselves by making sure their masks fit properly and, for the first time, proposing double masking as one approach.

 

Two methods substantially boost fit and protection, according to a new report from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. One is wearing a cloth mask over a surgical mask. The second is improving the fit of a surgical mask by knotting the ear loops and tucking in the sides close to the face to prevent air from leaking out around the edges. (Washington Post) 

CLICK HERE FOR FULL ARTICLE

 

A Bit of Good News with Caution Out of the US

The most severe surge of the Covid-19 pandemic in the U.S. has weakened significantly, according to key metrics, though public-health experts and epidemiologists urge caution, given the spread of highly contagious new variants. Newly reported cases have dropped 56% over the past month, based on a seven-day average, marking a significantly steeper fall than the U.S. saw after the spring and summer surges. Hospitalizations have declined 38% since Jan 6. The seven-day average of Covid-19 tests returning positive fell over the past week to 6.93%, the lowest since Oct. 31. (via The Wall Street Journal)

 

WHO Team Says Theory Covid Began

in Wuhan Lab ‘Extremely Unlikely’

The World Health Organization team that visited Wuhan to investigate the origins of the coronavirus pandemic has all but dismissed a theory that the virus leaked from a laboratory, while giving some credence to China’s focus on the possibility of transmission via frozen food.

 

In a lengthy press conference on Tuesday, representatives of the joint WHO/China investigative mission delivered a summary of findings from two weeks in the field. They said the team’s work did not dramatically change the picture they had before they began, but had added important details to the story. The team found no evidence of widespread circulation of the virus in Wuhan prior to December 2019, and said it was still unclear how it got into the Huanan seafood market, where the virus was initially detected. But, they added, “all the work that has been done on the virus and trying to identify its origin continue to point toward a natural reservoir”.

 

The team said they had examined four main hypotheses for the introduction of the virus into the human population. The idea that the virus came from a laboratory-related incident – a persistent theory popular with Donald Trump – was “extremely unlikely” and “isn’t a hypothesis we suggest implies further study”, said Peter Ben Embarek, the WHO’s food safety and animal disease specialist and chair of the investigation team.

 

Asked for further details, Embarek said the team looked at the arguments for and against the hypothesis, and while “accidents do happen … there had been no publication or research of this virus or one close to this virus, anywhere in the world.”. (The Guardian)

 

India’s Capital Reports No Virus Deaths for First Time Since May

India’s capital New Delhi didn’t report any coronavirus-related deaths for the first time in nine months, a milestone for a city that had emerged as a hotspot for the pandemic.

 

With a population of about 16 million, it has reported 10,882 deaths since the city recorded its first casualty on March 13, according to health ministry data. The last time the city reported a zero figure before Tuesday was on May 11.

 

It has 636,260 confirmed cases so far, according to a Delhi government health bulletin. Hundred new cases were reported out of 56,410 tests carried out on Tuesday.

 

The capital was overwhelmed with Covid cases around May and June and then again in the latter part of last year. Hospitals witnessed a shortage of beds and bodies piled up in morgues and crematoriums.

 

Throughout the country, about half of India’s states and federally-administered territories, including India’s most populous state Uttar Pradesh, recorded no fatalities on Tuesday. India is the second-worst virus-hit country in the world, trailing only the U.S. with more than 10.8 million infections and 155,252 deaths. With the roll out of vaccination to 6.6 million people so far, the health authorities are cautiously optimistic about reining in infections virus in the country. (Bloomberg)

 Did We Underestimate Russia’s Vaccine?

Sputnik V — named after the world’s first satellite that saw the Soviets initially outpace the Americans in the space race — is starting to look like it could be a global success story. It got a boost last week after the respected British medical journal the Lancet published a peer-reviewed paper that found the vaccine had 91.6 percent efficacy 21 days after the first shot and 91.8 percent for those over 60 years old, placing it on par with the celebrated Pfizer-BioNTech and Moderna vaccines.

 

More than a dozen countries have approved the vaccine for use, with more likely to follow now that it has received the Lancet’s seal of approval. Sputnik V is considerably cheaper than its Western competitors and does not require the same sort of ultracold storage infrastructure that would complicate distribution of the Pfizer vaccine in much of the developing world.

(Washington Post) 

 

Apply the Five Phases of Grief and Accept

Our Lives Will Never Be the Same

Vaccination drives hold out the promise of curbing Covid-19, but governments and businesses are increasingly accepting what epidemiologists have long warned: The pathogen will circulate for years, or even decades, leaving society to coexist with Covid-19 much as it does with other endemic diseases like flu, measles, and HIV. The ease with which the coronavirus spreads, the emergence of new strains and poor access to vaccines in large parts of the world mean Covid-19 could shift from a pandemic disease to an endemic one, implying lasting modifications to personal and societal behavior, epidemiologists say. “Going through the five phases of grief, we need to come to the acceptance phase that our lives are not going to be the same,” said Thomas Frieden, former director of the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. “I don’t think the world has really absorbed the fact that these are long-term changes.” (via The Wall Street Journal)

The coronavirus variant that was first identified in the U.K. is nowspreading rapidly in the U.S., doubling every 10 days, according to a new study. That means that the variant, known as B.1.1.7., is growing exponentially in prevalence. B.1.17 made up around 2% of currently circulating strains in the last week of January and likely doubled to 4% of circulating strains 10 days later, and 10 days after that, will double to 8%, then 16% and so on. By March it will likely be the most common variant in the country. (Live Science)

 

Not a Foregone Conclusion that Vaccines will Protect Over Time

A peer review has confirmed that the BioNTech-Pfizer vaccine is effective against two variants of the coronavirus, the companies announced on Monday. The review, which was published in the journal Nature Medicine,backed the results of a study completed by Pfizer and the University of Texas in late January. When the study was originally released, BioNTech and Pfizer said its finding suggested that no new vaccine would be necessary to fight coronavirus mutations first discovered in the United Kingdom and South Africa.

 

Nevertheless, the continuous transformation of the deadly virus makes clinical data and constant observation imperative. Experts say that it is not a foregone conclusion that vaccines currently in use will remain effective against possible new variants of the virus in the future. (viadw.com)

VACCINATIONS AROUND THE WORLD: As of February 9, 2021 

–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