QUICK LINKS for Busy People

–NEXT WEEK'S CONVERSATIONS–

with International School Leaders from Around the World

Western Academy of Beijing (WAB) and AAIE present  Round 4 of our panel discussion series that focuses on schools that continue to  find new pathways for improving teaching, learning and ownership of students in the Journey.

 

On March 31, Riffa Views International School from Bahrain will share how they have continued to flourish and innovate throughout. They started a series of faculty future searches to reflect upon what is core and what can be left behind, Their signature IGNITE Day program continued to evolve despite restrictions with learning pods and inspired Voice of RVIS podcast, run entirely by students. Their multi-year portfolios have become even more relevant and authentic... 

 

With the belief that the first stage of innovation is empathy, RVIS has continued to serve their community with 3Cs and an F: Communicate, Connect, Care & have fun. The school is co-host to the Compassion Summit and has designed and facilitated a regional design sprint with the goal to co-create across schools. 

 

For RVIS:

• Tara Waudby, Head of School
• Jessica Davis, Director for Learning
• Dhara Levers, Futures Coordinator

WAB and AAIE are also inviting schools from around the world to keep the spirit of The Future of Education NOW alive and share the learnings and innovations that have helped your school grow and thrive during the pandemic.  

 

Interested in joining a panel and share your story in the coming weeks?

Submit your interest here.

NEXT WEEK FOR THE NEW SCHOOL PROJECT: 

 

Working groups continue with their research and synthesis of key ideas for each of the Seven NEW SCHOOL PRINCIPLES.  The work teams are also preparing for a presentation during the April 11-16 AAIE Global Leadership CONVERSATION.

Essential Elements of Safe K–12 School Operations for In-Person Learning

Summary of Recent Changes  (as of 19 March, 2021)

• Revised physical distancing recommendations to reflect at least 3 feet between students in classrooms and provide clearer guidance when a greater distance (such as 6 feet) is recommended.
• Clarified that ventilation is a component of strategies to clean and maintain healthy facilities.
• Removed recommendation for physical barriers.
• Clarified the role of community transmission levels in decision-making.
• Added guidance on interventions when clusters occur.

Key Points

Evidence suggests that many K-12 schools that have strictly implemented prevention strategies have been able to safely open for in-person instruction and remain open.

 

CDC’s K-12 operational strategy presents a pathway for schools to provide in-person instruction safely through consistent use of prevention strategies, including universal and correct use of masks and physical distancing.

All schools should implement and layer prevention strategies and should prioritize universal and correct use of masks and physical distancing.

 

Testing to identify individuals with SARS-CoV-2 infection and vaccination for teachers and staff provide additional layers of COVID-19 protection in schools.

AN OPEN LETTER TO THE AAIE COMMUNITY

Staying Up-to-Date on the Global Pandemic Science 

New data show that people infected with the B.1.351 variant of SARS-CoV-2, first identified in South Africa, develop immune responses that can fend off multiple variants. Scientists want to learn from people who recover from COVID-19 and make antibodies that, over time, become more capable of blocking diverse coronavirus variants.

A wild-animal trader who caught a strange new virus from a frozen pangolin. A lab worker studying bat viruses who slipped up and sniffed the air under her biosafety hood. A man who suddenly fell ill after collecting bat guano from a cave to use for fertilizer. Were any of these scenarios what touched off the covid-19 pandemic? That’s the question facing a joint research team appointed by the World Health Organization and China that’s searching for the source of covid-19.

 

Missing puzzle piece: We know that a coronavirus very similar to some found in horseshoe bats made the jump into humans, then appeared in Wuhan by December 2019. But researchers haven’t found the critical detail: if it was in fact a virus with an origin in horseshoe bats, how did it make its way into humans from creatures living hundreds of miles away in remote caves?

 

The intermediary: An impending 300-page report from the group is expected to conclude that the virus, SARS-CoV-2, reached humans from bats via “an intermediate host species,” such as a wild animal sold as a food delicacy in Wuhan's markets. But there’s a big problem. More than a year after covid-19 began, no food animal has been identified as a reservoir for the pandemic virus.

 

Why it matters: Learning how the pandemic began could help health experts avert the next one, or at least react more swiftly.

There now appear to be more than a dozen versions of SARS-CoV-2, which are of varying degrees of concern because some are linked to increased infectivity and lethality while others are not.

 

It’s easy to be overwhelmed by this diversity and to fear that we’ll never achieve herd immunity. Yet evidence is growing that these variants share similar combinations of mutations. This may not be the multifront war that many are dreading, with an infinite number of new viral versions.

–THE NEWS of COVID-19–

125,864,307 Cases Worldwide (Johns Hopkins CSSE)

Ethiopians Scramble to Secure Oxygen

as the Country’s Caseload Grows

A recent surge of Covid-19 cases in Ethiopia has left medical workers at the country’s biggest treatment center scrambling to find enough oxygen for patients in critical condition.

Ethiopia has recorded a 24 percent increase in Covid-19 cases, to 194,524 in the past month, and deaths rose 17 percent, health ministry data show. Ethiopia, with a population of 117 million, has recorded 2,741 deaths since its first case was announced in March of last year.

 

Abel Mujera, the clinical director at the Millennium Hall Covid-19 treatment center in Addis Ababa, said demand for oxygen had more than doubled in two months — from 200 cylinders per day in January to 450 now. “Sometimes that’s barely enough to support the needs of our patients,” he said. “For the past few weeks, we had a surge in Covid-19 cases, and most of the patients we admit have a higher demand for oxygen and they need admission to critical care.”

Mr. Abel, 29, spends most mornings calling the loved ones of deceased Covid-19 patients at Millennium Hall, which the government set up shortly after Ethiopia’s first coronavirus case was confirmed.

 

A Covid-19 report released last week by the Ethiopian Public Health Institute said a spike in cases had been recorded in Addis Ababa, the capital, because of “decreased adherence to the public health and social measures” as well as a “high risk” that dangerous virus variants had entered the country.

 

Mr. Abel’s facility is treating 213 patients, of which 80 percent need oxygen — up from an average of 60 patients in January and February.

 

For Brazil’s Doctors, Choosing Who Lives and Who Dies  

In Brazil, where the coronavirus is still surging — daily deaths hit a record 3,251 Tuesday — this is now the life of a doctor: an unending succession of life-or-death decisions, and grappling with the mental trauma that follows.

 

In Brazil, a desperate search for an open bed

 

Brazil, which has buried more covid-19 victims than any country outside the United States, is suffering a health-care collapse. In three-fourths of state capitals, the critical care system is at greater than 90 percent capacity. There are vanishingly few places anywhere in the country to transfer patients. Hospitals are facing shortages in oxygen and the medications necessary to intubate patients. Intensive care units are so overwhelmed that victims of other emergencies are being turned away.

 

Now the country is running out of doctors, too. The failure to hire more has undone expansion plans all over the country, placing more stress on already overburdened health-care workers. As the virus kills about 2,300 Brazilians every day, the people charged with maintaining the faltering health-care system say the daily carnage has pushed them to their limit.

 

In recent weeks, doctors have pumped lungs manually with silicone valves. They’ve watched patients suffocate to death. They’ve seen waiting rooms transformed into halls of misery, where the dead have gone unnoticed for hours. And they’ve made painful decisions to leave behind the elderly and the dying because others had a greater chance of surviving. (Washington Post)

 

USA Hits 30,000,000+ Cases

The US has reported more than 30 million cases of coronavirus since the pandemic began, even as the rate of new infections has slowed precipitously following a surge in the autumn and early winter. The nation surpassed the milestone on Wednesday, nearly 12 weeks after hitting 20 million, according to Johns Hopkins University data. It had taken the US less than two months to go from 10 million to 20 million cases. Brazil has recorded the second-highest cumulative total with 12.1 million cases, followed by 11.7 million cases in India, where daily infections have climbed in recent weeks. (Financial Times, Johns Hopkins University)

 

A Variant Viewed as a “Double Mutant”

A new "double mutant" variant of the coronavirus has been detected from samples collected in India. Scientists are checking if the variant, where two mutations come together in the same virus, may be more infectious or less affected by vaccines. Like all viruses, the coronavirus keeps changing in small ways as it passes from one person to another. The vast majority of these mutations are inconsequential and don't alter the way the virus behaves. But some mutations trigger changes in the spike protein that the virus uses to latch on to and enter human cells - these variants could potentially be more infectious, cause more severe disease or evade vaccines. (bbc.com)

 

The Catastrophe of COVID-19 on Mental Health

The physical toll of the coronavirus pandemic has been headline news for more than a year, a gruesome daily tally of lives lost. But the waves of psychological illness, less visible, have been similarly catastrophic. For the doctors and nurses on the front lines, the exposure has been uniquely acute, and researchers are racing to understand the impact of their experiences. Emerging research from countries including the UK, the US, China, India and Italy has shown alarmingly high rates of mental health disorders among front-line healthcare workers during the pandemic. In February, a group of academics led by Talya Greene of the University of Haifa and Jo Billings of University College London published a paper in the European Journal of Psychotraumatology which found that, during the first wave of the pandemic, 22 per cent of all UK medical staff met the diagnostic criteria for post-traumatic stress disorder, 47 per cent for anxiety and the same number for depression. Monica Durrette, a clinical psychologist in Virginia, says, “I have had physicians in tears during sessions, because they’re so exhausted, angry, frightened. And I’ve had people say, ‘This is breaking me, I just feel broken.’ It’s heart-wrenching.” (Financial Times)

Dangerous Covid-19 Variants Could Mean all Bets Are Off

on the Road to Normalcy

Dr. Rochelle Walensky, director of the US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, said on the "Today" show Thursday that the US is "still seeing about 1,000 deaths a day," which she noted was way too many.

 

As for the number of daily infections, Walensky said, "What worries me is the steady flow of 50,000, 60,000 -- and we continue to see that even today."

 

A more contagious coronavirus variant is spreading across the US. Can vaccines stop it?

Walensky pointed to early signs that vaccinations are working, citing the decreased mortality rates for those over the ages of 65. Yet more infectious variants of Covid-19 are circulating, she warned.

 

With some states seeing rises of at least 10% in weekly average cases, according to Johns Hopkins University data, variants such as B.1.1.7 may lead to a greater risk of exposure and a potential stagnation in the fight against Covid-19.

 

"It tells us when we have a more contagious variant that all bets are off because it means that the activities that we thought were pretty low risk are now going to be higher risk," CNN medical analyst Dr. Leana Wen told CNN's Anderson Cooper on Thursday.

 

The variants are also complicating treatments, as the usage of certain monoclonal antibody therapy to treat Covid-19 have been halted due to lowered effectiveness. (CNN)

 

Why are More Young People Getting Sick with Covid-19 in Brazil?

During the first part of Brazil's struggle with the coronavirus, it was the elderly who made up the majority of those who were getting sick and dying from Covid-19. But since the new year, Brazil has descended into its worst days of this pandemic so far. Daily death and case numbers have shattered previous records.

 

And amid that surge, a worrying pattern has emerged—more young people seem to be getting severely ill and dying from Covid-19.  The question is why: Is a new variant infecting more young people and making them sicker? Are young people behaving in ways that make them more likely to become infected? Could it be some combination of both?

 

Across the country, intensive care physicians keep saying the same thing: In this latest wave, their patients are younger than ever.

 

"We have otherwise healthy patients that are between 30 and 50-years-old and that is the profile for the majority of patients," said Dr. Pedro Archer, a 33 year-old intensive care physician at a public hospital in Rio de Janeiro. "That is the big differentiator in this latest wave."

 

CNN has spoken to nearly a dozen ICU physicians and nurses since mid-January, across multiple hospitals in several Brazilian states. Each said their ICU beds are filled with more young people than ever.

 

"The numbers of serious infections are much higher than in the first wave," said ICU Dr. Luan Matos de Menezes back in January, speaking to CNN near a public hospital in the Amazonian city of Manaus. "You can tell their conditions are much more critical."

 

Brazil's Health Ministry publishes national statistics on the ages of Covid-19 victims. An AFP analysis of data from that ministry found the number of people aged 30-59 represented about 27% of Covid-19 deaths over the past three months or so -- a 7% increase from pre-December numbers.

 

The AFP also found the share of the death toll for those aged 60 and over fell by 7% in that same time period. CNN has not independently verified the analysis. State health officials in São Paulo, Brazil's most populous state, said earlier this month that anecdotal testimony from doctors across the country about the severity of cases in younger people is backed up by their data.

 

Officials said 60% of younger patients with Covid-19 needed ICU beds, a higher figure than earlier in the pandemic. (CNN)

Worldwide Vaccinations per 100 People:  As of MARCH 26, 2021

 

–UAE and Chile Still Lead the World–

–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