This song (as covered by The Happenings in 1966) has always stuck with me. September is upon us and schools are opening across the country. This year, however, these openings bring a bit more fear and arguments than in past years.
Another Lesson on Mitigation in Schools
Many of you likely have heard about the outbreak in an elementary school classroom in California reported in an early release from the CDC on August 27. The setting was an unvaccinated teacher who otherwise was following all the rules and teaching in a classroom that was optimized for prevention of SARS-CoV-2 transmission. The teacher became symptomatic but kept working plus routinely took his/her mask off to read aloud to students in class. What happened next is well summarized in this diagram from the report.
Note that the desks are 6 feet apart, an air filter was at the front of the room, the door was kept open, and windows flanking 2 sides of the classroom were open. The distribution and timing of cases in the classroom strongly suggest the teacher was the source of infection at least at the start of the classroom spread.
Vaccination, masks, social distancing, and other mitigation strategies all are important to keeping our kids safe when school opens.
Weighing Vaccine Risk/Benefits for Younger Children
Michael Schwartz, a former CNH pediatric resident and 1 of only 3 people (my wife and 1 of my 3 sons are the others) that I know actually read this blog, asked a great question last week that I wanted to answer more prominently this week. The folks at CDC have been great about distilling risks and benefits of the COVID vaccines as various rare adverse events have come to light in adolescents and adults, but do we have equivalent data for younger children to weigh the risks/benefits if and when vaccines are authorized for younger age groups?
I'm pretty sure CDC has access to unpublished numbers that they are monitoring, but for us regular pediatric healthcare providers I think the best place for summaries of pediatric information is the AAP/Children's Hospital Association biweekly reports. At the last update on August 19, things of course aren't looking good. It will be interesting to see how this changes as more schools are back in session. Also, remember that these data summaries are only as good as the sources. For example, the state of Texas (my place of birth, I'm sorry to say) has quit reporting COVID-19 data as of July 22.