1/ Time for the weekly report on stats and outbreaks in our schools. Here's a look by school and week.
2/ And here's a look at overall exposures and positive cases... We did have one week with over 100 people affected by needing to quarantine or being sick with COVID-19. Most of the weeks are hovering at about five dozen people affected.
3/ Here's a look at who is getting sick in Arlington by age, as a percentage of TOTAL cases in a week. Seems like kids cases jumped after school reopened, followed by increases in parent aged groups. Younger 20 somethings also continue to be high % of our cases.
4/ In addition, White people became a higher percentage of cases after schools reopened. And the 22207 zip code soon had a higher percentage of total cases as well. This North Arlington zip code includes a lot of the schools with the highest occupancy.
5/ One more glance at this...
6/ This shows rates of change by racial/ethnic group in Arlington. The dip in White cases leveled off after school buildings reopened. Same for Latino residents (but at lower rate of spread). Asian and Black students, most likely to learn at home, had an increase then decline.
7/ This is the case count by race/ethnicity.
8/ Rate of increase by age for the past few weeks: COVID-19's spread has been slowing, coming off worst month in January. The push to vaccinate is working! School kids may benefit from vaccinated parents but lag behind other groups. At least 7 school outbreaks during this time.
9/ We're now up to 59 recorded school outbreaks in Northern Virginia this year, adding St. Thomas More Catholic School in Arlington. School outbreaks appear to be reported to/by VDH with some delay from our county health department, showing up weeks afterward in the lists.
10/ Weekly cases in the age 0-19 bracket...
11/ Kids continue to take up a large % of the new cases each week in Arlington.
12/ Arlington schools report very few of our county's cases affecting kids in the APS dashboard. Are all of the other kids' COVID-19 cases from daycare or private schools? Or is the county too slow to let our school system know of cases? Or is there no one to do this data entry?
CORREX: Need to flip the lines marking 3rd to 5th grade and the addition of high school kids. Sorry about that!
The burden of COVID-19 in 22204, one of the most diverse zip codes in the county, has remained high for much of the pandemic.
These graphs are a simple attempt to show "where COVID was that week." They are a snapshot of what % new cases could be described in different ways.
13/ Finally, there was a lot in the weekly report from VDH, including a model that shows a July spike is possible if things reopen too fast and get too far ahead of vaccinations. Or, we all hang in there, eat takeout, vaccinate, and crush the 🦠 by July.

vdh.virginia.gov/content/upload…
14/ Looking at modeling for VA can make one a little nervous. Will Arlington and @GovernorVA maintain the policies that drive our community transition rate low and crush the virus? Or will we allow a July spike, prior to bringing kids back to school without social distancing?
15/ Feels like the Democrats need a "you broke it, you bought it" attitude towards this and support the policies that ensure our fall community transmission are low — since they mandated 5 days of school and have effectively forced APS to reject CDC advice on 3 feet of distance.
16/ CDC has updated its variant tracker now placing new more dangerous versions of this virus at an estimated 62% of cases In VA.

P.1 is now at .5% and appears for the first time in this list.

VA makes the top 8 states for % of variant of concern cases now.

• • •

Missing some Tweet in this thread? You can try to force a refresh
 

Keep Current with @SmartRestartAPS

@SmartRestartAPS Profile picture

Stay in touch and get notified when new unrolls are available from this author!

Read all threads

This Thread may be Removed Anytime!

PDF

Twitter may remove this content at anytime! Save it as PDF for later use!

Try unrolling a thread yourself!

how to unroll video
  1. Follow @ThreadReaderApp to mention us!

  2. From a Twitter thread mention us with a keyword "unroll"
@threadreaderapp unroll

Practice here first or read more on our help page!

More from @smartrestartaps

23 Apr
1/ When faced w/ uncertainty in a crisis, assuming best outcome can be a mistake. As @dgurdasani1 noted: "It's not alarmist to be cautious. In the face of uncertainty, when the losses can be large, the best strategy is to reduce risk as far as possible."
threadreaderapp.com/thread/1384778…
2/ This is @APSVaSchoolBd's plan for fall: Normal. Full buses. Normal lunch. (Full cafeterias indoors?) APS hopes that CDC drops its 3' guidance so there won't be any distancing, even among unvaccinated younger kids. (Contingency is 3' distance.)

Or anyone can choose virtual.
3/ This is @FCPSSupt's plan: force most to in-person. Limit access to virtual accommodations. But have "large-scale" testing and purchase tents to take class activities outdoors — plan now to reduce risk until kids vaccinated. (Critics: not enough done.)

washingtonpost.com/local/educatio…
Read 5 tweets
22 Apr
We learned that teachers in APS are now allowed to remove Plexiglass barriers on desks because they muffle sound, make seeing kids harder.

Here are a few other reasons schools should remove this snake oil... Short 🧵.

📌 First, CDC deleted guidance to use them in March.
📌 Third, and this and this and this...




Oh, and a bioaerosol expert on a our leadership team also tested these in his lab and found them to be utterly ineffectual at doing anything to block small floating particles!
Read 5 tweets
22 Apr
2/ Here's the breakdown of COVID-19 exposures and positive cases by school community as of the start of the week.
3/ The trend on youth cases in Arlington... via VDH data.
Read 20 tweets
22 Apr
1/ A big myth of the "return to school buildings" debate is that COVID-19 magically🧙‍♀️ doesn't spread in kids.

A preprint from an Omaha pilot project debunks this bigly (again).

Another 🧵 with evidence for TESTING to detect and 🛑🦠. #SafetyIsVITAL

abcnews.go.com/Health/study-s…
2/ University of Nebraska Medical Center found:

📌 Lots of asymptomatic COVID-19; testing caught cases MUCH higher than typical school reporting (self-reports and symptomatic).

📌 Staff: 2.5x more COVID

📌 Students: 6x more

📌 10x more 🦠 at school than in community stats
3/ Turns out schools may have missed up to 9 of 10 student cases and 7 of 10 staff cases — before better testing to detect and #StopTheSpread of COVID-19.

📌 District also mitigated risks:
✔️ hybrid
✔️ ¼ occupancy
✔️ 😷
✔️ 6 ft distancing

(HS & MS schools in study)
Read 23 tweets
20 Apr
1/ Study finds indoor sports most likely setting in our schools to spread COVID-19.

Secondary attack rates by setting:
📌indoor, contact sports like🏀, wrestling, cheer (23.8%)
📌staff meetings or lunches (18.2%)
📌elementary school rooms (9.5%)

academic.oup.com/cid/advance-ar…
2/ Tracked COVID-19 cases Dec 11, 2020, to Jan 22, 2021, in an Atlanta district that included 8 elementary schools, 2 middle schools, and a high school. Students were in-person 4 days per week and wore masks, with desks spaced 3 to 6 feet apart. More kids in ES rooms than MS/HS.
3/ All cases confirmed by PCR testing. Secondary attack rate (SAR) — % of contacts who become infected— was calculated by setting (classroom, bus, indoor sports); student or staff; symptomatic or asymptomatic, and time of exposure.

Overall, 9% secondary contacts got sick.
Read 9 tweets

Did Thread Reader help you today?

Support us! We are indie developers!


This site is made by just two indie developers on a laptop doing marketing, support and development! Read more about the story.

Become a Premium Member ($3/month or $30/year) and get exclusive features!

Become Premium

Too expensive? Make a small donation by buying us coffee ($5) or help with server cost ($10)

Donate via Paypal Become our Patreon

Thank you for your support!

Follow Us on Twitter!