Tag Archives: CDC

CDC to issue new COVID-19 guidelines for schools on Friday: White House

WASHINGTON (Reuters) – The federal Centers for Disease Control and Prevention plans to issue new guidelines for U.S. schools reopening on Friday, White House coronavirus adviser Andy Slavitt said.

Reopening schools is a top priority for the administration of President Joe Biden, who has stressed he wants it done safely and has supported vaccinations for teachers.

The top U.S. health safety agency has been working on a new set of guidelines to meet the challenges that school districts face across the country.

“Tomorrow, the CDC is going to roll out their operating plan to give school districts, local communities, the guidance they need to know to begin to do that and to begin to do that aggressively,” Slavitt said on Thursday.

Pressure to reopen or expand in-person learning for students has been building across the United States in recent weeks as the impact of remote learning on education and family life has become more apparent. The debate over how and when to safely reopen has become heated in many school districts.

Slavitt said he understood why some parents were impatient to reopen and stressed that the CDC was being very thorough in formulating its guidelines on masking, social distancing and other issues.

“I can assure you of one thing: There’s no debate over whether to open schools here. There’s a debate over how,” Slavitt said. “And if it were as simple as ‘open all the schools,’ they’d all be open by now.”

(Reporting by Doina Chiacu; Editing by Hugh Lawson and Bernadette Baum)

65.9 million doses of COVID-19 vaccines delivered, 44.7 million administered: U.S. CDC

(Reuters) – The U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention said it had administered 44,769,970 doses of COVID-19 vaccines in the country as of Wednesday morning and delivered 65,972,575 doses.

The tally of vaccine doses are for both Moderna and Pfizer/BioNTech, vaccines as of 6:00 a.m. ET on Wednesday, the agency said.

According to the tally posted on Tuesday, the agency had administered 43,206,190 doses of the vaccines, and delivered 62,898,775 doses.

The agency said 33,783,384 people had received 1 or more doses while 10,469,514 people have got the second dose as of Wednesday.

A total of 5,176,499 vaccine doses have been administered in long-term care facilities, the agency said.

(Reporting by Vishwadha Chander in Bengaluru; Editing by Ramakrishnan M.)

Double-masking, knotting-and-tucking for snug fit reduces COVID-19 spread, U.S. study shows

By Manas Mishra

(Reuters) – Making sure a mask fits snugly on the face and use of two masks is likely to significantly reduce a person’s exposure to the coronavirus, laboratory experiments described by U.S. health officials on Wednesday showed.

The U.S. Centers of Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) in January conducted experiments to see how well wearing a cloth mask over a three-ply medical procedure mask, and knotting the ear loops of a surgical mask and then tucking the excess material close to the face, protects against COVID-19.

They found that both these methods helped reduce the exposure to potentially infected aerosols by more than 90% in laboratory simulations.

Results from one experiment demonstrated that the un-knotted medical procedure mask alone blocked 42.0% of the particles from a simulated cough, and the cloth mask alone blocked 44.3%.

The double mask combination blocked 92.5% of the cough particles.

In another experiment, the CDC tried to simulate the spread of COVID-19 during breathing when one or both people are properly masked. In the first scenario with only the source of the aerosols wearing a mask, they found coronavirus exposure was reduced by 82.2% when double-masking, and 62.9% with a snug fitting, knotted and tucked surgical mask.

When the source and receiver of simulated breathing aerosols were both fitted with double masks, or knotted and tucked medical masks, the exposure of the receiver was reduced 96.4% and 95.9%, respectively, the experiments found.

The data underscore that a good, tight fit with no spaces around the sides or use of a second cloth mask to improve the fit of the first mask increases overall efficiency and reduces virus transmission risk, the CDC said.

(Reporting by Manas Mishra in Bengaluru; Editing by Bill Berkrot)

62.9 million doses of COVID-19 vaccines delivered, 43.2 million administered: U.S. CDC

Reuters) – The U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention said it had administered 43,206,190 doses of COVID-19 vaccines in the country as of Tuesday morning and delivered 62,898,775 doses.

The tally of vaccine doses are for both Moderna and Pfizer/BioNTech vaccines as of 6:00 a.m. ET on Tuesday, the agency said.

The agency said 32,867,213 people had received 1 or more doses while 9,840,429 people have got the second dose as of Tuesday.

A total of 5,015,224 vaccine doses have been administered in long-term care facilities, the agency said.

(Reporting by Vishwadha Chander in Bengaluru; Editing by Aditya Soni)

COVID-19 vaccine chasers hunt, wait and hope in Los Angeles

By Norma Galeana

SANTA FE SPRINGS, Calif. (Reuters) – Jose Luis Espinoza had been chasing a COVID-19 vaccine for more than three weeks.

He hadn’t hugged his 98-year-old father in a long time, and was hoping a vaccine would change that. Last week, he struck gold in Santa Fe Springs.

“It was the last dose they gave, and I was the lucky one,” the 68-year-old said.

The chase for leftover vaccine doses is widespread and competitive in Los Angeles. The wait can last for hours outside a clinic or vaccination site, and most people are turned away without a shot.

Clinics have leftover doses when people cancel their appointments at the last minute or don’t show up. Once opened, vaccine vials have an expiry date: 5 days for the Pfizer vaccine and 30 days for the Moderna one.

“We need to make sure if we’re going to pull out that vaccine, that we have the people signed up and the resources and the event scheduled,” said Will Baker, clinic manager for private ambulance service CARE Ambulance, stressing the importance of not wasting any of the precious doses.

‘NEVER GUARANTEED’

Vaccine chasers have been criticized for getting doses when it’s not their turn, perhaps taking it away from someone who might need it more.

“I’m here in the hope that there’s some that might be left over,” said Cynthia Perez, 48, the first to arrive when the Santa Fe Springs clinic opened at 2:00pm.

“So I’m not trying to jump the line. I’m just trying to take advantage of any vaccines or any doses that might be thrown away,” she said.

Perez said she had a child with asthma, and was in ill-health herself, adding, “I’m trying to get ahead of the curve a bit and stay healthy.”

As the evening wore on, the line of chasers outside the clinic grew, and Baker took down their details. Throughout the day, he counted the doses left at each vaccine station, revised the list of appointments, and did the math.

When the clinic closed at 6 p.m., and there was a single shot left over, he called Espinoza’s name.

“I went over the guidelines and I looked for anyone in the line that was 1A,” Baker explained, referring to the first category of vaccine allocation as recommended by the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.

“We did have one person in the line that met the 1A criteria and we were able to get him a vaccine today,” he said.

Then Baker went outside and told the rest of the line there were no more doses for the day, apologizing and thanking everyone for their patience.

Perez picked up her bag and headed home, disappointed but not deterred.

“You can’t be upset. It’s never guaranteed,” she said.

(Reporting by Norma Galeana; Editing by Sandra Stojanovic, Karishma Singh and Gerry Doyle)

Biden believes U.S. teachers are priority for vaccinations, White House says

WASHINGTON (Reuters) – President Joe Biden believes America’s teachers should be a priority in getting vaccinated against the coronavirus, but he will listen to scientists’ recommendations on a comprehensive approach to reopening schools, the White House said on Tuesday.

“He believes that teachers should be a priority on the vaccination list – he has supported that,” White House Communications Director Kate Bedingfield said in an interview with MSNBC.

“He believes that teachers should get their vaccines, but he’s listening to the science, and there are a number of important steps that we need to take to ensure that schools can open and open safely,” she said. “Vaccines are one piece of it.”

Official guidance for reopening American schools will likely come later in the week from the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC), Bedingfield said.

School reopenings have become a hot topic across the nation. District officials, teachers, parents and health professionals have been debating when and how to safely reopen for millions of students who have been taking classes remotely for 11 months since the pandemic closed schools last spring.

Educators in major cities, including Chicago and Philadelphia, on Monday called for strong COVID-19 safety protocols in their classrooms as those and other districts pushed to reopen.

“There are a number of important steps that we need to take to ensure that schools can open and open safely. Vaccines are one piece of it,” Bedingfield said. “There needs to be masking, there needs to be room for social distancing, so those mitigation measures are just as important.”

(Reporting by Doina Chiacu; Editing by Chizu Nomiyama and Jonathan Oatis)

U.S. educators wrangle over school re-opening

By Brendan O’Brien and Barbara Goldberg

(Reuters) – Educators in major cities including Chicago and Philadelphia on Monday called for strong COVID-19 safety protocols in their classrooms as those and other districts pushed to re-open schools that have been closed for nearly a year.

Across the nation, school reopenings have become a red-hot topic. District officials, teachers, parents and health professionals have been debating when and how to safely re-open schools for millions of students who have been taking classes remotely for 11 months since the pandemic closed schools last spring.

In Chicago, the powerful Chicago Teachers Union was considering the school district’s proposed COVID-19 safety plan that would allow schools to begin re-opening this week. In Philadelphia, educators won an agreement to allow a mediator to decide when in-person learning could safely resume.

If approved, the agreement with Chicago Public Schools, the third largest U.S. district, would avert a threatened lock out by the district, or strike by teachers who demanded stronger safety protocols to prevent the spread of the virus in classrooms.

A deal would allow for some 67,000 students to gradually return into school buildings over the next month, starting with pre-kindergarten and special education pupils later this week.

The union’s leadership is expected to decide on Monday night whether to send its 28,000 rank and file members the district’s safety plan to for a vote on Tuesday.

In Philadelphia, the teachers union succeeded late on Sunday in reversing a district order to return some 2,000 pre-kindergarten through second grade teachers to their classrooms on Monday to prepare for students coming back on Feb. 22.

“There is a lot of uncertainty about the process of re-opening,” said Pennsylvania State Senator Nikil Saval on a Twitter video as he protested with Philadelphia teachers outside his child’s school. “We want an eventual return to schools but only when it is safe … for teachers and students.”

The Philadelphia Federation of Teachers on Twitter cheered the city’s concession to allow an independent arbitrator to decide when the district can safely resume in-person teaching.

“The mediation process is still ongoing,” the union said on Twitter.

U.S. President Joe Biden on Sunday addressed the issue on Sunday, describing school closures and their negative impact on families as a national emergency.

During a Super Bowl interview on CBS, Biden said it was time for schools to reopen if they can do it safely, with fewer people in classrooms and proper ventilation.

“I think about the price so many of my grandkids and … kids are going to pay for not having had the chance to finish whatever it was,” he said. “They are going for a lot, these kids.”

Leading health organizations, including the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, have said there is little evidence that schools contribute to the spread of the virus, which has killed more than 460,000 people in the United States since the pandemic began.

In Michigan, more than 350 physicians and psychologists signed a letter to Ann Arbor Schools officials urging the resumption of in-person classes by March 1. They warned of the “harmful impact of delayed school reopening on our community.”

Dr. Kim Monroe, a pediatrician who helped organize the Michigan effort, told radio station WEMU, “We are seeing so much mental illness in children due to the virtual schooling.”

A gradual re-opening unfolded in Atlanta when third through fifth grade students went back to school on Monday after prekindergarten through second grade returned to schools on Jan. 25.

In New York City, in-person classes in the nation’s largest school system will resume for middle school students on Feb. 25. About half of the public school system’s 471 middle schools will offer five-day-a-week classroom learning with the remainder working toward that goal, Mayor Bill de Blasio and Schools Chancellor Richard Carranza said at a press briefing.

“If we’re in an environment where the city is overwhelmingly vaccinated, we’re able to bring school back as it was. Same physical proportions. Same number of kids in classrooms,” De Blasio said, adding he hopes to have all schools back to full-time in-person learning in the fall.

(Reporting by Brendan O’Brien in Chicago and Barbara Goldberg in Maplewood, New Jersey; Editing by David Gregorio)

U.S. COVID-19 cases and hospitalizations log biggest weekly drops since pandemic started

(Reuters) – The United States reported a 25% drop in new cases of COVID-19 to about 825,000 last week, the biggest fall since the pandemic started, although health officials said they were worried new variants of the virus could slow or reverse this progress.

New cases of the virus have now fallen for four weeks in a row to the lowest level since early November, according to a Reuters analysis of state and county reports. The steepest drop was in California, where cases in the week ended Feb. 7 fell 48%. Only Oregon, Puerto Rico, Arkansas and Vermont saw cases rise.

At least three new variants of the novel coronavirus are circulating in the United States, including the UK variant B.1.1.7 that is 30% to 40% more contagious, according to researchers.

“I’m asking everyone to please keep your guard up,” Dr. Rochelle Walensky, director of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, said on Monday. “The continued proliferation of variants remains a great concern and is a threat that could reverse the recent positive trends we are seeing.”

The average number of COVID-19 patients in hospitals fell by 15% to 88,000 last week, also a record percentage drop, according to a Reuters analysis of data from the volunteer-run COVID Tracking Project. It was the lowest average number in hospitals since late November.

Death fell 2.5% last week to 22,193. Excluding a backlog of deaths reported by Indiana, fatalities were down 9.5% last week. Deaths are a lagging indicator and usually fall several weeks after cases and hospitalizations drop.

Cumulatively, nearly 464,000 people have died from the virus in the United States, or one in every 704 residents.

Nationally, 7.3% of tests of tests came back positive for the virus, down from 8.5% the prior week, according to data from the COVID Tracking Project.

(Graphic by Chris Canipe, writing by Lisa Shumaker, editing by Tiffany Wu)

WHO team in China’s Wuhan visits provincial CDC

WUHAN, China (Reuters) – A World Health Organization-led team investigating the origins of the COVID-19 pandemic on Monday visited the Center for Disease Control and Prevention in China’s central region of Hubei, where the outbreak emerged in late 2019.

The group of independent experts spent about 4-1/2 hours on its longest site visit since completing two weeks of quarantine on Thursday, and did not speak to waiting journalists.

The WHO, which has sought to manage expectations for the mission, has said its members would be limited to visits organized by their Chinese hosts and have no contact with community members, because of health curbs.

The group has so far also visited hospitals where early cases were detected, markets, and an exhibition on the battle with the outbreak in the provincial capital of Wuhan.

No full itinerary for the group’s field work has been announced, and journalists covering the tightly controlled visit have been kept at a distance from team members.

Yanzhong Huang, senior fellow with the Council of Foreign Relations in Washington, said two weeks in the field was not much time for the experts.

“I don’t think they have the time to get any conclusive results. It is more like communication and information exchange,” Huang told Reuters by phone from Washington.

“It depends how diligent they are in digging new information but also about how cooperative and accommodating the Chinese side will be.”

Beijing has sought to cast doubt on the notion that the coronavirus originated in China, pointing to imported frozen food as a conduit.

That hypothesis figured again on Sunday in the Global Times tabloid run by the ruling Communist Party’s People’s Daily.

On Sunday, the experts visited the Huanan seafood market linked to initial infections, and the Baishazhou wholesale food market, where a loudspeaker repeatedly announced that the sale of imported cold chain products was banned at the market.

(Reporting by Martin Quin Pollard and Thomas Peter in Wuhan; Additional reporting by David Stanway in Shanghai; Writing by Tony Munroe; Editing by Gerry Doyle and Clarence Fernandez)

South Carolina reports two South African variant COVID-19 cases, first in U.S.

By Julie Steenhuysen

(Reuters) – State health officials in South Carolina on Thursday said they found two cases of COVID-19 linked to a more transmissible coronavirus variant first detected in South Africa, the first cases of the mutated virus discovered in the United Sates.

Viruses are constantly changing, but the presence of the South African variant in the United States is especially concerning because several laboratory studies have shown that it reduces vaccine effectiveness.

So far, vaccines made by Moderna Inc and Pfizer Inc/BioNTech still appear protective against this variant of the coronavirus, but the companies this week said they are considering making new versions of their shots just in case. Moderna also plans to test giving a third shot of its vaccine to bolster antibody levels.

The U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention said in a statement that it is aware of the cases and noted that there is no evidence the variant causes more severe disease.

The arrival of the South African variant follows predictions by the CDC this month that a more-transmissible U.K. variant could become the dominant strain in the United States by March.

CDC has said the arrival of more transmissible coronavirus variants emphasizes the need for rapid rollout of the vaccine to limit the ability of the virus to continue mutating.

(Reporting by Peter Szekely and Julie Steenhuysen in Chicago; additional reporting by Manojna Maddipatla in Bangalore; Editing by Chizu Nomiyama and David Gregorio)