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Hmm seems to me the Manatee School District is making it harder to obtain information on Covid-19 outbreaks. Which leads to the question: If they felt that they had everything (mostly) under control - why would they feel the need to stop their weekly public updates on Covid-19? Inquiring minds want to know...
Half a dozen Manatee County schools have reported new COVID-19 cases over the past several days.
District spokesman Mike Barber provided the update on Friday afternoon, responding to an inquiry from the Bradenton Herald. The list included two cases reported by the newspaper earlier this week (at Manatee High and Gullett Elementary), along with five cases that were previously unreported.
Barber also confirmed that he would no longer provide a weekly update of cases on Friday afternoons, a brief practice by the district. He said the district was now handling daily reports “just like public records requests.”
“If you want a daily update, it must be requested,” Barber said in an email.
At least 18 Manatee County schools have reported COVID-19 cases since the start of school on Aug. 17.
I told two friends & they told two friends and so on & so on; how infection spreads.
First Three Cases of Covid-19 Re-Infection Confirmed
This latest case (see link below) goes against the prevalent thinking of scientists that "reinfections" will be mild/milder. Apparently reinfections appear to be rare - but the truth is nobody knows for sure how rare reinfections actually are.
Earlier this week, the world was dealing head-on with what was believed to be the world's first documented case of coronavirus reinfection in Hong Kong.
Now, less than a week later, researchers in the United States are reporting their first documented case of a patient who got COVID, recovered and then got it again.
Scientists say that although reinfection is likely possible, it's also extremely rare.
Nevertheless, the first documented reinfection is notable in how quickly the patient seemed to be reinfected after his initial recovery.
"Having had it doesn’t mean you can’t get it again, that’s what this shows," Dr. Mark Pandori, director of the Nevada State Public Health Laboratory and co-author of the study, said in an interview with ABC's "World News Tonight." "It tells us possibly things we still don’t know about this virus ... or that there is a danger that even if you’ve had it that your immune system may not protect you from a significant illness next time."
The case report, which has not yet been peer-reviewed and is currently only available as a pre-print, tells the story of a 25-year-old man in Nevada. In late March, he developed some of the classic signs of COVID-19: sore throat, cough, diarrhea, headache and nausea. After testing positive on April 18, he began to gradually feel better, and the virus appeared to leave his system, seemingly verified with two consecutive negative tests in May.
But only a few weeks later, he started to feel ill again, testing positive for COVID-19 once again in June. This time, he was admitted to the hospital with serious symptoms.
At first, the researchers wondered if the virus had been hiding in his body the whole time -- mutating, changing and eventually developing into something that caused him to get sick with COVID-19 a second time. But they ultimately rejected this theory, saying that the two viruses were so different that it would have been nearly impossible for the virus to change that quickly inside his body. The only explanation was that he had been infected by a slightly different version of the coronavirus.
"There’s no invulnerability here," Pandori told ABC News. "Whether you’ve had this infection before or whether perhaps in the future vaccinated, there won’t be such a thing as invulnerability."
Last edited by wondermint2; 08-29-2020 at 03:17 PM..
"They quickly wiped it away. The draft report remains under review as the Department verifies that data is accurately reflected" : Translation: Let's figure out a way to 'spin' the data to make it look better before/if we make it public.
The Florida Department of Health accidentally released a report on COVID-19 outbreaks at schools across the state — from daycare centers to colleges — and found that nearly 900 students and staffers had tested positive during a two-week period in August as schools had just begun or readied to reopen.
State officials published the six-page draft online on Monday, but then quickly wiped it away a day later. The Herald obtained a copy before it disappeared.
“These draft reports were inadvertently made available on a Department archival site and not yet finalized. They remain under review as the Department verifies that data is accurately reflected,” Moscoso said in the email.
Gov. Ron DeSantis blasted the report’s release, saying it “misrepresented” what was going on now in schools.
Based on the draft’s preliminary data, 765 Florida residents associated with daycare centers, elementary, middle and high schools have tested positive for COVID-19 from Aug. 10 to Aug. 23:
- 205 students, 12 people considered “unknown” and 342 staff members from primary and secondary schools.
- 83 “attendees,” nine people considered “unknown” and 114 staff members associated with daycare centers.
- Among the state’s colleges, universities and trade schools, 90 students, four people considered “unknown” and 61 staff members tested positive for COVID-19.
Last edited by wondermint2; 08-29-2020 at 06:02 PM..
TALLAHASSEE — In a partial win for Gov. Ron DeSantis and Education Commissioner Richard Corcoran, a Tallahassee-based appeals court on Friday put on hold a Leon County circuit judge’s ruling that said a state mandate for schools to reopen this month amid the coronavirus is unconstitutional.
DeSantis and Corcoran have been locked in a legal slugfest with teachers unions over the education commissioner’s July 6 emergency order requiring schools to reopen five days a week in August or risk losing state funding.
The 1st District Court of Appeal on Friday agreed to a state request to reinstate a stay on Judge Charles Dodson’s ruling, but it refused to approve another request to fast-track the case to the Florida Supreme Court.
Under an order released by the appellate court late Friday afternoon, final briefs in the case aren’t due until Sept. 9, meaning a decision won’t be finalized until nearly all school districts have reopened. The court did not elaborate on its decision to stay Dodson’s ruling but said, “a written order elaborating on this disposition will follow.”
The appellate-court fight comes after Dodson twice this week sided with the Florida Education Association and the Orange County teachers union in lawsuits challenging Corcoran’s order requiring schools to reopen for in-person learning.
The teachers union could have a difficult time winning at the appellate court or the Supreme Court, both of which are stocked with judges appointed by Republican governors. The Supreme Court has a conservative-leaning majority of justices, including two who were appointed by DeSantis.
On the weekly chart the Covid-19 downtrend (for Sarasota & Manatee Counties) continued again this past week. We saw declines in new cases, test positivity rates and hospitalizations. Testing also continued to decline - however we can safely state that the Covid-19 transmission is actually declining (and not due to reduced testing) because of the declining test positivity rates and hospitalizations.
(July 19th - July 25th) total positive cases = 873 (124.7 cases per day on average)
(July 19th - 25th) total tests = 11, 217 (1602.4 tests per day on average)
(July 19th - 25th) test positivity rate = 7.78%
(July 12th -18th) total positive cases = 1123 (160.4 cases per day on average)
(July 12th - 18th) total tests = 15,758 (2251 tests per day on average)
(July 12th - 18th) test positivity rate = 7.12%
Manatee County
(July 19th - July 25th) total positive cases = 1264 (180.57 cases per day on average)
(July 19th - July 25th) total tests = 12,515 (1787.85 tests per day on average)
(July 19th - July 25th) test positivity rate = 9.9%
(July 12th - 18th) total positive cases = 1448 (206.85 cases per day on average)
(July 12th - 18th) total tests = 14,386 (2055.14 tests per day on average)
(July 12th - 18th) test positivity rate = 10%
Last edited by wondermint2; 08-30-2020 at 01:55 PM..
Well Sarasota County schools seem to be opening at a good time (the test positivity rate has come way down from the July peak). Also checking for symptoms is all fine and dandy - however much of the Covid-19 spread comes from asymptomatic carriers. Hope it all works out - however Manatee County schools appear to be having a bit of a problem keeping the Covid-19 out of their schools. Also it doesn't make the public more trusting when the school districts "clam up" and make it difficult to get public information.
HERE'S WHAT HAPPENS IF A STUDENT OR TEACHER TESTS POSITIVE FOR COVID-19 AT A SARASOTA COUNTY SCHOOL:
SARASOTA COUNTY, Fla. — After looking at the positivity rate in Sarasota County, the director of the county's Health Department says he feels good about the reopening of schools on Monday.
One of the biggest concerns for parents and even teachers, is what happens if someone tests positive for COVID-19 at a school?
"We've developed an online form that feeds into a database that all staff and students will be tracked on,” said Sarasota Schools’ Chief Operating Officer Jody Dumas.
If you're sending your child back to the classroom, all parents have to sign a form, promising to take their child's temperature and check for COVID-19 symptoms each morning before school.
"We are going to provide a list of common COVID-19 symptoms and we are going to ask parents please if your student is experiencing any of these symptoms don't put them on a bus, don't bring them to the bus stop, don't bring them to school,” Dumas said. “That's our first line of defense."
Last edited by wondermint2; 08-30-2020 at 02:57 PM..
TALLAHASSEE – With coronavirus cases down from a blistering mid-summer high, Gov. Ron DeSantis is pushing Florida into an uncertain new September stage, marked by a return of children to classrooms, campuses crammed with university students, and football stadiums partially filled.
But with critically needed testing also slumping, public health experts say the active autumn is likely to produce at least one thing – a surge in the virus. Again.
“With all these openings of universities and schools, we’re going to get a spike. Soon,” said Dr. Ira Longini, a biostatistician and epidemiologist at the University of Florida. “But how big, it’s hard to say.”
Dr. Amesh Adalja, an infectious disease specialist at the Johns Hopkins Center for Health Security, said the path Florida and other states are taking as a new school year dawns represents a stiff challenge to the distancing and hygiene protocols needed to rein in the virus, which has stricken more than 600,000 Floridians and claimed the lives of 11,000 residents.
“A virus increase is inevitable any time you have increased social interaction,” Adalja said. “The question is, are you prepared for that, with testing, hospital space, isolating of those who get sick. The virus isn’t going anywhere. The virus is going to continue to occur, it’s up to us how we handle it.”
When South Florida’s summer COVID-19 surge hit Miami-Dade County with full force in July, public officials had little capacity to track down the contacts of the thousands of new infections reported every day and stop the spread.
But by August, the health department had built up the county’s contact tracing workforce and shifted its testing strategy to dramatically cut turnaround times. Now there’s another problem: Many of the people contact tracers try to reach won’t respond to questions that could help cut infections in Miami-Dade.
As of mid-August, about 14,200 people cooperated with contact tracers, according to a health department report. But nearly double that number — about 27,150 — chose not to participate or could not be reached. It is not clear whether those were people infected with COVID or their contacts or both.
At the same time, fewer people are being tested for the disease despite state-run testing sites having more capacity than ever. Testing statewide has dropped about 31% from an average of 93,600 a day during the last week of July to an average of 64,100 last week.
After more than a month of spiking cases, deaths and national media coverage, Florida appears to have reached what public health experts are calling “COVID fatigue,” and Jason Salemi, an associate professor of epidemiology for the University of South Florida in Tampa, said he sees it playing out in the Sunshine State.
Gov. Ron DeSantis brought the White House’s new coronavirus adviser, Scott Atlas, to Tallahassee on Monday to embrace a controversial testing policy that suggests people with no symptoms should be discouraged from testing because it leads to shutdowns, a position opposed by other members of the president’s task force.
“The CDC is not saying you cannot get a test. They’re just saying there’s a rationale for getting a test, and if you are concerned, you can contact your doctor or your local health official,’’ said Atlas, an adviser to the White House Coronavirus Task Force, at the media event held at the state Capitol. “But there must be a prioritization because we need to use the testing — not to lock down society — you need to have the testing result in something very positive and that is decreasing deaths.”
Atlas supports policies of herd immunity and has urged that the United States adopt the model Sweden has used to respond to the virus outbreak, which advocates for lifting restrictions to allow more exposure and allow people to build up immunity to the disease rather than limiting social and business interactions to prevent the virus from spreading, according to recent reporting in the Washington Post.
DeSantis said he has been in frequent contract with Atlas and agreed with his strategy to discourage testing of those who have no symptoms.
Last edited by wondermint2; 08-31-2020 at 12:43 PM..
White House adviser joins DeSantis to tout COVID strategy: Test only those with symptoms
IMO this new Abbott rapid Covid-19 test (see link below) would be an excellent tool for schools/universities to screen for Covid-19 (catch the asymptomatic carriers before they spread the virus). It's my understanding that the test only costs $5 - so they can be given every couple of days. I'm thinking that there's going to be school districts that fly on their own and disregard the advice from DeSantis. At least I'm hoping so...
Abbott Laboratories is now holding trials to try and expand its rapid Covid-19 test to people who show no symptoms of the virus, ABT’s CEO Robert Ford has revealed to CNBC.
“We are working on developing data for asymptomatic claims, so we are running our clinical trial, and we’ll eventually have data to be able to support that,” Ford told CNBC.
Last edited by wondermint2; 08-31-2020 at 01:00 PM..
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