CORONAVIRUS INFO PROVIDED BY DR. JIM HARRIS – 09/04/2021

HELLO,

More than 5,000 Fort Worth students and teachers in quarantine for COVID-19 exposure

MISD COVID COUNTS AS OF 29 AUGUST:

NET Health board recommends masking in schools, businesses due to COVID-19 rise

Amazon algorithm directing readers to ivermectin, COVID-19 misinformation sites

Federal Health Officials Want The White House To Slow Its COVID Booster Shot Rollout

”…The leaders of the Food and Drug Administration and the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention are telling White House COVID advisors that there is not enough data right now to make a blanket recommendation on boosters and that it may be prudent to start boosters with older adults first, pending FDA authorization…At a White House briefing Thursday to support a recommendation for boosters, Fauci presented additional data from Israel on the use of a booster in adults aged 60 and older…The [ISRAELI] study looked at more than a million people who had received a third shot of the Pfizer vaccine starting at the end of July. Those results showed a strong immune response, Fauci said, adding that he believes a three-dose regimen of the Pfizer and Moderna vaccines would become “routine.”

(J. Harris: As we saw last week, recent studies also show a marvelous rise in antibodies after a J&J Vaccine booster jab in those who have already had that vaccine.)

FROM HOPKINS CITATIONS:

Israel’s COVID-19 Boosters Are Preventing Infections, New Studies Suggest (Science) Israel’s nationwide campaign to provide its population with COVID-19 vaccine boosters appears to benefit recipients. A third dose of the Pfizer-BioNTech vaccine significantly lowers the risk of infection, according to two new studies. A report for the country’s Ministry of Health, posted Friday, showed a third dose reduced recipients’ risk of testing positive for SARS-CoV-2 by more than 10-fold 2 weeks later. And in a preprint posted yesterday, researchers used data from a health maintenance organization (HMO) to calculate that a third dose roughly halves a person’s chances of testing positive for the virus starting 1 week after the shot and further reduces it after the second week.

2. Prevalence of Allergic Reactions After Pfizer-BioNTech COVID-19 Vaccination Among Adults With High Allergy Risk (JAMA Network) Can patients at high risk for anaphylactic reactions receive the Pfizer-BioNTech (BNT162b2) COVID-19 vaccine? In this cohort study of 8102 individuals with an allergy history, an algorithm was used to define 429 (5%) as “highly allergic”; this group was referred to receive immunization under medical supervision. A total of 98% of the highly allergic individuals had no allergic reaction, 6 (1%) had mild allergic responses, and 3 (0.7%) had anaphylactic reactions.

3. If You’re Unvaccinated, The CDC Wants You To Stay Home This Labor Day Weekend (NPR) If you’re not vaccinated, you shouldn’t travel over the long Labor Day weekend. That’s the bottom line, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention Director Dr. Rochelle Walensky. “First and foremost, if you are unvaccinated, we would recommend not traveling,” Walensky said at a White House COVID-19 briefing on Tuesday.

4. Full FDA Approval Triggers More Universities To Require The COVID-19 Vaccine (NPR) It’s been a week since the FDA announced full approval of Pfizer’s COVID-19 vaccine, and the decision has opened the door for colleges and universities to require the vaccine for their campuses. With a new academic year underway, about 100 colleges across the country added a mandate after the FDA approval. While more than 800 colleges and universities have now adopted COVID-19 vaccination requirements for their students and staff to be able to return to campus in person, most institutions — whether or not they have a requirement — have been highly encouraging or incentivizing their students to get vaccinated.

5. US SCHOOLS As the school year begins for many in the US, COVID-19 cases among children are rising, with nearly 204,000 new cases added the week ending August 26, representing 22.4% of the total weekly reported cases. This marks the second week with child cases at the level of the winter surge of 2020-21 and a 5-fold increase from July 22 to August 26, according to the American Academy of Pediatrics (AAP). US CDC data show the number of COVID-19 cases and related emergency room visits and hospitalizations among children were 4 times higher in states with low vaccination rates than those with higher vaccination rates during the month of August. CDC Director Dr. Rochelle Walensky said last week that recently opened schools with COVID-19 outbreaks generally are not following federal guidelines for vaccination and universal masking among staff and students. In one Iowa school district where masking is optional, parents are being given the option to quarantine their children if they have a known exposure, as long as they remain symptom-free, increasing the risk of transmission among asymptomatic children. In schools already operating, some outbreaks have caused districts to return to virtual learning, including one Texas school district where 2 junior high teachers died of COVID-19 complications the same week.

A Texas school district closed all its schools after two teachers died from Covid-19 (WACO AREA)

AND LASTLY: