| Kommentar | I can't even imagine how students, parents, and teachers are still managing, when so many schools are still evidently doing only minimal testing and tracing, not really enforcing masking or distancing, and largely ignoring ventilation. I do absolutely agree that after two very hard years, students need to be in school. I just wish that local and state governments were trying harder to give them the practical support they need in order to go back halfway safely. So the counterexample in the first article, where students organized to make their voices heard, was at least slightly encouraging. Even if Oakland is probably already one of the most progressive, student-centered districts in the US. _________________ Students, seeing lax coronavirus protocols, walk out and call in sick to protest in-person classes
Most school systems are determined to keep school in person, but some students aren’t convinced ...
As winter break ended, Ximena Santana received a confusing text message. It was from her Oakland, Calif., high school, reminding her to upload the results of the take-home coronavirus test she had been given. The problem was, she had never received a test. ...
By the second day, she and her friends noticed that large numbers of students were absent. Some were sick with covid-19, as case numbers surged nationwide because of the highly contagious omicron variant. Ximena’s friends were scared. She got scared, too.
“We were talking about how can we make school more safe,” Ximena said. Within days, they prepared a petition vowing to stay home until the Oakland Unified School District agreed to take steps, including offering KN95 or N95 masks, holding twice-weekly testing, and creating outdoor space for lunch when it rains. ...
Nearly two years since the coronavirus hit, the adults — parents, teachers, administrators, politicians — have spent a lot of time and energy fighting over what schooling in a pandemic should look like. Now, for the first time in large numbers, students are rising up and demanding that they get a say, too — in places like New York City, suburban New Jersey, outside Washington and California.
Studies last year found scant virus transmission inside schools, particularly when masks were worn consistently, and that was before vaccines were approved for children and teens. Schools that have moved online this month have mostly cited staff shortages due to illness. But some students are not convinced it’s safe. ...
On Thursday, some Oakland teachers stayed home in solidarity with students.
This week, the district appeared to respond to the health and safety concerns by announcing that it had distributed KN95 and N95 masks to teachers, and ordered 200,000 KN95 masks for students in the district, which enrolls about 50,000 children.
The district also said it had provided two HEPA filter air purifiers in each classroom and had ordered more covered dining sets for outdoor lunch. It said it would provide rapid tests to students in classrooms where there has been coronavirus exposure.https://www.washingtonpost.com/education/2022...For Coronavirus Testing, the Nose May Not Always Be Best
As Omicron spreads, some experts are calling for a switch to saliva-based tests, which may detect infections days earlier than nasal swabs do. ...
Over the past two years, diagnosing a coronavirus infection has often required probing the nose. Health care workers have inserted slender swabs deep into the recesses of Americans’ nasal passages, while at-home test kits have asked us to master the shallow double-nostril twirl.
“The traditional approach to diagnosing respiratory infections has been to go after the nose,” said Dr. Donald Milton, an expert on respiratory viruses at the University of Maryland.
But the rapid spread of the Omicron variant, and questions about the sensitivity of at-home tests, have rekindled a debate over whether the best way to detect the virus is to sample a different site: the mouth.
“The virus shows up first in your mouth and throat,” Dr. Milton said. ...
Dr. Milton and his colleagues recently found that in the three days before symptoms appear and the two days after, saliva samples contained about three times as much virus as nasal samples and were 12 times as likely to produce a positive P.C.R. result. After that, however, more virus began accumulating in the nose, according to the study, which has not yet been published in a scientific journal.
The Food and Drug Administration has now authorized numerous saliva-based P.C.R. tests, which have proven popular for screening students in schools. ...
Saliva’s advantages may be more pronounced with Omicron, which appears to replicate more quickly in the upper respiratory tract and have a shorter incubation period than earlier variants. Any testing method that can reliably detect the virus earlier is particularly valuable, experts said. ...
A team of South African researchers recently found
( https://www.medrxiv.org/content/10.1101/2021.... )
that while nasal swabs performed better than saliva swabs when detecting the Delta variant, the opposite was true for Omicron. (The study, which used P.C.R. tests, has not yet been reviewed by experts.)
More research is needed, and another small new study, conducted at a San Francisco testing site during an Omicron surge,
( https://www.medrxiv.org/content/10.1101/2022.... )
was less encouraging. Of the 22 people who tested positive on a rapid antigen test using standard nasal swabs, only two tested positive when their inner cheeks were swabbed. The scientists are currently studying whether throat swabs perform better. ...
Researchers at the California Institute of Technology found that while the virus often spiked first in saliva,
( https://journals.asm.org/doi/10.1128/JCM.01785-21 )
it ultimately rose to higher levels in the nose. Their results suggest that highly sensitive tests, like P.C.R. tests, may be able to pick up infections in saliva days earlier than they do in nasal swabs, but that less-sensitive tests, like antigen tests, might not. ...
Even scientists who were convinced of saliva’s potential were reluctant to recommend that people swab their mouths or throats with tests that are not authorized for that purpose. (The F.D.A. has also warned against this.) The biochemistry of the mouth is different than that of the nose and may affect the test results, potentially yielding false positives, scientists said.https://www.nytimes.com/2022/01/14/health/sal...Countries face a ‘Wild West’ scramble for covid pills
Experts fear that despite generic versions of the drug already available, pills produced by Pfizer and Merck could end up largely bought up by rich countries. ...
Wealthier countries have already advance[-]purchased much of the supply of treatments expected to be available in the first half of 2022. Effective use of the pills — which include Pfizer’s Paxlovid and Merck’s molnupiravir, co-developed with Ridgeback Biotherapeutics and Emory University — also requires access to coronavirus tests, which remain scarce in many places. ...
However, some signs indicate that the distribution of the drugs, which were shown in studies to be effective in lowering the risk of hospitalization and death, could shake out quite differently than for vaccines. Generic versions are already hitting the shelves in India and Bangladesh, and both Pfizer and Merck have reached deals to share the license for the drugs. ...
Both have approval from the U.S. Food and Drug Administration but data released in November showed that molnupiravir was less effective than initial clinical trials predicted, reducing the risk of hospitalization and death by only 30 percent when given within five days of the onset of symptoms. Pfizer’s antiviral drug was found to reduce hospitalizations and death by 88 percent in that same time frame. ...
Still, the drug companies will maintain control over supply to upper- and upper-middle-income countries not covered by the MPP license, including many in Latin America.
Experts also warn that a lack of testing in some countries could have a major impact on the rollout of the drugs. Modeling by the World Health Organization has estimated that 6 out of 7 covid-19 cases in Africa go undetected, in large part due to a lack of both supply and demand for tests.https://www.washingtonpost.com/world/2022/01/...Unvaccinated women with Covid are more likely to lose fetuses and infants, Scottish data show.
In Scotland, as in the United States, vaccination rates of pregnant women are low, even though there is no evidence that the Pfizer-BioNTech or Moderna vaccines pose serious risks during pregnancy. ...
Researchers in Scotland reported on Thursday that pregnant women with Covid were not only at greater risk of developing severe disease, but also more likely to lose their fetuses and babies in the womb or shortly after birth,
( https://www.nature.com/articles/s41591-021-01666-2 )
compared with other women who gave birth during the pandemic.
The risk of losing a baby through stillbirth or the first month of life was highest among women who delivered their babies within four weeks of the onset of a Covid infection: 22.6 deaths for every 1,000 births, four times the rate in Scotland of 5.6 deaths per 1,000 births.
All of those deaths occurred in pregnancies among unvaccinated women, the researchers found. “Quite strikingly, no baby deaths occurred in women who had SARS-CoV-2 and were vaccinated,” said Dr. Sarah J. Stock, the paper’s first author, a maternal-fetal medicine specialist at the University of Edinburgh Usher Institute in Exeter.
The study also found a higher rate of preterm birth among women diagnosed with Covid, a rate that spiked if the baby was born within a month of the mother falling ill. More than 16 percent of these women gave birth before 37 weeks of pregnancy, compared with 8 percent among other women.https://www.nytimes.com/2022/01/13/health/unv...Vgl. https://www.dw.com/de/covid-19-impfung-für-s...Endemie, Epidemie, Pandemie: Das sind die Unterschiede
Viele hoffen, dass das Coronavirus so schnell wieder verschwindet, wie es gekommen ist. Viele Virologen gehen aber davon aus, dass das Virus endemisch wird, gerade seit Omikron. Das bedeutet: Wir müssen damit leben.https://www.dw.com/de/endemie-epidemie-pandem...12 Signs You Have a Fake N95, KN95, or KF94 Mask ...
On the packaging
• It’s not tamper-evident. ... If your masks come in, say, a bag that’s just been twist-tied or zip-top-closed, be suspicious.
• There’s no company or location information. Legitimate respirators should state where the masks were manufactured. There should also be a legitimate website or physical address ...
• There’s no expiration date. Because the particle-repelling electrostatic charge on respirator masks eventually degrades over time, there should always be an expiration date listed on the packaging. Even likelier to deteriorate are the elastomeric materials in the straps ...
• Official terminology is used incorrectly. Any packaging that states a mask is “FDA approved” is a red flag. An N95 is approved by NIOSH, not the FDA (though a surgical N95 must also be authorized or cleared by the FDA). ...
• The company tries too hard (or not hard enough). If the packaging says “genuine,” “legitimate,” “authentic,” or “reputable,” you should view the mask with skepticism, as the CDC explains on its National Personal Protective Technology Laboratory (NPPTL) tips page.
( https://www.cdc.gov/niosh/npptl/usernotices/A... ) ...
On the mask
• There’s no branding. You should see the name of the company or logo right on the mask ...
• You notice quality-control issues. A crooked nose-bridge wire, elastics that lose their stretch or detach easily ...
On N95s
• The NIOSH mark is missing. NIOSH—spelled correctly—should be in block letters and easily detectable.
• There’s no approval number. This alphanumeric designation starts with the letters “TC-84A,” followed by four additional digits, and can be found on the mask or the bands. ...
• The mask has ear loops. Legitimate N95 masks ... have a pair of elastic bands that go around the back of the head. This typically creates a tighter seal ...
• It’s labeled for children. There are no kid-size N95 masks. Only adult-size masks undergo the NIOSH approval process ... However, there are legitimate children’s-size KN95 and KF94 masks, including those we recommend in our guide to the best masks for kids and toddlers.
( https://www.nytimes.com/wirecutter/reviews/be... )
On KN95s
• There’s no GB marking. The KN95 standard requires that masks made after July 1, 2021, be stamped with GB2626-2019, which provides reassurance that the manufacturer constructed the mask according to current Chinese respirator standards ... A mask with a GB number ending in 2006 was made according to the previous standard and is still legitimate if the expiration date hasn't passed.https://www.nytimes.com/wirecutter/blog/12-si...Italian police object to being sent pink face masks to wear on duty
Union chief writes to head of police saying ‘eccentric’ masks could damage image of the institutionhttps://www.theguardian.com/world/2022/jan/14...Antikörper aus Alpaka-Blut können vor Covid-19 schützen
Video ansehen 06:11
Sie sehen unscheinbar aus, aber haben Superkräfte: Alpakas. In ihrem Blut haben Forscher hochwirksame Antikörper gegen das Coronavirus und seine Varianten gefunden - auch gegen die hochansteckende Omikron-Variante.
* Schlagwörter Alpakas, Chile, Nanobodies, Antikörperhttps://www.dw.com/overlay/media/de/antikörp... |
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