What Science Says About Sending Kids Back to School
Wisconsin might be claiming that it can reopen schools safely this fall, but Benjamin Knorr, a 40-year-old single father of two teen boys, doesn’t buy it. Knorr would consider sending his kids back to school in the fall if daily COVID-19 cases drop, but he says that he and other parents suspect that even if schools open this fall, it’s just a matter of time before they’re shut down again. And if you can’t get many adults to wear face masks, Knorr says, how can you expect teenagers to?
“Once you start going to school, the kids are in a 15-to-20-person class, seven or eight [times a day]. One kid is exposed to 100 other people, who all have families. I mean, it’s crazy,” says Knorr. “I can’t even really believe that they’re doing it. I wish that the governor would just say he wasn’t going to open the schools, instead of putting it on all these individual communities. It’s just not responsible.”
There are still many unanswered questions about how the disease impacts children, including how likely it is for kids with asymptomatic COVID-19 to transmit the virus. But the best scientific evidence we have suggests that young children are less likely to get sick from COVID-19 or to develop severe symptoms if they do. They also seem less likely to pass the virus on to other people when they do get sick. According to a South Korean study earlier this month, kids under 10 years old who get sick from the virus seem to be about half as likely to spread the virus to someone else.
At the same time, there are warning signs that school reopenings will pose major challenges for communities. The South Korean study found that kids between 10 and 19 years old spread the virus at about the same rate as adults, which means that greater precautions will be necessary to safely reopen middle and high schools. And if safety measures to stop the spread of the virus fail, the people most in danger may be teachers, a quarter of whom are at higher-than-average risk of complications from the disease.
Dr. Yvonne Maldonado, a pediatric infectious disease physician and epidemiologist at Stanford Medicine, says schools can be reopened safely—if they implement effective safety measures, such as having primary school teachers wear face masks and taking steps to reduce the number of kids in a classroom.
“We have not seen transmission when you take the proper precautions,” Maldonado says. “So what I would want to know as a parent is, what is my school doing to make sure those precautions are in place. And that’s the key. If the school can do it, then I would feel comfortable. If the school seems like they really don’t have their act together, or they don’t have the resources, then I might be worried about that.”
More than 17 million people around the world had been sickened by COVID-19 as of 1 AM eastern time today, and more than 667,000 people have died.
Here is every country with over 250,000 confirmed cases:
The coronavirus is spiking once again in East Asia, including in places that seemed to have successfully contained the virus. China announced today that it has quarantined 18,000 people, after confirming more than 100 new cases in an outbreak centered in the northwestern region Xinjiang, according to NBC News. Vietnam is also working to contain its first outbreak by banning big public gatherings and nonessential services in certain cities after reporting 43 cases in six parts of the country in the last week, per the AP. Meanwhile, Japan reported over 1,000 daily cases for the first time yesterday, even recording several in the prefecture of Iwate, which had been one of the last places in the developed world unscathed by COVID-19, the Wall Street Journal reports.
In Africa, the total number of COVID-19 cases has doubled over the last 25 days, and the World Health Organization regional director for the continent, Dr. Matshidiso Moeti, warned today that easing lockdown restrictions could make the situation worse, CNN reports. The outbreak has also had trickle-down public health impacts, Moeti said: “people are afraid of getting treated and going to health units for medical assistance, due to the risks of COVID-19.”
Meanwhile, Russia appears to be intent on becoming the first country to approve a COVID-19 vaccine. Russian officials told CNN that they are working to get approval for the vaccine, developed by Moscow’s Gamaleya Institute, by Aug. 10 or earlier. Experts have raised questions about how fast the vaccine was developed, and the fact that there have been no research data published. The vaccine has also yet to complete Phase 2 trials; normally, drugs are not submitted for approval until after successful Phase 3 trials are complete. Deputy Prime Minister Tatyana Golikova said yesterday in a televised meeting of officials that the vaccine is expected to get conditional approval—meaning researchers would still need to conduct Phase 3 trials on 1,600 more people before production begins in September.
The Situation in the U.S.
The U.S. recorded more than 4.4 million coronavirus cases as of 1 AM eastern time today. More than 150,000 people have died. Here's where daily cases have risen or fallen over the last 14 days, shown in confirmed cases per 100,000 residents:
On July 29, there were 70,776 new cases and 1,403 new deaths confirmed in the U.S. Here's how the country as a whole is currently trending:
The United States reached another grim milestone yesterday, with the death toll from COVID-19 passing 150,000. More people have died from COVID-19 in the U.S. than in any other country in the world.
The U.S. economy took a record-shattering plunge during the April-June quarter, shrinking 33% year over year, according to the Commerce Department. The previous quarterly record was a 10% drop. The main culprit was consumer spending, which fell 34%, and typically makes up 70% of economic activity, although business investment, residential housing and government spending also shrank.
A federal report named four key battleground states in the 2020 presidential election—Arizona, Florida, North Carolina and Wisconsin—as part of the “red zone” where COVID-19 is spreading quickly, according to the New York Times. Given that Trump’s approval ratings have fallen and his disapproval ratings have risen as the pandemic has progressed in the U.S., that could be good news for challenger Joe Biden if residents of those states place the blame for the virus’s spread on the sitting President.
Former presidential candidate Herman Cain has died from COVID-19 complications. It is not known where the 74-year-old Republican contracted the virus, although he was photographed without a mask at President Trump’s campaign rally in Tulsa on June 20, days before he was diagnosed with COVID-19. Public health experts had expressed concern that the rally—where neither mask-wearing nor social-distancing were enforced—could become a hotspot for COVID-19.
All numbers unless otherwise specified are from the Johns Hopkins University Center for Systems Science and Engineering, and are accurate as of July 30, 1 AM eastern time. To see larger, interactive versions of these maps and charts, click here.
WHAT ELSE YOU SHOULD KNOW
The NBA’s Postseason Tips Off—Inside a COVID-19 ‘Bubble’
The National Basketball Association’s 2019-2020 season is starting up again, 141 days after the league shut down in March. To get you back in the game, TIME’s Sean Gregory lined up what you should be watching for after the players take the court later today. Read more here.
Column: Faster, Less Accurate Tests Could Help U.S.’s Testing Woes
As U.S. labs face a backlog of tests and shortage of supplies, the key to speeding up testing may be prioritizing antigen tests, which are less accurate but faster and cheaper, argues Dr. Ashish K. Jha, a professor at Harvard T.H. Chan School of Public Health. Jha writes that the U.S. has the capability to bring the tests to tens of millions of Americans, which can help the country get “past 10-day delays, quash the current outbreaks, and ensure that we can safely go to work, do our shopping, and send our kids to school.” Read more here.
Wisconsin’s Paper Industry Might Go Up in Flames
The pandemic has hastened the decline of the paper industry in Wisconsin, the nation’s leading producer of paper, the Washington Post reports. The impending closure of one plant, Verso Corp.’s Wisconsin Rapids Mill, will put 900 people out of work. Read more here.
The Devastation of Texas’ Latinx Community
Latinx residents in Texas’ most populous county, Harris, have been diagnosed with COVID-19 at higher rates than non-Latinx residents, and suffer worse outcomes, ProPublica reports. That’s largely because Latinx residents are more likely to work service jobs and have conditions like diabetes, and less likely to have health insurance in a state that failed to use the Affordable Care Act to expand health insurance to low-income residents. Read more here.
Thanks for reading. We hope you find the Coronavirus Brief newsletter to be a helpful tool to navigate this very complex situation, and welcome feedback at coronavirus.brief@time.com.
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Today's newsletter was written by Tara Law and edited by Elijah Wolfson.
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