Public Health

The Covid Crisis Is Now a Garbage Disposal Crisis, Too

Tue, 2021-09-28 18:40 — mike kraft

Across Brazil, recycling plants stopped running for months. In Uganda, a junkyard is short on reusable plastics. And in Indonesia’s capital, disposable gloves and face shields are piling up at a river mouth.

Surging consumption of plastics and packaging during the pandemic has produced mountains of waste. But because fears of Covid-19 have led to work stoppages at recycling facilities, some reusable material has been junked or burned instead.

At the same time, high volumes of personal protective equipment have been misclassified as hazardous, solid waste experts say. That material often isn’t allowed into the normal trash, so a lot of it is dumped in burn pits or as litter.

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COVID-19 pill developers aim to top Merck, Pfizer efforts

Tue, 2021-09-28 17:52 — mike kraft

Enanta Pharmaceuticals, Pardes Biosciences, Japan’s Shionogi & Co Ltd and Novartis AG said they have designed antivirals that specifically target the coronavirus while aiming to avoid potential shortcomings such as the need for multiple pills per day or known safety issues.

Infectious disease experts stressed that preventing COVID-19 through wide use of vaccines remains the best way to control the pandemic. But they said the disease is here to stay and more convenient treatments are needed here.

“We need to have oral alternatives for suppression of this virus. We have people who aren’t vaccinated getting sick, people whose vaccine protection is waning, and people who can’t get vaccinated,” said Dr. Robert Schooley, an infectious diseases professor at UC San Diego School of Medicine.

Pfizer and Merck, as well as partners Atea Pharmaceuticals and Roche AG have all said they could seek emergency approval for their COVID-19 antiviral pills this year.

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Delaware mandates COVID-19 vaccines for all school staff; some Arizona schools renew mask policy

Tue, 2021-09-28 17:30 — mike kraft

Delaware mandates COVID-19 vaccines for all school staff All teachers and staff at public and private schools in Delaware must get vaccinated against COVID-19 or submit to regular testing, Gov. John Carney (D) announced Tuesday. Adam Barnes TheHill

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Despite Delta: Back to school goes better than expected so far

Tue, 2021-09-28 11:44 — mike kraft

Defying Delta: Back to school goes better than feared School for children in many nations has been underway for more than a month and fears the Delta coronavirus variant would derail in-person learning have largely proven unfounded. Michael Erman,Gwladys Fouche,Alistair Smout Reuters

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Model for mitigation measures for reopening schools during the COVID-19 pandemic

Tue, 2021-09-28 11:37 — mike kraft

Model-driven mitigation measures for reopening schools during the COVID-19 pandemic As the COVID-19 pandemic drags on, we need strategies for reopening those schools that have remained closed. We developed stochastic network models to study the risks associated with returning to in-person learning during the COVID-19 pandemic, and to explore the value of mitigation measures in reducing these risks. Our models indicate that the risk of school outbreaks increases as community prevalence increases, and that secondary schools pose greater control challenges than primary schools. The models reveal that a number of measures can help substantially: dividing students into multiple cohorts who attend school on an alternating basis, frequently testing teachers and students, and vaccinating teachers and staff.

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South Africa and Oxfam press for waiver of intellectual property rights on COVID-19 vaccines

Tue, 2021-09-28 11:12 — mike kraft

South Africa, Oxfam call for fairer trade rules in response to pandemic South Africa's president and the head of Oxfam heaped pressure on World Trade Organization members and manufacturers to allow fairer access to COVID-19 vaccines on Tuesday, including through a waiver on intellectual property rights. Reuters Reuters

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The Northeast could prevent a Covid-19 surge like the one in the South by following key measures-- Fauci

Tue, 2021-09-28 10:47 — mike kraft

People in the Northeast could prevent a Covid-19 surge like the one in the South by following these measures, Fauci says As weather grows colder and children spend more time in school, a surge of Covid-19 cases like the one in the South could be in store for the Northeast, but it is not too late to get ahead of it, Dr. Anthony Fauci said. Madeline Holcombe, CNN CNN

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New York health care workers rush to get vaccinated, averting staffing crisis

Tue, 2021-09-28 09:32 — mike kraft

Health care workers in New York rush to get vaccinated, averting a staffing crisis

New York Times

Thousands of health care workers in New York got inoculated against Covid-19 ahead of Monday’s deadline, helping the state avoid a worst-case scenario of staffing shortages at hospitals and nursing homes.

Health officials across the state reported that employees had rushed to get vaccinated before Monday, avoiding being suspended or getting fired. New York has 600,000 health care workers.

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UPDATE: Court rules New York City can proceed with vaccine mandate for educators and staff

Mon, 2021-09-27 19:40 — mike kraft

New York City can proceed with vaccine mandate for educators and staff, judges ruled.

New York City’s vaccine mandate for nearly all adults working in its public schools can proceed as scheduled, a federal appeals panel ruled on Monday, reversing a decision made over the weekend that paused enforcement of the mandate until later this week at the earliest.

Mayor Bill de Blasio had originally ordered well over 150,000 educators and staff in the nation’s largest school system to receive at least one dose of a Covid-19 vaccine by tonight at midnight. That deadline was put on hold late Friday by a judge of the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Second Circuit. The three-judge panel was scheduled to take up the issue on Wednesday, but it appears to have ruled early.

It’s not yet clear if the city will decide to implement the mandate tonight at midnight as originally scheduled or wait until later in the week.

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