Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

The school guidelines for Phase 2 are nearly impossible to accommodate for most schools. Keeping a cohort of 11 kids plus one teacher (or rotating teachers) isolated from all other groups of students could work in some lower grades, if you have enough staff and enough classrooms (huge "if"), but once you get to a grade with leveled classes (honors, regular, AP, etc) and electives, very few students have the same schedules and they all mix as they change classes. In most schools this starts as early as 6th grade, and in a few, 4th grade.

Opening schools in Phase 2 should really be just for youngest elementary kids who need the child care. It shouldn't be expected to be "real school".

Then just get childcare. It's not a daycare, it's school. If you're an essential worker you'll get daycare, if not sorry you're in the same boat as everyone else. Public school may function as childcare but the main goal is for children to learn.

Anonymous wrote:

The school guidelines for Phase 2 are nearly impossible to accommodate for most schools. Keeping a cohort of 11 kids plus one teacher (or rotating teachers) isolated from all other groups of students could work in some lower grades, if you have enough staff and enough classrooms (huge "if"), but once you get to a grade with leveled classes (honors, regular, AP, etc) and electives, very few students have the same schedules and they all mix as they change classes. In most schools this starts as early as 6th grade, and in a few, 4th grade.

Opening schools in Phase 2 should really be just for youngest elementary kids who need the child care. It shouldn't be expected to be "real school".

I think we need to close indoor restaurants/bars in order for contact tracing to improve and this new metric to go up.

I believe it: I reported a positive case at my workplace to DC Health. I was contacted and gave them the information (name and phone number) of the positive case. I was told I would be sent information via email and could then submit all known close contacts of that positive case. I haven't heard from them since and that was over a week ago.

It is a good measure. I wish MD and VA would release similar data.

In Hong Kong for example, where a "third wave" is currently being felt, they are able to trace 50-60% of the new cases to existing contacts (and they are freaking out about the remaining 40%). Gives a good estimate about community spread vs small groups / families.

Anonymous wrote:DC has a rather nice website to show the data of current cases, and goes so far as to show how close we are to the threshold for Phase 3.

https://coronavirus.dc.gov/page/coronavirus-data

In recent days (maybe it has been there longer--I just didn't notice it), they added a metric

"Percentage of new cases from quarantined contacts". This means how many of the new positive cases were "close contacts" of someone they were already aware of, kind of a measure of contact tracing and a measure of how much of the community spread is from unknown sources. D.C.'s guideline are that this needs to be about 60% to move to Phase 3.

DC is at 3.1%

This is going to take a massive effort to get this number up to the level required for Phase 3. That or the Mayor is going to have to fudge and drop that from the consideration list.

(note: has anyone seen a similar number for MD or VA?)

That's a good measure. I think of it as kind of "leakage" of cases coming into the community. If cases keep cropping up from unknown sources, but you have some idea of what the person who tested positive was doing, you may be able to identify a source or behavior that there can be policy change to resolve. For example, if 50% of your new cases reported being at a bar in the previous week, maybe you close bars. If there are a lot of reports of being with someone who recently traveled, maybe you put in screening at the airports (saliva test and request to quarantine until results are back).

I really wish there was some guidance that if your county has a case rate above X, then you shouldn't travel outside of your county.

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:So this means no chance of any in person school in DC? Zero exceptions?
Public private high school college etc?

Why would it mean that? If we remain in Phase 2, there can still be some in person school under DC guidelines. Colleges in DC are to come up with their own plans that must be approved by Mayor's office.

The school guidelines for Phase 2 are nearly impossible to accommodate for most schools. Keeping a cohort of 11 kids plus one teacher (or rotating teachers) isolated from all other groups of students could work in some lower grades, if you have enough staff and enough classrooms (huge "if"), but once you get to a grade with leveled classes (honors, regular, AP, etc) and electives, very few students have the same schedules and they all mix as they change classes. In most schools this starts as early as 6th grade, and in a few, 4th grade. For example, my high school student is in a very small school, but there is only one other student with the exact same list of classes. They aren't going to be able to set up enough classrooms to have 2 per room, nor can you logistically set up a schedule that matches those individual schedules to classrooms and qualified rotating teachers (one teacher may have to hit 5 different rooms in one class period). If you've never seen a school's master class schedule, it will be hard to understand, but if you see one of those huge and complicated spreadsheets, you'd know right away that it just isn't possible. Add to that the number of students and particularly teachers who will required DL accommodation and you end up with even fewer teachers rotating to classrooms and are better off just doing DL.

This makes a lot of sense to me. It will be hard to achieve but pretending we won't need the information if we don't look doesn't work.

Anonymous wrote:So this means no chance of any in person school in DC? Zero exceptions?
Public private high school college etc?

Why would it mean that? If we remain in Phase 2, there can still be some in person school under DC guidelines. Colleges in DC are to come up with their own plans that must be approved by Mayor's office.

So this means no chance of any in person school in DC? Zero exceptions?
Public private high school college etc?

Honestly, we shouldn't even be considering moving on to Phase 3 right now. What we should be considering is moving BACK to Phase 1.

That's a useful metric. If you can see that most new cases are traceable to known cases, you are seeing discrete outbreaks that could be controlled with rapid testing and effective tracing and quarantine. If it's just running rampant in the community, testing and tracing isn't adequate.

Anonymous wrote:DC has a rather nice website to show the data of current cases, and goes so far as to show how close we are to the threshold for Phase 3.

https://coronavirus.dc.gov/page/coronavirus-data

In recent days (maybe it has been there longer--I just didn't notice it), they added a metric "Percentage of new cases from quarantined contacts". This means how many of the new positive cases were "close contacts" of someone they were already aware of, kind of a measure of contact tracing and a measure of how much of the community spread is from unknown sources. D.C.'s guideline are that this needs to be about 60% to move to Phase 3.

DC is at 3.1%

This is going to take a massive effort to get this number up to the level required for Phase 3. That or the Mayor is going to have to fudge and drop that from the consideration list.

(note: has anyone seen a similar number for MD or VA?)

Thanks. That is useful information. I have not seen anything similar in MD. However, I have posted previously expressing interest in having information obtained from contact tracing available through some public dashboard (not just in news reports).

I heard Joshua Sharfstein, former Secretary of the Dept. of Health in Maryland, now on the faculty at Hopkins saying the same thing this morning. The public is being given little or no information regarding information obtained through contact tracing.

DC has a rather nice website to show the data of current cases, and goes so far as to show how close we are to the threshold for Phase 3.

https://coronavirus.dc.gov/page/coronavirus-data

In recent days (maybe it has been there longer--I just didn't notice it), they added a metric "Percentage of new cases from quarantined contacts". This means how many of the new positive cases were "close contacts" of someone they were already aware of, kind of a measure of contact tracing and a measure of how much of the community spread is from unknown sources. D.C.'s guideline are that this needs to be about 60% to move to Phase 3.

DC is at 3.1%

This is going to take a massive effort to get this number up to the level required for Phase 3. That or the Mayor is going to have to fudge and drop that from the consideration list.

(note: has anyone seen a similar number for MD or VA?)