COVID-19 Report for El Paso County: Schools Briefing

Many Colorado Springs school districts begin in-person learning this week. Here's what you need to know

Good morning, and happy Monday. On this pre-pandemic date last year, the New York Times reported President Trump’s legal defense team “strenuously denied” his guiltiness after the House voted to impeach him for insinuating foreign interference in his reelection. (This year, Trump made history after becoming the first U.S. president to be impeached twice, this time for inciting a violent mob at the nation’s Capitol to overturn the results of an election he lost.)

Today’s newsletter looks a little different than our usual weekly forecasts. First, our resident microbiologist Phoebe Lostroh explains her findings after analyzing outbreak data from Oct. 1 to Dec. 28, 2020, found on the public El Paso County COVID-19 dashboard. Then, we detail Colorado Springs school districts’ plans to return to in-person learning this week, the benefits and drawbacks of doing so, and guidelines for how schools can reopen safely. 

👑Happy Martin Luther King, Jr. Day! This year, Colorado Springs is hosting virtual events under the theme of “Community Out of Chaos: Change Now!” to honor MLK’s legacy. Keynote speaker Cornell Brooks, former president and CEO of the NAACP and professor at the Harvard Kennedy School, presents his address today at 10:30 a.m. Register here for all events. 

📈K-12 schools one of top contributors to COVID-19 outbreaks in El Paso County, Colo. 

In El Paso County, Colo. K-12 schools were the third-highest contributor to outbreak counts last fall, after long-term care facilities and the county jail. 

Lostroh and The CC COVID-19 Reporting Project analyzed recent outbreak data from the public El Paso County COVID-19 Dashboard with data available on Jan. 13. From Oct. 1 to Dec. 28 there were a total of 305 outbreaks (defined as two or more confirmed cases linked to a site within 14 days.) 51 outbreaks (16% of all outbreaks) occurred at facilities where people typically live for longer than a week, including the jail and long-term care facilities. There were 4,277 cases at these sites (78% of all outbreak-associated cases) and 204 deaths (99% of all outbreak-associated deaths.) 

248 of the remaining outbreaks occurred at places people typically visit for less than a day or do not live in longer than a week. These outbreaks and cases associated with them are displayed in the pie charts below. 

Outbreaks in El Paso County, Colo. from Oct. 1 to Dec. 28 (excluding long-term care facilities and the jail) 

🗝 Key points: Sites that contributed to over 3% of outbreaks are labeled. K-12 schools accounted for almost a third (27%) of the 248 outbreaks, surpassing the 17% of outbreaks that occurred at outpatient or acute healthcare sites. The next five most frequent sites in descending order were office/indoor workspaces, childcare centers, construction companies/contractors, restaurants and bars, and retailers. Colleges and universities accounted for only 2% of the outbreaks.

Outbreak-related cases in El Paso County, Colo. from Oct 1. to Dec. 28 (excluding long-term care facilities and the jail) 

🗝 Key points: As of Jan. 13, there were 1,955 cases associated with outbreaks that did not occur at long-term care facilities or the jail. Sites that contributed to over 2.6% of outbreak-related cases are labeled. Outpatient and acute healthcare sites accounted for 21.1% of these cases, with K-12 schools coming in second at 15.4% of cases, followed by restaurants and bars with 8.9% of cases. Colleges and universities had only 1% of the cases associated with outbreaks. 

Meanwhile... 

🍎Colorado Springs welcomes back in-person learning and dining indoors  

In November, as New York City case counts skyrocketed and the percent positivity rate approached 3%, Mayor Bill de Blasio ordered all in-person schools to switch to remote learning, but kept indoor dining open. Similar stories appeared in places like Boston and Philadelphia, underscoring the U.S. approach of prioritizing indoor dining over in-person learning, while countries in Europe have done largely the opposite. 

In Colorado Springs, the city’s biggest school districts — including Academy District 20, Colorado Springs School District 11, Falcon District 49, and Harrison District 2 — announced mid-November that after Thanksgiving Break, in-person classes would shift to a remote format through the end of the calendar year. The announcements came roughly two weeks before El Paso County moved to Level Red restrictions on Nov. 27, which effectively closed indoor dining. 

In mid-December, Colorado released its Roadmap To In-Person Learning. The report emphasized “the in-person imperative” and laid out some negative elements of remote learning, including decreased academic development, some families’ lack of access to reliable technology, and limited one-on-one time with students. 

The report went on to detail how the risk of younger children spreading the virus is low, and with proper safety-mitigation protocols, in-person learning is relatively safe. Colorado state officials said they’re supporting the transition back to in-person learning by providing over 2.4 million medical-grade masks to schools across the state, and offering community-based testing and quarantine guidance. 

Now, many Colorado Springs school districts prepare to transition back to in-person learning this week. While the local COVID-19 situation has improved from November, Lostroh said there’s still significant viral spread. Indoor dining at 25% capacity is now allowed again, after Gov. Polis moved all red-level counties down to Level Orange effective Jan. 4. 

Many of the city’s school districts are allowing elementary schools to operate fully in-person, while sorting middle and high school students into hybrid-style cohorts, with approximately half of students going into schools one day and the other half of students going in the next. Many districts are still offering fully-remote options for students whose parents choose to keep them home, and some have set aside one day of the week for online-only instruction.

For schools to reopen in the spring, Lostroh said it’s important for classrooms to have proper ventilation and adequate humidity, and that schools practice pod-based physical distancing, hand washing, and enforced mask wearing. 

The Center for Disease Control (CDC) advised that a key condition to open schools safely is low community transmission, and said very high transmission occurs when the COVID-19 incidence per 100,000 people is above 200. The incidence in El Paso County is about 2.4 times higher than that at 478.3 people as of Jan. 17.

COVID-19 incidence in El Paso County, Colo. with color-coded predictions 

🗝 Key points: The actual calculated incidence is in black Xs, while the red, grey, and blue Xs provide high, middle, and low estimates, respectively. The orange and red lines at the top of the graph show when El Paso County had orange or red-level safety precautions in effect. The red, orange, and yellow dotted lines at the bottom of the graph show the thresholds for those incidence levels. 

🚨Fears and frustrations about the return to in-person learning  

COVID-19’s risk to young children is thought to be low, but not zero. The Denver Post reported last week that Colorado has seen a jump in MIS-C cases, a mysterious syndrome tied to children who tested positive for the virus. The state reported nine confirmed and 16 suspected cases of MIS-C in December. While most children recover with only mild symptoms, some end up in the hospital for treatment. Last spring, two children in Colorado died of complications from MIS-C. 

The new B117 variant is also thought to be more transmissible among children, The New York Times reported, which could increase viral spread in schools and across the country. 

Some Colorado teachers remain wary of a return to in-person learning. The state’s changing vaccine guidelines expanded Phase 1B from 100,000 people to over 1.3 million, potentially increasing the time teachers must wait for a vaccine despite being moved up from their original position in Phase 2. 

KOAA News5 reported on Jan. 13 that some Colorado Springs teachers were frustrated about state lawmakers starting to get the COVID-19 vaccine in the coming weeks, despite high-risk groups not being fully vaccinated. Colorado’s current vaccination timeline says that frontline essential workers, including teachers, are not able to get vaccinated until after March 1. 

"I’m really in the position to be a super spreader. I’m the one that's contacting 45-50 families a day, potentially 100 families a week,” one Colorado educator told KOAA News5. “Someone in my first class could have COVID and could transmit that to me and I don’t even know for a couple of days. By then I have transmitted potentially to every student I’ve contacted that day.” 

Vaccine distribution guidelines have also sparked anger from teachers in other states. In New Jersey, smokers are at a higher priority than teachers and public transit workers because smoking is a medical condition that increases a person’s risk of developing severe COVID-19 symptoms. 

Q-and-A with Lostroh: Our resident microbiologist on how to reopen schools 

Lostroh is a professor of molecular biology at Colorado College on scholarly leave who is serving as the program director in Genetic Mechanisms, Molecular and Cellular Biosciences at the National Science Foundation. Her opinions are her own and not necessarily those of the National Science Foundation or Colorado College. This interview has been edited for length and clarity.

CC COVID-19 Reporting Project: What have you learned from your analysis of El Paso County outbreak data?

Lostroh: Let’s say you’re a regular person living in Colorado Springs and you’re not in a long-term care facility or jail, which is probably most people living in Colorado Springs. So then where’s the most likely source of an outbreak, if that is your circumstance? Last fall, the number one place was K-12 schools. Those outbreaks tend to be small in terms of the number of people involved, and there were no deaths, but it is the most frequent site for outbreaks in the regular community compared with everywhere else ... So I think that’s important since we’re going to go back to in-person learning very soon.

CCRP: Per Level Orange guidelines, preschool and K-12 schools are “suggested” for in-person classes. What do you think needs to happen for schools to reopen safely in the spring, and how should local governments support the reopening process for schools? 

Lostroh: The number one thing is that you need community transmission to be lower, and right now, our community transmission is very high. Number two is you need healthy buildings. Healthy buildings have adequate ventilation and adequate humidity. Every classroom needs to have access to a carbon dioxide meter that can tell how much carbon dioxide is in the air as a proxy for ventilation. The parts per million should be less than 1,000 parts per million if there’s adequate ventilation in the classroom. In order for the normal defenses of the lung to function, and in order for exhaled virus particles to travel in the air as little as possible, the humidity needs to be 40 to 60% in the room. So every teacher needs access to a hygrometer to measure the humidity in the room and needs to have that room humidified. What can governments do? They can provide inspection for both of those things, they can provide funds to improve ventilation, and they can provide funds to improve humidity. Those things need to be done critically. The third thing that schools need are healthy practices like physical distancing, universal mask wearing, and enhanced hand hygiene, because even though COVID-19 is spread primarily through breathing, it still can be spread by touching a contaminated object and then touching your face. The other thing that would really help would be for the government to provide rapid, cheap, and free tests to teachers, so that a teacher could take a weekly test themself.

CCRP: How does COVID-19 affect children, and to what extent is children spreading the virus to adults a serious threat?

Lostroh: How the virus replicates in children is mainly confined to the upper respiratory tract in most cases. It replicates more in their nasal passages and less in their lungs and in other tissues for most children under five years old. But the older you get, the more receptors you have throughout your body that the virus can stick to, so you’re more susceptible to contracting the virus. As far as passing it on to adults, I believe the data on that say it’s not that common occurrence for a child to pass it onto an adult. But there is disagreement about the quality of that evidence and how much evidence there is addressing that point. So I would say that it’s not conclusively understood yet. It’s hard to study children — it’s hard enough to get consent to study adults, and it’s really hard to get consent to study children.

CCRP: Some European countries have prioritized closing businesses like restaurants and bars over K-12 schools, whereas many U.S. states kept schools closed while other businesses remained open. What do you think we can learn from policies that keep schools open over walk-in businesses?

Lostroh: In the European Union, there is much greater respect for the need for childcare so that women can have active economic work lives and earn money. You have to keep schools open so that women can go to work, that’s how it is. We don’t have free childcare or subsidized jobs as a matter of government policy. So I think that the general policies of how families with children are treated are very different in the European Union and the United States. This practice of how we’ve been handling our schools versus how they handled their schools is sort of a manifestation of many years of differences in the political approach of how you support a society where people are going to have children. Another thing that some European countries have in their favor is their populations tend to be more united around certain cultural values than the United States, which is more diverse in lots and lots of ways. I also think that most of the EU has invested its money for coronavirus protection a little bit differently. So for instance, they chose to prioritize schools right away and they figured out how to do that. That wasn’t our priority. We gave out business loans, often to businesses that didn’t need the money — not just to small businesses. But European countries have often paid essential workers to stay home because people need an income. So it’s a knotty problem that has many threads.

CCRP: Last Friday, President-elect Joe Biden revealed his plan for controlling the coronavirus in the U.S., which included a goal of opening the majority of K-8 schools by the end of his first 100 days in office. How do you feel about these announcements?

Lostroh: Overall I’m pretty excited about his plan. I think that scientists who have solid reputations because of their accomplishments as scientists and doctors are in charge of this plan, and so I am feeling quite happy about that. I think that having K-8 schools open in the first 100 days is a great goal that we should absolutely be spending money on and be doing our best to make happen. K-5 first, then 6-8 and going up. I think that it should absolutely be a priority, and it’s also an inspiring goal. Whether schools are open or not has a huge impact on the economy because parents work in many different sectors of the economy. I think that the United States has been underestimating the impact of school closures on the economic situation, so I’m hoping that Biden’s plan will help the situation.

About the CC COVID-19 Reporting Project

The CC COVID-19 Reporting Project is created by Colorado College student journalists Isabel Hicks, Esteban Candelaria, Lorea Zabaleta, and Cameron Howell in partnership with The Catalyst, Colorado College’s student newspaper. Work by Phoebe Lostroh, Associate Professor of Molecular Biology at CC and National Science Foundation Program Director in Genetic Mechanisms, Molecular and Cellular Biosciences, will appear from time to time, as will infographics by Colorado College students Rana Abdu, Aleesa Chua, Sara Dixon, Jia Mei, and Lindsey Smith.

The project seeks to provide frequent updates about CC and other higher education institutions during the pandemic by providing original reporting, analysis, interviews with campus leaders, and context about what state and national headlines mean for the CC community. 

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