MMWR Weekly Briefing

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Week of February 8, 2021 Feb 18, 2021

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This episode discusses five MMWR COVID-19 reports. The first highlights how wearing a tighter-fitting mask can help slow the spread of COVID-19. Two reports detail mask use among students at schools and universities and another indicates how mask mandates impact COVID-19 hospitalization rates in the community. The last report shows that, although many Americans intend to be vaccinated against COVID-19, fewer people in certain at-risk groups plan to get the shot.

Week of February 1, 2021 Feb 09, 2021

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This episode discusses five MMWR COVID-19 reports. The first describes the demographics of people who have received the first dose of COVID-19 vaccine. The second report describes the percentage of residents and staff of skilled nursing facilities who have been vaccinated. Two reports spotlight disparities in health outcomes among certain minority groups. The last report presents the reduced number of children receiving testing for elevated blood lead levels during the first part of 2020.

Week of January 25, 2021 Feb 02, 2021

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This week's episode covers seven MMWR COVID-19 reports. The first describes the small number of severe allergic reactions after people received the Moderna COVID-19 vaccine. The second report presents strategies the National Football League used to prevent COVID-19 spread during the most recent season. The third report highlights how K through 12 schools used preventive measures to limit spread, even with high rates of COVID-19 in the community. Three reports detail how COVID-19 outbreaks continue to impact different settings in the United States, such as colleges and universities, athletics, and correctional facilities. The final report describes how a state COVID-19 stay-at-home order affected cervical cancer screening among women in a large health system in Southern California.

Week of January 18, 2021 Jan 26, 2021

Show notes

This week's episode covers four MMWR COVID-19 reports. The first describes the rise of new variants of the virus that causes COVID-19. The second report highlights U.S. vaccination coverage data among kindergarteners during the 2019‒2020 school year. The third report evaluates the performance of an antigen test and highlights how antigen tests can be an important tool in an overall community testing strategy. The last report describes baseline health department data metrics for assessing case investigation and contact tracing efforts.

Week of January 11, 2021 Jan 21, 2021

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This week's episode covers four MMWR COVID-19 reports. In the first, I'll describe how lapses in infection control likely led to an outbreak of a multidrug resistant threat in a hospital's COVID-19 unit. The second report details how COVID-19 cases among nursing home residents and staff followed similar trends to those in surrounding communities. The third report demonstrates how European countries that implemented stricter mitigation policies earlier in the pandemic tended to report fewer COVID-19 deaths. Finally, the last report describes trends in COVID-19 incidence among children, adolescents, and young adults.

Week of January 4, 2021 Jan 12, 2021

Show notes

This week's episode covers five MMWR COVID-19 reports. The first describes that severe reactions following Pfizer-BioNTech COVID-19 vaccination appear to be very rare. Another report describes how U.S. counties with large colleges and universities saw a substantial increase in cases after starting in-person classes this fall. A third report shows how an increase in COVID-19 cases at an Arkansas university was linked to Greek Life activities. The last two reports provide data supporting options for health department to shorten quarantine periods.

Weeks of December 21 and 28, 2020 Jan 05, 2021

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This week's episode covers six MMWR COVID-19 reports. The first discusses interim recommendations from the Advisory Committee on Immunization Practices or ACIP the second COVID-19 vaccine available under Emergency Use Authorization in the U.S. The second report focuses on ACIP's recommendations for the next phases of who should receive COVID-19 vaccines. The third report describes how antigen tests can be fast and inexpensive but sometimes require a second test to confirm the result. The fourth report is a joint CDC-WHO report that details how innovations in testing and sampling, transportation and data visualization allowed the Global Polio Eradication Initiative to keep investigating and detecting polio despite unprecedented challenges during the COVID-19 pandemic. The fifth report looks into the household spread of COVID-19 and implications of shortening the quarantine period. The last report is a COVID-19 Stats that illustrates how COVID-19 rates changed over time by age group and highlights crucial data to drive public health action.

Week of December 14, 2020 Dec 21, 2020

Show notes

This week's episode covers six MMWR COVID-19 reports. In the first, ACIP issued an interim recommendation for use of the Pfizer-BioNTech COVID-19 vaccine in people 16 years and older. The second report estimates the added costs of adopting recommended prevention and control measures to reduce the risk for spread of COVID-19 in schools. The third report compares the differences in school and community close contacts exposures in children testing positive for SARS-CoV-2 and those testing negative. Another report investigated factors that might affect spread of COVID-19 among workers at 2 poultry processing facilities in Maryland. The fifth report discusses how health centers funded by the Health Resources and Services Administration, or HRSA, have provided access to COVID-19 tests for racial and ethnic minority populations. The final report shows how telehealth is a promising approach to promoting and expanding access to care.

Week of December 7, 2020 Dec 14, 2020

Show notes

In this week's episode, I'll discuss five MMWR COVID-19 reports. One report outlines a combination of ten actions that individuals, families, and communities can take to save lives, and speed up community and economic recovery. The second report describes how Head Start programs successfully implemented CDC COVID-19 guidance for childcare programs that offer in-person learning as well as other ancillary measures. The third report details data from July 2020 surveys on parental attitudes about school reopening. The fourth report looks at trends in emergency department visits related to child abuse and neglect. The final report shows how the COVID-19-associated death rate among adults who are American Indian or Alaska Native are higher than that of non-Hispanic White adults.

Week of November 30, 2020 Dec 10, 2020

Show notes

This week, MMWR published four reports. One report describes ACIP recommendations for the priority populations for the initial phase of the COVID-19 vaccination program in the United States. Another report describes multiple cases of drug-resistant bacteria in a New Jersey Hospital while the facility was experiencing a surge of COVID-19 cases. A third and fourth report describe the disproportionate rates of COVID-19 in Marshallese and Hispanic and Latino persons and how we can reduce these disparities.

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