An apprehensive return to school

Also: Moderna sues Pfizer over COVID-19 vaccine patents [View in browser](    [❤️]( August 30, 2022 Hi CommonHealth reader, How should we be thinking about COVID as we head into a new school year? Universal mask requirements, “test-to-stay” policies and contact tracing are all [things of the past](. But [wastewater data]( indicates that COVID remains stubbornly present. I reached out to a few folks as they were gearing up for the school year, and I heard a good deal of apprehension. Tracy Curtin, a Boston Public Schools fourth-grade teacher, said she wishes kids were still required to wear masks, so they could play in close proximity without having to worry. “It is hard to feel like this year is going to really be different than last year. And last year was a hard one,” Curtin told me. A coalition of health care and community leaders in Massachusetts has called for [more precautions and plans]( in case COVID rears its head. “Six-months ago we took an off-ramp, but if cases rise we need an on-ramp,” said Jon Levy, a member of the coalition and chair of the Department of Environmental Health at Boston University. The public health nurse in Barnstable County, Maurice Melchiono, is trying to be optimistic, but he admitted, “I am concerned.” He said it’s not just COVID, it's COVID along with all the other infectious diseases that run through classrooms. He’s been busy coordinating a vaccination campaign to get kids up to date on their regular vaccines. And now he’s putting his energy into planning clinics that will offer the [new COVID booster]( designed to target the latest omicron strain. He’s got his fingers crossed that it gets the green light from federal regulators by mid-September (the booster will be available for people 12 and up). If all goes as planned, the clinics will offer the booster as well as the flu vaccine. “We've been getting reports that the flu in the southern hemisphere was pretty nasty. And typically, we follow in the northern hemisphere starting in the next month or so,” he said. “If people continue to wash their hands, social distance and — I'm not going to say the M-word because everybody gets all nervous and crazy about it — but mask as much as possible, we should be okay.” A study released last week did bring [some promising news.]( It found that the overall number of deaths in Massachusetts were at pre-pandemic levels this past spring, despite a lot of COVID cases and plenty of COVID hospitalizations. I asked the lead author of that study, Jeremy Faust, an emergency room physician at Brigham and Women’s Hospital, whether that research bodes well for the fall. He was not exactly reassuring. “The future is completely unknown,” Faust said. However, both Faust and Melchiono pointed to the two things we know work. Vaccines and boosters reduce the risk of severe illness and death from COVID. And [a good mask]( can help protect you when there’s a lot of virus in the community. Gabrielle Emanuel Health reporter [Follow]( Support the news  This Week's Must Reads [Some good COVID news: Deaths were at pre-pandemic levels in Mass. this spring, study finds]( The researchers called the findings good news but warned, "the future is completely unknown." [Read more.]( [Some good COVID news: Deaths were at pre-pandemic levels in Mass. this spring, study finds]( The researchers called the findings good news but warned, "the future is completely unknown." [Read more.]( [Moderna sues Pfizer over patents behind COVID-19 vaccine]( Moderna said it believes the vaccine developed by its rivals — Pfizer and the German drugmaker BioNTech — infringes on patents the company filed between 2010 and 2016. 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[Read more.]( What We're Reading 📚 Somewhere out there, we all might have a secret twin. That’s one of the provocative ideas in [this New York Times story]( about new research showing that unrelated people who look alike — similar enough to pass for twins — share more than a resemblance. “These people really look alike because they share important parts of the genome, or the DNA sequence,” Dr. Manel Esteller, a researcher in Barcelona, Spain, told the Times. How can that happen? Researchers say it's a combination of chance and population growth. “Now there are so many people in the world that the system is repeating itself," Esteller said. Don’t miss the stunning photos of real-life doppelgängers. — Priyanka Dayal McCluskey "The online threat escalates very quickly into offline violence when we start to see these patterns of attack." — Joan Donovan, of Harvard's Shorenstein Center on Media, Politics and Public Policy, speaking about [threats against children's hospitals]( ICYMI [Crowds return to 'Mass. and Cass' area in Boston, months after city dismantled encampment]( City officials say progress is slow on finding long-term solutions to the humanitarian crisis, but they continue to work on providing housing and services to people living on the streets or with addiction. [Read more.]( [Crowds return to 'Mass. and Cass' area in Boston, months after city dismantled encampment]( City officials say progress is slow on finding long-term solutions to the humanitarian crisis, but they continue to work on providing housing and services to people living on the streets or with addiction. [Read more.]( 🧠💥 Did you know...💥🧠 There's a [good reason]( why sweat stinks. The smell comes from bacteria on the skin that help protect us from inflammatory problems and infections. 😎 Forward to a friend. They can sign up [here](. 📣 Give us your feedback: newsletters@wbur.org 📧 Get more WBUR stories sent to your inbox. [Check out all of our newsletter offerings.]( Support the news     Want to change how you receive these emails? Stop getting this newsletter by [updating your preferences.](  I don't want to hear from WBUR anymore. Unsubscribe from all WBUR editorial newsletters [here.](  Interested in learning more about corporate sponsorship? [Click here.]( Copyright © 2022 WBUR-FM, All rights reserved.