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Expert group delivers new guidance for keeping schools open and safe

Translating the latest evidence into clear recommendations, a multi-disciplinary group of experts delivers guidance on how schools and districts can reduce in-school Covid-19 risks for both children and adults to near zero.The key to opening schools safely? High quality infection control.

Vaccines, What’s Next

How to talk about vaccines for our youngest children

On Friday, June 17, the FDA authorized both Moderna and Pfizer vaccines for children 6 months to 4 years old. Our evidence summary provides timely knowledge and evidence-based talking points for public health professionals, healthcare workers and others engaging in conversations about vaccinations for children under 5 years old.

Featured, Vaccines, What’s Next

New Analysis Shows Vaccines Could Have Prevented 318,000 Deaths

Brown School of Public Health and Microsoft AI for Health release a new dashboard that shows vaccine preventable death nationwide and for each state, providing critical insights for state and federal Covid-19 response teams.

Featured, Vaccines, What’s Next

Covid-19 Vaccines: The Miracle that Fell Short

The U.S. vaccination rollout is at once a remarkable public health success and a striking public health failure. It reveals challenges far beyond vaccinations, and urges investigation into why current models for delivering and building confidence in life-saving public health measures are failing to reach and protect all Americans equally.

Vaccines, What’s Next

What Is Vaccine Demand?

There’s more to people’s health behavior than party affiliation: Unvaccinated Americans are not a monolith, but instead diverse individuals with unique histories, identities and lived experiences — and more remain open to vaccination than public discourse may suggest.

Hospital Capacity, Vaccines

Hospital Vaccine Mandate Tracker

In a pandemic which has already cost too many lives and created too much hardship, hospitals must ensure that health systems are the safest place possible, by mandating Covid-19 vaccines for all employees. Do hospitals near you mandate staff vaccinations? Join us to track hospital safety across the country.

Vaccines, What’s Next

Vaccinations Dashboard

Vaccination Daily Targets Is each state matching their daily targets for distribution and daily doses administered? The dashboard shows if in each state, doses administered each day match daily targets. The dashboard also is unique in showing crucial information such as COVID-19 cases, hospitalizations, and deaths alongside vaccine distribution and administered doses, allowing comparisons between […]

Vaccine Passports: Recommendations for Curtailing Inequity

Vaccine passport programs run the risk of creating a novel underclass of individuals who have neither protection against the virus nor secondary public access privileges. The Justice, Health and Democracy Rapid Response Impact Initiative releases guidance to build trust and minimize inequality.

Education, Featured

Independent Task Force Publishes Resources to Support Schools and Districts

COVID Collaborative, Harvard’s Edmond J. Safra Center, Brown School of Public Health, and New America launched a task force to support schools and districts in implementing CDC guidance and getting students and staff safely back for in-person learning.

The New Epicenter of the Pandemic: The COVID Crisis in India

New Epicenter of Pandemic: The COVID Crisis in India India is facing a humanitarian catastrophe, unprepared, and unable to confront a deadly new surge of COVID-19. What is happening in India? How and why is it happening? And what must be done to stop this tragedy? A webinar yesterday sponsored by Brown University’s School of […]

Dr. Ashish Jha Testifies Before Senate HELP Committee

Although the Biden administration has done an admirable job of getting COVID-19 vaccinations into arms across America, there is still important work ahead.

Dr. Ashish Jha Testifies Before Congressional Subcommittee on COVID-19 Vaccinations

Here we are, at the end of February 2021, reaching a goal that was to have been met in December 2020—to fully vaccinate 20 million Americans. How did we get here?

Opening Schools Safely: FAQ about latest guidance

In December, a group of experts convened by our Justice, Health and Democracy Rapid Response Initiative released updated guidance for how to open schools safely. The report, “Schools and the Path to Zero: Strategies for Pandemic Resilience in the Face of High Community Spread,” has received a lot of interest and some frequently asked questions are answered in this post.

New Coronavirus Variant Threatens A More Deadly Pandemic

A new variant of Sars-CoV-2 – the virus that causes COVID-19 – has been found from coast to coast in the United States and is likely spreading in communities across the nation. This demands an urgent rethinking of our current policy responses.

State Testing Targets: Jan 1, 2021

The nation is at a pivotal moment in the fight against the pandemic. Vaccines are finally starting to roll out, but the virus is spreading faster than ever — and killing thousands of Americans daily. And it will be months before enough people get inoculated to stop it.

Education, Featured, Testing

Schools and the Path to Zero

Translating the latest evidence into clear recommendations, a multi-disciplinary group of experts delivers guidance on how schools and districts can reduce in-school COVID-19 risks for both children and adults to near zero. The key to opening schools safely? High quality infection control.

Schools and the Path to Zero: Our Recommendations & Guidance

The nation’s educators are living through extraordinary challenges. Recommendations to get students back for in-person learning are necessary, for the good of students, and reasonable, because safety can be achieved.

Misinformation, Risk Levels

Why Scientific Evidence Matters in a Pandemic

In advance of a Senate hearing, leading doctors, scientists, and public health experts unite to stand up for transparency, accountability, and the scientific process.

The Case for Open Schools in a Pandemic

As the worst wave yet of the COVID-19 pandemic sweeps across the nation, the data on schools is becoming clear: most schools can and should stay open, particularly for younger children (K through 8).

New COVID-19 Map Shows Risk Levels By Congressional District

What is the COVID-19 Risk Level in your congressional district? What action will be needed in the weeks and months ahead?

The Economic Case for Robust Public Health Intervention to stop COVID

Washington has authorized unprecedented fiscal and monetary stimulus worth over $3 trillion since the pandemic hit American shores. Yet there are signs the US economic recovery is faltering, exposing the limits of fiscal and monetary policies when the real economy is no longer functioning as before.

Testing Targets: October 1, 2020

Updated testing targets for Fall 2020. From Diagnostics to Screening for COVID-19: Introducing the U.S. Testing Calculator

Fighting Misinformation: The Preprint Sifter

Fighting Misinformation: The Preprint Sifter Helping you get straight to the evidence. The Preprint Sifter is a new Twitter tool that tracks down Tweets from leading epidemiologists, virologists, public health and other experts who are posting, vetting and verifying COVID-19 related preprint papers. Follow @preprintsifter on Twitter In this pandemic, scientists around the world share preliminary […]

America Needs to Radically Rethink Our COVID-19 Testing Approach

At this critical moment in our nation’s fight against COVID-19, it is time to radically rethink our approach to testing. The way forward is not a perfect test, but one offering rapid results.

In April, Congress appropriated $25 billion for coronavirus testing. Where did the money go?

The U.S. Congress is currently deliberating additional supports for states to improve the nation’s testing and tracing infrastructure. To inform distribution mechanisms for these much needed funds, it’s important to check in on how the previous appropriation for testing ($25 billion in the Paycheck Protection Program and Health Care Enhancement Act, passed in April) was spent, or not spent, by HHS.

Path to Zero & Schools: Achieving Pandemic Resilient Teaching and Learning Spaces

Finding ways to get kids back to school safely as the virus continues to spread across the nation is a daunting task. Our new guidance helps schools and districts devise plans based on the size of the outbreak in their community.

Path to Zero: Utilizing Interstate Compacts to Unleash Testing Capacity

As coronavirus cases soar across the United States, viral testing has become a bottleneck. Severe testing shortages and processing delays are hampering the COVID-19 response. Here is how to rapidly build the arsenal of timely tests we need to suppress and defeat the coronavirus.

Cars in traffic

Misinformation, Risk Levels

Cases and Deaths Are Surging in Southern States NOT Because of Vacationers From the North

The numbers of cases of and deaths from COVID-19 are surging in the south because states relaxed COVID-19 restrictions too soon, and not, as suggested yesterday by Robert Redfield, Director of the Centers for Disease Control, because of an influx of northern vacationers after Memorial Day.

Dr. Ashish K. Jha says US withdrawal from WHO is devastating loss in battle against COVID-19

Dr. Jha testified before members of the Senate Committee on Foreign Relations that U.S. that withdrawal from the World Health Organization (WHO) “will harm not only the health of people around the world, but also US leadership and scientific prowess.”

State Testing Targets: July 6, 2020

State Testing Targets: July 6, 2020 As COVID-19 outbreaks grow more severe, most U.S. states still fall far short on testing From Mitigation to Suppression: In collaboration with NPR, HGHI is publishing new state testing targets for July. This new data shows only 18 states meet minimum targets for mitigation, and only three reach suppression […]

Evidence Roundup: Why positive test rates need to fall below 3%

Evidence Roundup: Why positive test rates need to fall below 3% By Divya Siddarth, Harvard Safra Center COVID Initiative, Rebecca Katz, Georgetown University Center for Global Health Science and Security, Ellie Graeden, Talus Analytics, Danielle Allen, Harvard Safra Center, and Thomas Tsai, HGHI According to epidemiologists, “epidemic control requires detecting even minor symptoms and testing […]

It’s not about being sick: Why we need to test more healthy people to beat this virus

States are opening up, people are welcoming summer in large crowds at the beach, in the pool and in parks. The problem with this rushed return to life-as-usual: We don’t know who in crowded places is passing the coronavirus to others. Evidence now shows nearly half of the spread of COVID-19 is from people with no symptoms – people who feel fine, and don’t know they are infected. Finding them and controlling the disease demands drastically increasing testing of healthy people—and no state is currently doing enough of that.

Misinformation, Testing

The CDC is conflating viral and antibody tests. Here’s what you need to know

The government’s disease-fighting agency is compromising a few crucial metrics that governors depend on to reopen their economies. Pennsylvania, Georgia, Texas, and other states are doing the same. The practice is muddying the data, and making it harder to base responses on solid evidence. Clearer and more standardized instructions on data collection from the CDC could have helped prevent this.

State Testing Targets: May 15, 2020

State Testing Targets: May 15, 2020 Ten days ago, the Harvard Global Health Institute published data looking at how many tests each state should be doing as part of their strategy to begin a slow re-opening around May 1, based on the size of their coronavirus outbreak at the time. Ten days is a long […]

Dr. Ashish Jha addresses Congress, urging Feds to do more on testing, support states

Participating in a virtual briefing for members of the House Coronavirus Oversight Committee, Dr. Ashish Jha, Director of the Harvard Global Health Institute (HGHI), said the federal government must do more to increase testing, support states to help increase testing, and to encourage innovative, new tests to identify those testing positive for COVID-19.

Modeling Uncertainty: How to make sense of changing predictions

In a pandemic, hard evidence is a precious commodity. That’s where scientific models come in, providing estimates on how many people may die from COVID-19, or how many tests a state may need to perform to outpace the virus. But like the outbreak, estimates change. In this post, we explain why that’s a good thing, and how to make sense of what models tell us.

HGHI and NPR publish new state testing targets

Partnering with National Public Radio, we are publishing an updated version of our model of projected state testing targets today, looking at how many tests we think each state should be ready to perform by May 15. The numbers are sobering: Overall, our need for testing has only increased over the past weeks. Less than a dozen states have gotten ahead of this virus.

Nationwide Testing Targets: May 1, 2020

Nationwide Testing Targets: May 1, 2020 Why we need at least 500,000 tests per day to open the economy — and stay open. Partnering with The New York Times, we published a first projection of a nationwide testing target on April 18, estimating how many tests the entire nation should be performing by May 1, 2020. Ubiquitous […]

State Testing Targets: May 1, 2020

State Testing Targets: May 1, 2020 Find out if your state falls short on testing needed to open up in early May. More than half of U.S. states will have to significantly step up their Covid-19 testing to even consider starting to relax stay-at-home orders after May 1, according to a new analysis by the […]

Analysis: Find out if your state falls short on testing needed to open up in early May

Analysis: Find out if your state falls short on testing needed to open up in early May More than half of U.S. states will have to significantly step up their Covid-19 testing to even consider starting to relax stay-at-home orders after May 1, according to a new analysis by the Harvard Global Health Institute and […]

Why we need at least 500,000 tests per day to open the economy — and stay open

Ubiquitous testing is essential to the nation’s ability to succeed with the planned phased opening of the economy and to stay open. In this HGHI analysis, we estimate that the number of tests needed every day is, at a minimum, 500,000, though we likely need many more.

Why do we still need testing?

Over the past few days, federal policymakers have been arguing that testing is overblown as an issue – that it is not so important or that we are doing enough. These are two separate issues. Is testing really important? And if yes, are we doing enough? HGHI faculty director Ashish K. Jha explains.

Google Cloud

HGHI Partners with Google Cloud to Award Cloud Research Credits

We’re partnering with Google Cloud to enable researchers to harness the power of the Cloud in their fight against COVID-19.

State Snapshot: California – A Tale of Two Cities

As the coronavirus continues to sweep across the United States, one question is on everyone’s mind: Where are different communities in the cycle of the pandemic, and how bad will it get? To find answers, state governments and research groups are now collecting detailed testing and hospitalization data that can help assess how each state is performing when it comes to detecting and addressing COVID-19. Which states are doing well? Where might we see future hot spots? In this series, we interpret the data in more detail, one state at a time.

SARS 1 vs. SARS 2: Does the new virus live longer on surfaces?

A recent publication in the New England Journal of Medicine aimed to determine how long SARS-CoV-2 could survive in the air and on various surfaces. The authors compare the length of SARS-CoV-2 survival to SARS-CoV-1 (measured by the amount of virus remaining after a duration of time) in aerosolized form and on copper, cardboard, stainless steel, and plastic.

Can SARS-CoV-2 contaminate hospitals?

What do we know about how SARS-CoV-2 survives outside the human host in hospital settings? Transmission of COVID-19 within hospitals has been observed, but is is unclear how the virus was passed along. In a hospital in Singapore, researchers tested numerous sites in the rooms of three COVID-19 patients to determine how long the virus can live on various surfaces as well as personal protective equipment (PPE).

Building Testing Capacity in Africa – 42 Countries and Counting

Once the news was out about a novel coronavirus emerging in China, Dr. John Nkengasong, director of the Africa Centres for Disease Control and Prevention, swiftly moved to action: In a few short weeks, he built capacity to test for the novel virus across the African continent. HGHI’s Ashish Jha asks: How did he do it, what is the current capacity for testing, and what’s next as the virus spreads around the world?

Is Twitter Becoming Better At reporting COVID-19 Testing than the CDC?

Tynan Friend, HGHI | March 13, 2020 Numerous reports over the past weeks have circulated throughout the U.S detailing what many regard as severe shortcomings in the COVID-19 laboratory testing by the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC).

It’s a crisis, yes. But that’s when humans get creative.

Here is a truth about the human brain: in crisis, we get creative. So, like other major crises before, the coronavirus pandemic is driving innovative ideas and new solutions for how to deal with the risk of infection, testing shortages, and other current challenges.

The Role of the FDA in the US Testing Debacle

Confusion and controversy have surrounded the conversation about diagnostic testing for COVID-19 in the United States. We know that testing is a critical component of an effective response effort. We summarize a recent JAMA viewpoint that highlights why the US has experienced a testing gap, walks through the regulatory procedures for lab-developed tests during an emergency, and provides some insight into who should be tested.