Science lesson 🔬: Covid transmission in the schools (free version)

Plus: City working on LGBT nondiscrimination ordinance, mayor says; Analyzing Belk's bankruptcy plans; Tips to sleep better; Higher gas bills cause alarm; Residents blow off Covid directive

Jan 27, 2021

Good morning! Today is Wednesday, January 27, 2021. You’re reading The Charlotte Ledger, an e-newsletter with original local business-y news and insights for Charlotte, N.C. We’re delivering information you won’t find elsewhere.

Editor’s note: This is a shorter, free version of The Charlotte Ledger sent to people on our free sign-up list. The complete version for paying subscribers went out 15 minutes ago. It included:

The full interview with a Duke pediatrics professor who was part of a team of researchers who studied Covid transmission in schools.
An analysis of Belk’s announcement Tuesday that it plans to file for bankruptcy protection — and why that might be a positive step for the venerable Charlotte-based department store chain.
Information on why recent bills from Piedmont Natural Gas seem to be so high.
Tips from a Novant Health sleep specialist about how you can catch some extra shuteye at night. (We’re tempted to insert a joke here about some of our somnolent local news competitors, but we’ll pass.) This is part of our “A Better You in 2021” series that helps readers get the year started on the right track.
Info on what local hospitals are doing to prepare patients for the next phases of the vaccine … and how the rules for the next few phases seem even more loosey-goosey than the current distribution.
Data that shows whether Mecklenburg County residents took the health department’s Covid directive seriously or not.

We welcome you to join us as a paying subscriber to receive full access to all our articles — and to support reader-focused local journalism for Charlotte, free of annoying pop-up ads, fluff and clickbait. We’re not part of some big corporate media empire. We’re a locally owned small business run by people who live here who believe that Charlotte deserves better, smarter sources of information — and our team is working to deliver that to our readers. Details here.

Q&A: A Duke pediatrics professor explains her new research examining kids and Covid; ‘It’s super exciting’

(Photo by Kelly Sikkema/Unsplash)

Few local debates in recent months have been as divisive as the decisions on whether or not to send local public school students back to the classroom.

On one side are people who say that reopening schools is too dangerous because it will surely lead to additional infections and deaths. On the other side are those who say it’s safe and who worry that keeping schools closed will set students back academically and emotionally.

This month, a group of nine pediatricians at Duke and UNC Chapel Hill medical schools released a study based on their work this fall in 11 North Carolina school districts that were in school part-time. They crunched the Covid transmission numbers and worked with superintendents, principals and teachers to determine how to return students to class safely. Known as the ABC Science Collaborative, the program helps develop guidance and best practices for about half of North Carolina’s public school systems. (Charlotte-Mecklenburg Schools was not among the participants.)

The study’s results mostly indicated that Covid spread in schools is low, if students wear masks, stay apart from each other and wash their hands. Those conclusions are generally in line with other research published this week from researchers at the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. President Biden has made returning to classrooms one of his top Covid-related priorities.

Although the issue of school reopenings has become political, the Duke and UNC researchers say their work should not be misconstrued to support political views and that their role is to help communities develop the best approaches for returning students to the classroom.

Earlier this month, one of the professors, Duke pediatric infectious disease specialist Dr. Kathleen McGann, spoke with Ledger editor Tony Mecia about the group’s research — and what it means for school reopenings. The full interview is available to The Ledger’s community of paying subscribers on our website (🔒). We’re excerpting a portion of it below.

Remarks have been edited for clarity and brevity:

Q. What are the implications of your research for the debates that are going on now, as far as whether schools should be in class or virtual?

We’ve been working with the superintendents since August and meeting with them biweekly to talk about the science, the importance of masking, hand hygiene, distancing, those key mitigation strategies. And then we looked at the data. We looked at districts where the children had been in in-person schooling for the nine weeks during the first quarter of school.

For those 11 districts, we looked at two things: We looked at number of staff or children entering school with Covid-19 infections. And there were 773 community-acquired transmissions. And then we looked at secondary transmission, or within-school transmission, and there were only 32.

Our hypothesis was that in-person instruction would not result in a substantial risk of in-school spread if people adhered to masking, distancing and hand hygiene. So the bottom line is, if you think about those 773 that came into the school, given our normal transmission rate that we see in North Carolina, it’s about 1.1. So we could have seen up to 800-900 additional infections as a result of those 773. We had 32 within the schools, so it was awesome.

These were schools that were super strict about masking and distancing and hand hygiene. Most of the transmission was related to non-adherence to masking. So, for example, a pre-kindergarten group had a cluster because initially we didn’t require children under 5 to wear masks. We shifted. Now, all those 4-year-olds are required to wear masks, and we’re not seeing any more clusters.

The other place we saw some transmissions were in the special education classes, or special needs classes. And that’s harder. Those children are less likely to wear masks.

And then the other time we're seeing transmission is where people are eating and talking together without wearing their masks and are sitting closer than 6 feet apart.

It’s super exciting that we were able to show notably limited secondary transmissions within schools during the first quarter, and some of these counties had 900 cases per 100,000 people over a 14-day period. [Editor’s note: The most recent data shows Mecklenburg at 1,046 cases per 100,000 over the last 14 days.] So, in other words, some of these counties had really high community disease.

You may ask me now, well, transmission is even higher. And you’re right. But we feel pretty confident looking at those counties that we looked at. Some of them had pretty high transmission rates during the study.

We’re demonstrating, at least with hybrid instruction, that we’re not seeing transmissions even close to what the community is seeing.

Q. What about the risk to teachers?

We did not see child-to-adult transmission of Covid within the schools we studied. There were no instances of child-to-adult transmission. We’re seeing that in households, also: Children are generally not the index case.

It’s not a “never” kind of thing, but that was encouraging.

Q. What about the idea that you don’t really know how many cases you have in schools because not everybody is being tested every day?

Yeah, you know, they’re not being tested in the community, either. So even though people think maybe there’s underreporting of cases in schools, we’re really looking at secondary transmissions. We’re not trying to identify all the cases, just the ones resulting from an index case from the community.

Q. What about the argument that in places where community spread is so high that, in the name of safety, people should just stay home and not go to school because there are gatherings where Covid could be transmitted — even if it’s brought in from the community as opposed to transmitted in the school? Does your study address that in any way?

The things that would make us think about potentially changing our approach would be if it’s a county where there are not hospital beds or ICU beds to care for patients. That would be one potential consideration, although luckily most children do not require hospitalization and do pretty well. But that’s not always true with the staff.

And then the other big issue for us has been some schools, or even just classrooms, have needed to close because of staffing. They don’t want kids in school if there are not teachers and others to keep the children safe in general. So if they cannot fully staff a classroom or a school, then that’s when the schools have had some hard decisions to make.

Q. So would you say children are safer in school? Or are they safer at home?

You have to think like an epidemiologist on a population basis. Our data is showing that within-school transmissions are markedly lower than in the community. Yes, there are individuals who are at home — isolating, masking — who rarely go out. And you know, that’s a very safe environment.

But that’s not what the majority are doing. And so if children are out there in the community rather than in school, where it’s more protected, then school is where some districts want them to be.

The full interview is available to Ledger paying subscribers on our website:

Check out the full interview

Related Ledger articles:

Belk to file for bankruptcy — and that might be better than it sounds

Tuesday’s announcement that Charlotte-based department store chain Belk will file for bankruptcy protection helps end months of speculation about the retailer’s future.

Its financial struggles — debt trading for cents on the dollar, slow payment of vendors, being heavily invested in big physical stores as more shopping goes online, attempting to sell “modern Southern style” amid a yoga-pants-friendly pandemic — have been well-documented.

The future might be better than it sounds. “Bankruptcy” carries a stench of failure, but it can be an opportunity for companies to get their financial houses in order. Or it can be a step toward total collapse.

Based just on its announcement Tuesday, Belk’s situation appears to resemble more of the former than the latter. Consider:

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Editor’s note: For many of us, January is a time of self-reflection and improvement. So at The Ledger, we’re pulling together advice and achievable tips from some of our city’s top experts in various fields for this month-long feature designed to help build a better you — personally and professionally.

5 ways to get better sleep

by Dr. Nancy Behrens

While sleep is essential for our mental and physical health, many of us have found our sleep has suffered over the past year. Life during the pandemic has disrupted routines for work, school and exercise. Stress is at an all-time high as we worry about health and politics.

Here are some strategies to improve your sleep, helping you to stay healthy and to feel good during the day.

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Dr. Nancy Behrens is a sleep specialist at Novant Health, where she has been treating patients with sleep disorders, ranging from sleep apnea to narcolepsy, for 14 years. She is also system director for Novant Health’s sleep programs.

Previous installments of “A Better You in 2021,” our series that helps you improve professionally and personally with the advice of local experts:

Does Charlotte really have a shot at Major League Baseball?

Charlotte got prominent play in a recent piece in The Athletic that assesses the prospects of various cities landing a Major League Baseball franchise as the league contemplates its next round of expansion.

The story is long (and subscribers-only), so here’s the low-down: In a field that also includes Orlando; Portland, Ore.; Nashville; Vancouver; Montreal; Las Vegas; New Orleans and Monterrey, Mexico, Charlotte ranks at or near the top in most data-driven categories — population, growth, demographics, income, size of local business community.

Key questions:

Would Charlotte’s proximity to Atlanta and existing local interest in the Braves make a new team a tough sell?
Does the city’s lack of an organized expansion campaign (compared to well-funded efforts in Nashville, Portland and Montreal) hurt it?

The piece quotes Rick Curti, leader of the grassroots Charlotte Bats campaign, but the quote is from a 2017 WBTV story, and Curti’s website hasn’t been updated in a year. Meanwhile, Portland has former Braves star Dale Murphy stumping for it, Nashville was led until recently by longtime MLB front office executive Dave Dombrowski, and Montreal’s effort is spearheaded by businessman Stephen Bronfman.

The 2019 MLS expansion experience showed Panthers owner David Tepper has what it takes to conjure a successful expansion effort essentially out of thin air — but it’s unclear how the NFL might choose to apply its complicated rules on ownership of other sports teams.

Bottom line: Does that Charlotte Pipe & Foundry parcel have room for a baseball stadium, too? —TW

Mecklenburg residents are blowing off Covid directive, data shows

Cell-phone location data suggests that people are leaving their houses about as much as they did before Mecklenburg County’s health director issued her Covid “directive” two weeks ago urging people to stay home.

OK, that’s probably not news to anybody who has driven around town lately.

A “social distancing index” calculated by the University of Maryland has actually moved the opposite direction in Mecklenburg, declining slightly since health director Gibbie Harris issued her non-binding directive designed to slow the spread of Covid on Jan. 12.

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Why your natural gas bill jumped last month

Some Piedmont Natural Gas customers gasped when they opened their December bills, with some seeing payments owed that were two, three or even four times higher than November’s, and in some cases much higher than December 2019. (Naturally, they took their complaints to Nextdoor, posting hundreds of comments in several threads on the matter.)

Why are the recent bills so much higher? A few reasons:

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Registration for Covid vaccine appears headed for honor system

Atrium Health and Novant Health have started “pre-registration” for members of the remaining groups eligible for the Covid vaccines.

And if you thought the vaccine distribution has been topsy-turvy so far, just wait until we get into these next phases, when the definitions of who is eligible are going to blur.

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In brief

Nondiscrimination ordinance in the works: Mayor Vi Lyles says the city is working to draft a nondiscrimination ordinance: “We will be meeting with LGBTQ+ community leaders and others in our community to discuss our specific ordinance language to ensure that everyone is protected and welcomed in our city. We recognize this is an important issue and one City Council will be taking up in the coming months,” she said in a statement. (WSOC)
Silver Line route takes shape: Attention, land speculators — the city is fine-tuning its plans for the route of the proposed new light rail line. At a City Council committee meeting this week, council members got a glimpse of some of the corridors, the routing and the proposed stops. (UNC Charlotte Urban Institute)
Fintech merger: Sunlight Financial, co-headquartered in Charlotte, announced plans to merge Spartan Acquisition Corp. and become a publicly listed company. Sunlight Financial provides financing capabilities to solar contractors. (Business Wire)
ASC names acting chief: The Arts & Science Council has named Krista Terrell as its acting president, following former president Jeep Bryant’s resignation announcement earlier this month. Terrell has been with the arts non-profit for nearly 19 years, most recently as its vice president of marketing and communications. The ASC and Bryant have not given a reason for Bryant’s resignation.
2 big CMS resignations: Two of Charlotte-Mecklenburg Schools’ top administrators are retiring from the district. Carol Stamper is stepping down as deputy superintendent of operations and Kathy Elling is retiring as chief school performance officer. Stamper has been with the district 36 years; Elling for 31 years. The two women were saluted for their dedication during Tuesday night’s CMS school board meeting. “What a year to go out on,” said board chair Elyse Dashew.
Chocolatier closes: Chocolate store chain Godiva is closing all 128 of its North American stores, including the one at SouthPark Mall, the retailer said this week. Fun fact: The Belgium company’s name was inspired by “the well-known Saxon legend of Lady Godiva, who rode unclothed through the streets of Coventry to entreat her husband, Leofric the Dane, to lower taxes.”

Tar Heel basketball standout Luke Maye explains why you should nominate for 40 Over 40 right now.

Luke, we think that’s a great idea! If you know some who is making Charlotte a better place — and that person is aged 40+ — nominate today!

Contest details are here.

What celebrities will be plugging the 40 Over 40 Awards next? Stay tuned!

Programming note: Ledger editor Tony Mecia appears as a guest on 90.7 WFAE at 6:40 a.m. and 8:40 a.m. on Thursdays for a discussion of the week’s local business news in the station’s “BizWorthy” segment. Audio and transcripts are also available online.

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Executive editor: Tony Mecia; Managing editor: Cristina Bolling; Contributing editor: Tim Whitmire, CXN Advisory; Reporting intern: David Griffith