The Long Island Sound in New York
Good morning. This is Jonathan Spira reporting. Here now the news of the pandemic from across the globe on the 1,254th day of the pandemic and
OP-ED ON THURSDAY
All Signs Point to a New Wave
If you are noticing more people donning face masks recently, there’s good reason: As regular readers of this space and the Morning News Brief know, cases are on the rise and we believe this points to a late-summer wave of SARS-CoV-2 cases.
The increase in cases comes as the new omicron subvariant EG.5 became dominant in the United States, although there’s no clear connection that shows that the subvariant is directly responsible for the increase.
I’ve warned that we’ve mothballed many of the critical tools that we had in place since the start of the pandemic in our attempt to put the event in the rear-view mirror but Covid doesn’t really care about our wish that it go quietly into the sunset. No sooner do we predict an end to a high number of cases than it roars its ugly head and tricks us with one bad scenario after another.
One problem is that, while many people use at-home test kits, the reporting of new cases we gathered from lab tests for Covid is no longer part of our arsenal and very few people use the compared to the population-at-large. (Disclaimer: I do post my test results to the site but I often wonder who else actually does.)
It’s important to keep in mind that, even with a late-summer wave of cases, it’s unlikely to create the conditions we’ve seen in past summer waves given what appears to be a high number of people with herd immunity and a virus that is less likely to cause hospitalizations than the original delta or omicron waves.
Use common sense when deciding how to mask. A crowded meeting room is a good use case for masking while a lonely walk in the park is not.
In other news we cover today, YouTube is deleting en mass miracle cure videos, a U.S. organization that funded research by the Wuhan Virology Institute is being sued for helping cause the pandemic, and a genetically modified pig kidney is working successfully after being transplanted into a human being.
UNITED STATES
The Manhattan non-profit that funded the Wuhan Institute of Virology’s gain-of-function research is being sued by the families of four people who died from SARS-CoV-2. Court papers for the lawsuit charge EcoHealth Alliance and its president, Peter Daszak, for “creating” the bug and then “releasing it, either intentionally or accidentally.”
The two defendants knew that the virus was dangerous and “capable of causing a worldwide pandemic,” claims the suit, which was filed in Manhattan Supreme Court which, despite its name, is the trial-level court, not the highest in the state.
The plaintiffs contend that EcoHealth – despite only partially funding the research – failed to ensure that the appropriate safety measures for the type of research being funded were in place and then launched a cover-up concerning the origins of the virus and outbreak.
Gain-of-function research, sometimes abbreviated as GoF, is medical research that genetically alters an organism in a way that may enhance the biological functions of gene products. This may include an altered pathogenesis, transmissibility, or host range, i.e., the types of hosts that a microorganism can infect. This type of research is generally conducted to get ahead of a new virus and be able to develop a vaccine or therapeutic protocols before the virus emerges in the wild.
Finally, weekly hospitalizations due to SARS-CoV-2 rose 14% in the most recent reporting week (see TODAY’S STATISTICS, below), although the current figures are still lower than at other points in the pandemic.
For the week ending August 5, hospitalizations increased by 14.3% from 9,026 to 10,320, CDC data shows.
GLOBAL
New Zealand ended the last of its coronavirus pandemic restrictions Thursday. The island nation ended its remaining seven-day mandatory isolation rule for those who test positive for the virus as well as mandatory masks in health care facilities from midnight. The country, in large part thanks to some of the world’s strictest pandemic policies, suffered a much lower mortality rate than most other countries.
OTHER HEALTHCARE NEWS
Three people have died after contracting an infection from rare flesh-eating bacteria . In Connecticut and New York. The bacteria can be found in warm, brackish waters or raw shellfish, officials said on Wednesday.
One person from New York State was infected with Vibrio vulnificus in July after eating raw oysters from an out-of-state establishment, according to the New York State Department of Public Health. Two others, these in Connecticut, contracted the virus after swimming in two separate locations in the Long Island Sound, according to Christopher Boyle, director of communications for the Connecticut Department of Public Health.
Vibrio vulnificus comes from the same family as the bacteria that causes cholera.
Meanwhile, YouTube said it would tackle miracle cures, bogus disease prevention tips, and other health myths that litter its site with a new assault on medical misinformation. The effort starts with a mass take-down of videos about “harmful or ineffective” cancer cures, the company said in a statement earlier in the week.
Finally, surgeons at New York University Hospital successfully transplanted a genetically modified pig kidney into a brain-dead person and the kidney has worked so far for 33 days and counting. The news shows the advancing efforts to use animals to ease perennial organ shortages for humans.
The results of the July 14 transplant haven’t’ yet been published but will provide data to support clinical trials testing animal-to-human transplant.
TODAY’S STATISTICS
Now here are the daily statistics for Thursday, August 17.
As of Thursday morning, the world has recorded 693.65 million Covid-19 cases, an increase of 0.05 million from the previous day, and 6.91 million deaths, according to Worldometer, a service that tracks such information. In addition, 665.4 million people worldwide have recovered from the virus, an increase of 0.05 million from the prior day.
The reader should note that infrequent reporting from some sources may appear as spikes in new case figures or death tolls.
Worldwide, the number of active coronavirus cases as of Thursday at press time is 21,247,738, a decrease of 12,000. Out of that figure, 99.8%, or 21,210,314, are considered mild, and 0.2%, or 37,424, are listed as critical. The percentage of cases considered critical has not changed over the past eight months.
The test positivity rate for Covid for the week ending August was 17.76%, up from 16.66% the prior week, according to data from the CDC Respiratory Virus Laboratory Emergency Department Network Surveillance, or RESP-LENS By comparison, the test positive rate for influenza was 1.24%,down from 1.26%, ,and, for RSV, that figure was 0.78%, down from 0.99%.
The percentage of deaths due to Covid was 1.1% in the week ending August 5, 2023, a figure that is up 12.3% over the week.
Finally, the number of hospital admissions from Covid for seven days ending August 5 was 10,320, a figure that is up 14.3% over the preceding week.
As of March 25, 2023, the Morning News Brief began to update case data as well as death tolls on a weekly basis. In addition, as of May 15, 2023, the Morning News Brief has pressed pause on certain data sets as we assess the update of changes in reporting by U.S. health authorities at the CDC. Where appropriate, the Morning News Brief has reintroduced data sets are they have become available.
Since the start of the pandemic, the United States has, as of Thursday, recorded 107.79 million cases, a higher figure than any other country, and a death toll of 1.17 million. India has the world’s second highest number of officially recorded cases, 45 million, and a reported death toll of 531,922.
The newest data from Russia’s Rosstat state statistics service showed that, at the end of July 2022, the number of Covid or Covid-related deaths since the start of the pandemic there in April 2020 is now 823,623, giving the country the world’s second highest pandemic-related death toll, behind the United States. Rosstat last reported that 3,284 people died from the coronavirus or related causes in July 2022, down from 5,023 in June, 7,008 in May and 11,583 in April.
Meanwhile, France is the country with the third highest number of cases, with 40.14 million, and Germany is in the number four slot, with 38.43 million total cases.
Brazil, which has recorded the third highest number of deaths as a result of the virus, 705,054, has recorded 37.71 million cases, placing it in the number five slot.
The other five countries with total case figures over the 20 million mark are South Korea, with 33.9 million cases, as number six; Japan, with 33.8 million cases placing it in the number seven slot; and Italy, with 25.92 million, as number eight, as well as the United Kingdom, with 24.67 million, and Russia, with 22.98 million, as nine and ten respectively.
VACCINATION SPOTLIGHT
The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention said that, as of August 5, the total number of updated bivalent doses given in the United States was 152.5 million, an increase of 8 million doses over the past month.
Older – and no longer updated – data from the CDC shows that over 270.2 million people in the United States – or 81.4% – have received at least one dose of the coronavirus vaccine as of May 11, 2023. Of that population, 69.5%, or 230.6 million people, have received two doses of vaccine, and the total number of doses that have been dispensed in the United States is now over 676.7 million. Breaking this down further, 92.23% of the population over the age of 18 – or 238.2 million people – has received at least a first inoculation and 79.1% of the same group – or 204.3 million people – is fully vaccinated.
Some 70.5% of the world population has received at least one dose of coronavirus vaccine by Thursday, according to Our World in Data, an online scientific publication that tracks such information. So far, 13.5 billion doses of the vaccine have been administered on a global basis and 47,617 doses are now administered each day.
Meanwhile, only 32.53% of people in low-income countries have received one dose, while in countries such as Canada, China, Denmark, France, Italy, the United Kingdom, and the United States, at least 75% of the population has received at least one dose of vaccine.
Only a handful of the world’s poorest countries – Bangladesh, Bhutan, Cambodia and Nepal – have reached the 70% mark in vaccinations. Many countries, however, are under 20% and, in countries such as Haiti, Senegal, and Tanzania, for example, vaccination rates remain at or below 10%.
In addition, with the beginning of vaccinations in North Korea in late September, Eritrea remains the only country in the world that has not administered vaccines.
Anna Breuer contributed reporting to this story.
(Photo: Accura Media Group)
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