Coronavirus Morning News Brief – Nov. 5: How to Spend Covid-19 Stimulus Act Funds, Pandemic Has Caused ‘Collective Trauma’ in Adults

Buckingham Palace in London. Today is Guy Fawkes Day. The palace is still standing as is the House of Parliament.
Good morning. This is Jonathan Spira reporting. Here now the news of the pandemic from across the globe on the 1,333rd day of the pandemic and Guy Fawkes Day.
This weekend, Brits of all political persuasions will eat sausages, light bonfires, and burn effigies of one individual, Guy Fawkes.
Guy Fawkes was part of a plot by English Catholics who had planned regicide against the Protestant King James I and the destruction of his parliament.
The conspiracy’s primary goals were religious in nature, but also political. King James had previously announced a plan to unite England, Scotland, and Wales into a kind of united kingdom, to be named later. November 5 was the day legislators were to meet to receive documents and certify the decision. Sound familiar?
Unlike in modern times, there were no RICO statues nor much of an appetite for fair trails.  The plotters ended up with their heads on pikes.  These days, Fawkes is burned in effigy and in recent years, so was Boris Johnson and, upon occasion, Donald Trump.  Perhaps the United States needs a similar holiday on January 6.
In other news we report today , how one county is spending American Rescue Plan funds, mask mandates are returning in the United States, adults in the U.S. are suffering from pandemic-induced “collective trauma,” and mask mandates return to the Bay Area.
UNITED STATES
The race to use funds from the American Rescue Plan continues before the clock runs out. In Pennsylvania, Westmoreland County commissioners voted last week to allocate $270,000 from the county’s pool of American Rescue Plan funds, which means that approximately $52 million – roughly half of the $105 million of funds received from the federal government in 2021 –  has been spent.
The county has until the end of next year to spend the remaining $53 million.
Thus far, the funds have been used for a $7 million construction project to rebuild an underground parking garage and a new courtyard at the courthouse, technology upgrades, pay hikes and bonuses to municipal workers, and to fill revenue gaps in the county’s $420 million budget.
The American Rescue Plan Act of 2021, also called the Covid-19 Stimulus Package or American Rescue Plan, was a US$1.9 trillion economic stimulus bill passed by Congress to speed up the country’s recovery from the economic and health effects of the pandemic.
Mask mandates returned in parts of California this week as several Bay Area counties reinstated them ahead of an expected climb in SARS-CoV-2 cases through the holiday period.
Healthcare workers in Alameda, Contra Costa, Sonoma, and San Mateo counties are required to don face masks in patient care settings through at least the end of the winter respiratory virus season.
In addition, two counties, Santa Clara and Marin, also require patients and visitors in patient-care settings to done face masks while San Francisco mandates year-round masking for healthcare providers and jail and prison workers but not for patients or visitors.
Meanwhile, on the political front, Florida Governor Ron DeSantis, who is trying to revive his struggling campaign for the Republican Party’s presidential nomination, is leaning into vaccine skepticism to energize primary voters.
DeSantis had hoped that his response to the coronavirus pandemic, which helped propel him to a strong re-election victory in Florida last year, would produce similar results in the Republican presidential primary, but that has not turned out to be the case.
Finally, a study by the American Psychological Association shows that the pandemic, which is about to enter its fourth year, has caused “collective trauma” in adults in the United States.
The APA, in its Stress in America 2023 survey, released these findings after surveying over 3,000 people about how their well-being has changed since the start of the pandemic. Adults between the ages of 35 and 44 reported a spike in chronic health conditions, which rose from 48% in 2019 to 58% in 2023.
That same age group self-reported in mental illnesses, increasing by 14 percentage points from 31% in 2019 to 45% in 2023.  The leading mental illnesses reported were anxiety and depression, the APA said.
Of perhaps even greater concern, adults between the ages of 18 and 34 years old had the highest rate of mental illness, at 50% in 2023.
GLOBAL STATISTICS
Now here are the daily statistics for Sunday, November 5.
As of Sunday morning, the world has recorded just over 697.37 million Covid-19 cases, an increase of under 0.01 million in the past, and 6.93 million deaths, according to Worldometer, a service that tracks such information. In addition, just over 669.16 million people worldwide have recovered from the virus, an increase of just under .01 million.
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 Sunday at press time is 21,274,405, a decrease of 290. Out of that figure, 99.8%, or 21,236,474, are considered mild, and 0.2%, or 37,931, are listed as critical. The percentage of cases considered critical has not changed over the past ten months.
Since the start of the pandemic, the United States has, as of Sunday, recorded 109.21 million cases, a higher figure than any other country, and a death toll of 1.18 million. India has the world’s second highest number of officially recorded cases, 45 million, and a reported death toll of 533,293.
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 38.55 million total cases.
Brazil, which has recorded the third highest number of deaths as a result of the virus, 706,808, has recorded 37.95 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 34.57 million cases, as number six; Japan, with 33.8 million cases placing it in the number seven slot; and Italy, with 26.23 million, as number eight, as well as the United Kingdom, with 24.8 million, and Russia, with 23.12 million, as nine and ten respectively.
CURRENT U.S. COVID STATISTICS AT A GLANCE
In the United States, in the week ending October 28, 2023, the test positivity rate was – based on data released on November 2 from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention – 9%, a figure that is essentially unchanged from the previous 7-day period, while the percentage of emergency department visits that were diagnosed as SARS-CoV-2 was 1.2%, a figure that is down 5.7%.
The number of people admitted to hospital in the United States due to SARS-CoV-2 in the same 7-day period was 14,745, a figure that is up 0.01%. Meanwhile, the percentage of deaths due to SARS-CoV-2 was 2.5%, a figure that is unchanged over the same period.
VACCINATION SPOTLIGHT
Some 70.6% of the world population has received at least one dose of coronavirus vaccine by Sunday, according to Our World in Data, an online scientific publication that tracks such information.  So far, 13.53 billion doses of the vaccine have been administered on a global basis and 19,730 doses are now administered each day.
Meanwhile, only 32.8% 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 in any significant number.
Paul Riegler contributed reporting to this story.
(Photo: Accura Media Group)