The individual box containing a dose of the new 2023 coronavirus vaccine
Good day. This is Jonathan Spira, director of research at the Center for Long Covid Research, reporting. Here now the news of the pandemic from across the globe on the 1,422nd day of the pandemic.
In news we report today, a new CDC report found that the 2023 coronavirus vaccine offers strong protection against symptomatic infection, Biogen is pulling its Alzheimer’s disease therapy Aduhelm off the market, and the cumulative death toll from climate change in this century alone will likely cross the 4 million mark in 2024.
UNITED STATES
The 2023 coronavirus vaccine offers strong protection against symptomatic infection and can cut the chances of getting infected by half.
A new study prepared by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention shows that the vaccine is 54% effective at preventing symptomatic infection in adults. The study, which was the first in the country to assess the effectiveness of the 2023 vaccines, analyzed data for 9,000 adults who were tested for Covid at CVS and Walgreens pharmacies in the period from mid-September 2023 through mid-January of this year.
The 54% figure is consistent with what has been reported in other countries, and it is also approximately what was reported for the previous version, said the Ruth Link-Gelles, a commander in the Commissioned Corps of the U.S. Public Health Service and the study’s lead author. Link-Gelles also heads the CDC’s vaccine effectiveness program for Covid and RSV.
“Everything from this study is reassuring that the vaccines are providing the protection that we expected,” she said in a statement.
A new study shows that thousands of frontline workers, namely those whose jobs would not be able to be performed from home, died but would have survived had the U.S. regulatory system better protected them. The study, U.S. Workers During the Covid-19 Pandemic: Uneven Risks, Inadequate Protections, and Predictable Consequences, was published in thebmj, which is a weekly peer-reviewed medical journal effectively owned by the British Medical Association
“Federal policies on workplace exposure were developed to protect the supply chain of food or other vital products, or to prevent staff shortages at healthcare facilities, rather than to protect frontline workers from virus exposure,” wrote the George Washington University–led study authors. “Some employers, with the support (and encouragement) of elected officials, put production and profits ahead of worker safety and health.”
The report is the first in a series that examines the lessons learned from the first few years of the pandemic and outlines possible steps that might avert deaths in the next pandemic.
OTHER HEALTHCARE NEWS
Biotechnology firm Biogen said it will discontinue sales of its controversial Alzheimer’s treatment Aducanumab, which is marketed as Aduhelm. The company will also halt further development, it announced.
The drug’s approval in 2021 drew close scrutiny after it appeared that there had been little evidence that it improved patient outcomes.
The treatment focused on attacking misfolded amyloid proteins, which have been linked to neurodegeneration and implicated in the progression of the disease, although this theory has recently been called into question. Clinical trials showed that cognitive decline was delayed by approximately 20% over a period of 18 months at a high dosage while a second study showed no significant improvements. The controversies revolved around side-effects: Some 40% of high-dose patients experienced some degree of brain swelling and 6% of participants had to leave the study due to severe side effects.
.
The cumulative death toll from climate change since the year 2000 will pass the 4 million mark in the current year, this according to the McMichael standard, a researcher wrote in a commentary in the journal nature medicine.
At the start of the current century, Australian epidemiologist Anthony McMichael developed a method of calculating how many people’s deaths were attributable to climate change by looking at how many people had died from diarrheal disease, malnutrition, malaria, cardiovascular, and flooding, worldwide, in the year 2000. Using computer modeling, they were able to parse out the percentage of deaths that were then attributable to climate change and, for that year, the figure was 166,000.
The four-million person death toll is “more than every other non-COVID public health emergency the World Health Organization has ever declared combined,” said the author of the commentary, Colin Carlson, a global change biologist and assistant professor at Georgetown University.
GLOBAL STATISTICS
Now here are the daily statistics for Thursday, February 1.
As of Thursday morning, the world has recorded 702.61 million Covid-19 cases, an increase of 0.07 million in the last 24 hours, and 6.98 million deaths, according to Worldometer, a service that tracks such information. In addition, 673.55 million people worldwide have recovered from the virus, an increase of 0.07 million.
The reader should note that infrequent reporting from some sources may appear as spikes in new case figures or death tolls as well as the occasional downward or upward adjustment as corrections to case figures warrant.
Worldwide, the number of active coronavirus cases as of Thursday at press time is 22,081,241, an increase of 2,000 in the past 24 hours. Out of that figure, 99.8%, or 22,044,995, are considered mild, and 0.2%, or 36,246, are listed as critical. The percentage of cases considered critical has not changed over the past 16 months.
Since the start of the pandemic, the United States has, as of Thursday, recorded 110.84 million cases, a higher figure than any other country, and a death toll of 1.2 million. India has the world’s second highest number of officially recorded cases, 45.03 million, and a reported death toll of 533,448.
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 38.81 million total cases.
Brazil, which has recorded the third highest number of deaths as a result of the virus, 708,195, has recorded 38.3 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 26.71 million, as number eight, as well as the United Kingdom, with 24.89 million, and Russia, with 23.88 million, as nine and ten respectively.
CURRENT U.S. COVID STATISTICS AT A GLANCE
In the United States, in the week ending January 20, 2022, the test positivity rate was, based on data released on January 26, 2024 from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention was 10.8%, and the trend in test positivity is -1.2% in the most recent week. Meanwhile, the percentage of emergency department visits that were diagnosed as SARS-CoV-2 was 2.1%, and the trend in emergency department visits is -16.3%.
The number of people admitted to hospital in the United States due to SARS-CoV-2 in the same 7-day period was 26,607, a figure that is down 14% over the past 7-day period. Meanwhile, the percentage of deaths due to SARS-CoV-2 was 3.7%, a figure that is up -7.5% for the period.
VACCINATION SPOTLIGHT
Some 70.6% 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, 13.53 billion doses of the vaccine have been administered on a global basis and 21,800 doses are now administered each day.
Meanwhile, only 32.9% 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.
Anna Breuer contributed reporting to this story.
The Coronavirus Daily News Brief is a publication of the Center for Long Covid Research. www.longcov.org
If you have Long Covid and need to talk to someone, call the Long Covid Patient Peer Counseling Phone Line, or HOPELINE. The HOPELINE is our free, confidential support and information service.
☏ 844 LONGCOV (844 566-4268)
(Photo: Accura Media Group)
All Rights Reserved Travel