The Moskovsky Bar at the Four Seasons Hotel Moscow. “Something to drink? “No thank you, I have Long Covid.”
Good afternoon. 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 its 1,456th day.
In news we cover today, precautions taken to avoid contracting SARS-CoV-2 quickly killed off on strain of the flu so new flu vaccines will be changing, former Governor Andrew Cuomo of New York was subpoenaed to testify at a congressional hearing about the early months of the pandemic, and Long Covid may cause hangover-like symptoms after drinking alcohol.
LONG COVID
A peer-reviewed study from researchers at Stanford University suggests that Long Covid could cause increased sensitivity to alcohol.
Scientists at Stanford’s Post-Acute Covid-19 Syndrome Clinic looked at a group of four Long Covid patients with varying demographics and documented their medical histories and alcohol consumption habits before and after contracting SARS-CoV-2.
The study suggests that the patients, despite their varying health backgrounds, share a new-onset sensitivity to the consumption of alcohol subsequent to infection, which triggers “unprecedented symptoms and similar or lower alcohol consumption levels,” the researchers said.
The three women in the study reported “overwhelming” fatigue after drinking alcohol in the same quantities as prior to contracting SARS-CoV-2. A 60-year-old man complained of headaches after drinking a quantity of alcohol similar to what he would drink before becoming infected. This patient reported “chronic, daily headaches characterized by a squeezing sensation at the top and back of the head, typically worst at night,” the study’s authors wrote.
A new study suggests that low blood iron levels may be a trigger for Long Covid. The study, published this week in the journal Nature Immunology, was based on blood samples from 214 patients collected via the Cambridge Institute of Therapeutic Immunology and Infectious Disease.
The study, entitled Iron Dysregulation and Inflammatory Stress Erythropoiesis Associates with Long-Term Outcome of Covid-19 and led by researchers at the Cambridge Institute of Therapeutic Immunology and Infectious Disease, suggests that Long Covid was associated with how quickly inflammation and low iron levels regulated after acute infection.
The researchers found that patients who took a longer time to demonstrate regulation, and had more severe initial infections, were at an increased risk of Long Covid.
UNITED STATES
Former New York Governor Andrew Cuomo will be subpoenaed to testify before the House Oversight Committee, a Congressional committee investigating his handling of nursing homes during the first years of the pandemic.
A Cuomo spokesman said that the subpoena wasn’t necessary before the governor had already offered to testify and had also offered to provide written responses to questions prior to doing so.
“Do your job,” the spokesman, Rick Azzopardi said to reporters. “Ukrainian soldiers are throwing stones at Russian tanks because we haven’t sent ammunition and we still don’t have a budget. Instead, they continue to play politics with Covid and weaponize people’s pain and loss of loved ones. Congress is officially a circus and they are nothing but clowns.”
The federal government’s offer for free at-home Covid test kits will soon be discontinued. The on-again/off-again offer was most recently made available in mid-November of last year, just in time for the holiday travel season.
The free test kits will continue to be available at www.covidtests.gov through March 8, 2024.
“Orders for free at-home Covid-19 tests will be suspended on Friday, March 8, 2024,” a message that first appeared on Monday of this week said on the website.
GLOBAL NEWS
All of the masking, staying at home, and improved ventilation that helped people avoid contracting SARS-CoV-2 appear to have killed off one known circulating lineage of Influenza B virus, known as the Yamagata virus.
On Tuesday, the U.S. Food and Drug Administration’s Vaccines and Related Biological Products Committee voted unanimously to remove the strain from the next round of seasonal flu vaccines, a move that will result in a trivalent vaccine instead of the previous quadrivalent vaccine.
On Tuesday, a panel of experts who advise the US Food and Drug Administration on vaccines voted unanimously to recommend three-strain flu vaccines that will exclude any viruses from B strains that are part of branch of the flu’s family tree called Yamagata.
Yamagata viruses were already decline before the start of the pandemic but the precautions that were taken appear to have finished them off. They haven’t been detected since March 2020.
Already in October 2023, the World Health Organization concluded that protection against the lineage was no longer necessary in future seasonal flu vaccines and recommended that the number of lineages targeted by the vaccine be reduced from four to three.
In what appears to be a get into the Guinness Book of World Records, a 62-year-old man with the initials HIM from Magdeburg, the capital of Sachsen-Anhalt in Germany, deliberately received 217 vaccinations against SARS-CoV-2 within a 29-month period. In contrast, the average German citizen has received between three and four Covid vaccine shots.
HIM was not part of a clinical study nor was the sum total number of vaccinations contemplated under guidelines from the Robert Koch Institut, Germany’s public-health institute, or the Bundesministerium für Gesundheit, the Federal Ministry of Health.
The number of inoculations was so high that the Staatsanwaltschaft Magdeburg, the public prosecutor’s office, opened an investigation, which was later dropped.
The researchers, in what can only be described as a “don’t try this at home” statement, concluded the report in the Lancet saying that “we do not endorse hypervaccination as a strategy to enhance adaptive immunity.”
GLOBAL STATISTICS
Now here are the daily statistics for Wednesday, March 6.
As of Wednesday, at press time, the world has recorded 703.96 million Covid-19 cases, an increase of 0.04 million in the last 48 hours, and 7 million deaths, according to Worldometer, a service that tracks such information. In addition, 674.9 million people worldwide have recovered from the virus, an increase of 0.04 million in the past 24 hours.
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 Wednesday at press time is 22,052,181, a decrease of 3,000 in the past 24 hours. Out of that figure, 99.8%, or 22,016,768, are considered mild, and 0.2%, or 35,413, are listed as critical. The percentage of cases considered critical has not changed over the past 19 months.
Since the start of the pandemic, the United States has, as of Wednesday, recorded 111.6 million cases, a higher figure than any other country, and a death toll of 1.22 million. India has the world’s second highest number of officially recorded cases, 45.03 million, and a reported death toll of 533,499.
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 38.82 million total cases.
Brazil, which has recorded the third highest number of deaths as a result of the virus, 709,963, has recorded 38.45 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 26.72 million, as number eight, as well as the United Kingdom, with 24.9 million, and Russia, with 24.01 million, as nine and ten respectively.
CURRENT U.S. COVID STATISTICS AT A GLANCE
In the United States, in the week ending February 24, 2024, the test positivity rate was, based on data released on February 29, 2024 from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention was 7.4%, and the trend in test positivity is -0.9% in the most recent week. Meanwhile, the percentage of emergency department visits that were diagnosed as SARS-CoV-2 was 1.5%, and the trend in emergency department visits is -14.6%.
The number of people admitted to hospital in the United States due to SARS-CoV-2 in the same 7-day period was 17,310, a figure that is down 8.7% over the past 7-day period. Meanwhile, the percentage of deaths due to SARS-CoV-2 was 2.1%, a figure that is down 10.7% in the same period.
VACCINATION SPOTLIGHT
Some 70.6% of the world population has received at least one dose of coronavirus vaccine by Wednesday, according to Our World in Data, an online scientific publication that tracks such information. So far, 13.57 billion doses of the vaccine have been administered on a global basis and 3,795 doses are now administered each day.
Meanwhile, only 32.7% 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, 2023, 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.
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