In front of a shuttered McDonald’s restaurant on 42nd Street in Manhattan, a man demonstrates the proper way to wear a face mask in a photograph taken in the fourth week of the pandemic.
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 1,462nd day.
In news we cover today, pandemic-induced shutdowns began in earnest in New York City four years ago today, the first two years of the pandemic saw life-expectancy reduced by 1.6 years, and vaccines cut the rusk of cardiologic complications from SARS-CoV-2, among other Covid and Long Covid-related news.
THE LEDE
Four Years Ago Today Was the Beginning of the End: The Pandemic Shuttered Broadway. The Rest of the World Followed
The events of four years ago today are indelibly engraved in my memory like almost no other, except perhaps where I was when the space shuttle exploded, where I was on the Brooklyn-Queens Expressway en route to Brooklyn or when I woke up in a hotel room in San Francisco on September 11, 2001, and the aftermath of the terror attacks of that day were being recapped on television.
And then there was March 12, 2020.
I had arrived back in the States from London a few days earlier and my closest friend, John, was flying back to New York City that day. We had both attended shows at theaters in the West End. While John was in the air, Governor Andrew Cuomo announced that events with more than 500 people must be cancelled or postponed, an executive order specifically designed to close Broadway theaters, which all have a minimum of 500 seats.
John arrived and called me once his flight had landed and it fell to me to tell him the news: ”They shut Broadway down.”
This, of course, was merely the tip of the iceberg. I had been writing about Covid since late December and on a daily basis since mid-January, becoming an armchair epidemiologist in the process.
The rest of the month was no better. The day before, the World Health Organization declared the novel coronavirus outbreak to be a global pandemic. Then, on March 13, then President Trump declared a national emergency and, the following day, the first two deaths from SARS-CoV-2 in New York State occurred. A 65-year-old man from Suffern, in Rockland County northwest of New York City, died on the 13th, county officials said and the following day, an 82-year-old woman who had been one of the first to test positive in New York City for the virus died on the 14th in Brooklyn, Governor Cuomo announced at the time.
The U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention recommended on March 15 that any gatherings of people in the country be limited to no more than 50 people and New York City’s Board of Education announced that the Big Apple’s schools would close the following day.
That news was followed in lockstep on March 17, when all restaurants and bars were told to close, except for delivery service, and on March 20, Governor Cuomo signed the New York State on Pause executive order, a 10-point policy to assure uniform safety for everyone in the state.
At that point, there had been 7,102 confirmed cases in the state.
The United States became the country with the most reported deaths from the virus, a position that four years later remains. There had been 1,300 deaths in the country and the most affected state had been New York, with 38,987 cases and 432 deaths, according to the data the Coronavirus Morning News Brief (now Coronavirus Daily News Brief) maintained from official government sources.
Workers in hazmat suits at Grand Central Terminal in the first week of the pandemic
UNITED STATES
In New Jersey, a new report reveals that the Garden State was not prepared for the pandemic, along with the rest of the world. Notably, the $9 million publicly funded report, prepared by the law firm of Montgomery McCracken Walker & Rhoads in partnership with Boston Consulting Group, concluded that the state is not ready for the next public-health emergency.
The report framed the future in blunt language.
“We collectively failed as a nation and as a state to be adequately prepared” Paul Zoubek, a former New Jersey assistant attorney general who worked on the study, wrote in the report. “At the state level, heroic actions were taken to respond in good faith to the crisis. Despite the lessons of the last four years, New Jersey remains underprepared for the next emergency.”
GLOBAL
Global life-expectancy, which had been on the rise until the novel coronavirus came onto the scene, fell by 1.6 years at the peak of the pandemic, a new study published on Monday in the journal The Lancet, found.
Global life expectancy is the average number of years a person can expect to live from their time of birth. It had risen from 49 years in 1950 to more than 73 years in 2019. But in the period 2019 through 2021, the trend was reversed and fell by 1.6 years.
“For adults worldwide, the COVID-19 pandemic has had a more profound impact than any event seen in half a century, including conflicts and natural disasters,” the study’s lead author, Austin Schumacher, an acting assistant professor of health metric sciences at the University of Washington in Seattle, said in a statement provided to the Daily News Brief.
A new study found that coronavirus vaccines substantially reduce the risk of heart failure and potentially dangerous blood clots linked to SARS-CoV-2 for up to one year.
Researchers examined health records for more than 20 million people in the United Kingdom, Spain, and Estonia and found consistent and compelling evidence that the jabs protect against serious cardiovascular complications of the disease.
Vaccines from Pfizer, Moderna, and Oxford-AstraZeneca were among those found to be highly effective in preventing the rare heart and clotting conditions.
ENTERTAINMENT WORLD
Jazz musician John Stockton is suing the Washington attorney general and the executive director of the Washington Medical Commission, arguing that the state’s policy of disciplining doctors who spread COVID misinformation is unconstitutional under the First Amendment. The former basketball player is teaming up with the Children’s Health Defense, a nonprofit affiliated with presidential candidate Robert F. Kennedy Jr., in the lawsuit.
The suit contends that two doctors who are also part of the suit were harmed by the decision of the commission to charge them with professional misconduct, in that they were no longer able to post opinion columns spreading misinformation.
The Washington Medical Commission, as of 2021, has maintained a policy that prohibits the dissemination of public misinformation.
GLOBAL STATISTICS
Now here are the daily statistics for Tuesday, March 12.
As of Tuesday, at press time, the world has recorded 704.03 million Covid-19 cases, a figure that has increased by 0.3 million in the last 24 hours, and 7 million deaths, according to Worldometer, a service that tracks such information. In addition, 675.01 million people worldwide have recovered from the virus, an increase of 0.04 million in the last 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 Tuesday at press time is 22,016,335, a decrease of 8,000 in the past 24 hours. Out of that figure, 99.8%, or 21,981,007, are considered mild, and 0.2%, or 35,328, 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 Tuesday, recorded 111.64 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 the world’s fourth highest death toll, 533,510.
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 March 2, 2024, the test positivity rate was, based on data released on March 8 from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention was 6.5%, and the trend in test positivity is -1% 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 -21.2%.
The number of people admitted to hospital in the United States due to SARS-CoV-2 in the same 7-day period was 15,141, a figure that is down 13.6% over the past 7-day period. Meanwhile, the percentage of deaths due to SARS-CoV-2 was 2.2%, a figure that is up 0.1% in the same period.
VACCINATION SPOTLIGHT
Some 70.6% of the world population has received at least one dose of coronavirus vaccine by Tuesday, 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 2,322 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.
☏ 844 LONGCOV (844 566-4268)
(Photo: Accura Media Group)
All Rights Reserved Travel