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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 1,464th day and Pi Day.
THE LEDE
Happy Pi Day. Here’s a Look at How This Tasty Holiday Came About.
Today, March 14, is Pi Day, the annual celebration of the mathematical constant denoted by the Greek letter π, facilitated by the all-numeric date format observed in the United States and precious few other places, namely month-day-year or MDY.
The MDY format makes today 3/14 or 3.14, the latter being the first digits of the numerical approximation of π, or 3.14159.
For those readers who missed that year in school , Π is a mathematical constant equal to a circle’s circumference divided by its diameter. It is generally approximated as 3.14159 because its decimal representation never ends.
The idea of Pi Day was conceived of at the San Francisco Exploratorium, a museum that covers science, technology, and the arts founded by physicist and educator Frank Oppenheimer, the brother of theoretical physicist J. Robert Oppenheimer, in 1988 by physicist and curator Larry Shaw. To Shaw, pi seemed like the perfect subject of scientific veneration and celebration and it conveniently had a fortunate homophone in the word “pie,” which of course are shaped like a circle and have a diameter and a circumference. The tasty dessert seemed like it would be an excellent tool to teach people about, ahem, the two-letter pi.
Since 1988, the idea has gone far beyond the pie shops of the Bay Area (it’s rumored even Mrs. Lovett makes delicious pies on Pi Day), and in 2019, the United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization designated March 14 as the International Day of Mathematics.
In news we cover today, the second death attributed to Covid in New York State took place four years ago today, the fear of Covid is greatly diminished despite a significant risk, and a Las Vegas man is off to prison for pandemic relief fraud.
THIS DAY IN COVID HISTORY
On March 14, 2020, 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 Andrew Cuomo announced at the time. Hers was the second pandemic-related death in New York State.
CORRECTION – March 14 , 2023 3:35 p.m. EDT
In the Global Statistics section, Tuesday’s edition of the Brief incorrectly stated that there had been a decrease of 120,000 Covid cases in the past 24 hours. There actually had been an increase of 120,000 cases. The error has since been corrected. The Coronavirus Daily News Brief regrets the error.
LONG COVID
An Australian researcher says that it is time to stop using terms such as “Long Covid” for symptoms that are similar to other post-viral syndromes such as those experienced after influenza.
Dr. John Gerrard, the chief health officer of the state of Queensland, Australia, and the lead author of the study, said that it was “time to stop using terms like ‘long Covid’” because such use implies that there is something unique about these longer-term symptoms. Gerrard will present his findings next month at the European Congress of Clinical Microbiology and Infectious Diseases in Barcelona.
The World Health Organization defines “Long Covid” as a condition occurring in people who are still experiencing symptoms three months after their initial SARS-CoV-2 infection, when those symptoms can’t be explained by an alternative diagnosis.
A new survey indicates that fear of SARS-CoV-2 is continuing to fade. A Pew Research Center report published late last week found that only 20% of respondents now consider the virus a significant threat to the health of the U.S. population, a substantial decline from significantly higher figures just four years ago. Moreover, just 10% expressed deep concern over the prospect of contracting the virus and then being hospitalized.
In addition, 21% of those responding to the survey said they believe that it’s somewhat important for the medical field to address Long Covid, while 6% said it was not important or not very important. A rather surprising 22% indicated they had never heard of Long Covid.
UNITED STATES
A Las Vegas man who stole over $40,000 from the Paycheck Protection Program that was part of the nation’s pandemic relief efforts will spend two years in federal prison, the office of the U.S. attorney of Nevada announced Thursday.
Arian Anthony Bailey defrauded the program by obtaining $40,000 under false pretenses, according to a copy of his plea agreement. The 34-year-old fraudster pleaded guilty to one count of wire fraud and was sentenced this month to 30 months in prison followed by three years of probation, according to the agreement. He must also pay back $46,731.39, which includes $5,000 the government spent processing the applications.
Bailey had tried to obtain over $500,000 in relief funds but his applications, which were all made while on supervised release for felony drug and gun convictions, were turned down.
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.
GLOBAL STATISTICS
Now here are the daily statistics for Thursday, March 14.
As of Thursday, at press time, the world has recorded 704.23 million Covid-19 cases, a figure that has increased by 0.04 million in the last 24 hours, and 7.01 million deaths, according to Worldometer, a service that tracks such information. In addition, 675.07 million people worldwide have recovered from the virus, an increase of 0.03 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 Thursday at press time is 22,141,887, an increase of 6,000 in the past 24 hours. Out of that figure, 99.8%, or 22,106,556, are considered mild, and 0.2%, or 35,331, 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 Thursday, recorded 111.66 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, 533,512.
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, 710,427, has recorded 38.59 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 24.03 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 Thursday, 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.
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