A group of men in Paris playing pétanque
Good morning. This is Jonathan Spira reporting. Here now the news of the pandemic from across the globe on the 890th day of the pandemic.
We’re not done with new ideas for Covid vaccines quite yet. While recent innovations have included vaccines that are delivered like nose drops or nasal sprays, at least one scientist is taking a totally different approach.
An immunologist at the University of Texas Medical Branch reported that an experimental coronavirus vaccine that primes the immune system to recognize a stabile form of the virus could outsmart future variants.
“We think of it as a one-time solution for all the Covid variants,” the immunologist, Haitao Hu, who is also the senior author of a study describing the vaccine in Wednesday’s edition of the journal Science Translational Medicine, told the Los Angeles Times.
Other scientists who were not part of the study concurred.
“It’s a great idea,” Dr. Paul Offit, a virologist and immunologist at the University of Pennsylvania, told the newspaper. “You could have argued that we should have done this at the beginning.”
In other news we cover today, Covid cases are rising in France and may soon do so in the United States, health experts are predicting a severe flu season, and former First Lady Melania Trump was apparently quite critical of her husband’s handling of the pandemic in its first few months.
Here’s a look at what has taken place over the past 24 hours.
UNITED STATES
Scientists are warning of a likely increase in coronavirus cases come fall based on national wastewater data. After seeing declines in the late part of summer, there has been an increase in the number of U.S. wastewater sites reporting increases in the presence of the coronavirus. Wastewater is considered a very good indication of the direction of the pandemic.
After several exceptionally light flu seasons during the first two years of the pandemic, health experts are warning that this year’s flu season could be quite severe. Fewer people are donning face masks currently and more people are out mingling with social distancing a forgotten thought, which given the lack of built-up immunity from the past few years would place people at a higher risk of contracting influenza.
Then First Lady Melania Trump was apparently not a fan of how her husband, then President Donald Trump, handled the early days of the pandemic. According to a new book, she told the Donald, “You’re blowing this,” according to a new book, The Divider: Trump in the White House, 2017-2021, by reporters Susan Glaser and Peter Baker.
Finally, mass transit systems in the New York metropolitan era, which resembled ghost towns until recently, hit pandemic-era records for passengers on Wednesday, the chairman of the Metropolitan Transit Authority, Janno Lieber, said. The city’s subways and subways as well as the Metro-North Railroad and the Long Island Rail Road commuter rail systems all saw record numbers of passengers.
GLOBAL
In Europe, the Santé publique France, the country’s national health body, warned of a resurgence of coronavirus cases and urged people to continue to get inoculated against the virus.
TODAY’S STATISTICS
Now here are the daily statistics for Friday, September 16.
As of Friday morning, the world has recorded 616.3 million Covid-19 cases, an increase of 0.6 million cases, and over 6.5 million deaths, according to Worldometer, a service that tracks such information. In addition, 595.4 million people worldwide have recovered from the virus, an increase of 0.6 million.
Worldwide, the number of active coronavirus cases as of Friday is 14,276,025, a decrease of 33,000. Out of that figure, 99.7%, or 14,235,317, are considered mild, and 0.3%, or 40,708, are listed as critical. The percentage of cases considered critical has not changed over the past 24 hours.
The United States reported 94,168 new coronavirus infections on Friday for the previous day, compared to 115,402 on Thursday, 61,511 on Wednesday, 87,002 on Tuesday, and 11,464 on Monday, according to data from the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services. The 7-day incidence rate is now 63,946. Figures for the weekend (reported the following day) are typically 30% to 60% of those posted on weekdays due to a lower number of tests being conducted.
The average daily number of new coronavirus cases in the United States over the past 14 days is 64,308, a 28% decrease, based on data from the Department of Health and Human Services, among other sources. The average daily death toll over the same period is 498, a decrease of 4% over the same period, while the average number of hospitalizations for the period was 33,143, an 11% decrease.
In addition, since the start of the pandemic the United States has, as of Friday, recorded 97.4 million cases, a higher figure than any other country, and a death toll of 1.08 million. India has the world’s second highest number of officially recorded cases, 44.5 million, and a reported death toll of 528,273.
The newest data from Russia’s Rosstat state statistics service showed that, at the end of July, 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 reported that 3,284 people died from the coronavirus or related causes in July, 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, over 34.8 million, although Brazil has recorded the third highest number of deaths as a result of the virus, 685,258, and has recorded over 34.6 million cases, placing it in the number four slot.
Germany is in the number five slot with 32.6 million cases.
The other four countries with total case figures over the 20 million mark are South Korea, with 24.3 million cases, the United Kingdom, with 23.58 million cases, placing it in the number seven slot, and Italy, with 22.1 million, as number eight, as well as Japan, with just under 20.5 million, and Russia, with 20.3 million.
VACCINATION SPOTLIGHT
The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention said that, as of the past Friday, over 263.4 million people in the United States – or 79.3% – have received at least one dose of the coronavirus vaccine. Of that population, 67.6%, or 224.6 million people, have received two doses of vaccine, and the total number of doses that have been dispensed in the United States is now just under 613 million. Breaking this down further, 90.3% of the population over the age of 18 – or 233.1 million people – has received at least a first inoculation and 77.4% of the same group – or 199.9 million people – is fully vaccinated. In addition, 51.7% of that population, or 103.4 million people, has already received a third, or booster, dose of vaccine.
Starting on June 13, 2022, the CDC began to update vaccine data on a weekly basis and publish the updated information on Thursdays by 8 p.m. EDT, a statement on the agency’s website said.
Some 67.9% of the world population has received at least one dose of coronavirus vaccine by Friday, according to Our World in Data, an online scientific publication that tracks such information. So far, 12.67 billion doses of the vaccine have been administered on a global basis and 4.28 million doses are now administered each day.
Meanwhile, only 22.5% 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 in the single digits, if not lower.
In addition, North Korea and Eritrea are now the only two countries in the world that have not administered vaccines.
Anna Breuer contributed reporting to this story.
(Photo: Accura Media Group)
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