The New York City Pavilion in Flushing Meadows Park, the site of the 1939 and 1964 World’s Fairs. The U.N. General Assembly used the building from 1946 to 1950.
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 1,479th day.
In news we cover today, the head of the United Nations relief organization is retiring after announcing he has Long Covid, Pfizer partner BioNTech is in default of its royalty agreement with the NIH, and the U.S. Food and Drug Administration issued an emergency use authorization for a new antiviral to protect against Covid.
TODAY IN COVID HISTORY
On March 25, 2020, Dr. Anthony Fauci said that the coronavirus pandemic was “accelerating” in the United States. Fauci, who was the director of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases before retiring in 2023, said that some “60% of the infections” were in the New York metropolitan area as were 56% of new infections.
Alaska Airlines announced it was cutting its flight schedule by 70% with immediate effect, and the U.S. Army called on retired medical personnel to volunteer to support the pandemic response.
As of this date, there were at least 65,201 Covid cases in the country and the death toll continued to rise, more than doubling in several days from 400 to 928, based on the Coronavirus Daily News Brief’s figures published at the time.
LONG COVID
The head of the United Nations relief operations announced on Monday that he has Long Covid and would step down from his position by the end of June. Martin Griffiths, a British career diplomat who currently serves as Under-Secretary-General for Humanitarian Affairs and Emergency Relief Coordinator, was appointed to his current position in 2021. Prior to that he was a conflict mediator at the UK’s Foreign and Commonwealth Office and was the first executive director for the European Institute of Peace.
Griffiths, who is 72, said he tested positive for SARS-CoV-2 in April 2022 as he was visiting the U.N. headquarters in New York after returning from a trip to Afghanistan, Russia, and Ukraine.
“I am following health guidance, cancelled travel, and isolating at home,” Griffiths said in a social media post at the time. “I’m grateful to have had my vaccines already, an opportunity too many around the world have not had.”
In a statement announcing his resignation, he did not describe the severity of his Long Covid symptoms.
UNITED STATES
Pfizer vaccine partner BioNTech said on Monday it has received a “notice of default” on the payment of royalties and other amounts relating to its coronavirus vaccine from the National Institutes of Health.
BioNTech licensed certain patents from the NIH, among other entities, which is why the U.S. government is owed certain royalty payments, according to the German company’s annual report.
The U.S. Food and Drug Administration last week issued an emergency use authorization for an antibody to protect immunocompromised individuals against SARS-CoV-2.
The new monoclonal, pemivibart, which will be marketed as Pemgarda by biotech firm Invivyd, is the first such antibody to become available since the FDA pulled AstraZeneca’s Evusheld off the market in January 2023 after the omicron variant had effectively rendered Evusheld ineffective.
Pemgarda is a re-engineered version of Adintrevimab, albeit one that is designed to protect against omicron variants. Using Adintrevimab, which was launched in 2021 to fight Covid-19 before the omicron wave, as the basis for the new antiviral gave Invivyd a leg up in getting the drug to market while its competitors had to basically start from scratch.
GLOBAL NEWS
Coronavirus vaccines were found to cut the risk of heart failure and blood clots following a SARS-CoV-2 infection, a new study suggests. Specifically, the study, published earlier in the British Medical Journey, found that an inoculation cut the risk of heart failure by up to 55% and blood clots by up to 78% following a Covid infection.
A team of researchers led by Núria Mercadé-Besora, a data scientist at the University of Oxford who has a Ph.D. in in Computational and Applied Physics looked at the health records of over 20 million people in Europe. Half of them were vaccinated against Covid, and half were not. Vaccines included in the research were those manufactured by Moderna, Pfizer, AstraZeneca and Johnson & Johnson.
GLOBAL STATISTICS
Now here are the daily statistics for Monday, March 25.
As of Monday, at press time, the world has recorded 704.45 million Covid-19 cases, an increase of 0.02 million in the last 24 hours, and 7.01 million deaths, according to Worldometer, a service that tracks such information. In addition, 675.29 million people worldwide have recovered from the virus, an increase of 0.01 million in the same period.
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 Monday at press time is 22,145,241, an increase of 3,000 in the past 24 hours. Out of that figure, 99.8%, or 22,110,170, are considered mild, and 0.2%, or 35,071, 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 Monday, recorded 111.73 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, 533,539.
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 38.83 million total cases.
Brazil, which has recorded the third highest number of deaths as a result of the virus, 710,966, has recorded 38.69 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 24.91 million, and Russia, with 24.06 million, as nine and ten respectively.
CURRENT U.S. COVID STATISTICS AT A GLANCE
In the United States, in the week ending March 16, 2024, the test positivity rate was, based on data released on March 22 from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention was 4.6%, and the trend in test positivity is -0.8% in the most recent week. Meanwhile, the percentage of emergency department visits that were diagnosed as SARS-CoV-2 was 0.7%, and the trend in emergency department visits is -25.6%.
The number of people admitted to hospital in the United States due to SARS-CoV-2 in the same 7-day period was 10,719, a figure that is down 20.9% over the past 7-day period. Meanwhile, the percentage of deaths due to SARS-CoV-2 was 1.8%, a figure that is essentially unchanged over the period.
VACCINATION SPOTLIGHT
Some 70.6% of the world population has received at least one dose of coronavirus vaccine by Monday, 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 5,898 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.
Finally, as of March 15, 2024 , only the following countries and territories have not reported any cases of SARS-CoV-2 infections whatsoever:
Antarctica
British Antarctic Territory
Peter Island
Overseas
Bouvet Island
Heard Island and McDonald Islands
Prince Edward Islands
South Georgia and the South Sandwich Islands
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)
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