Are Americans YOLOing? Pouring the Dom Perignon Brut Champagne in international first class
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 1,481st day and the final day of the month of March.
In news we cover today, researchers want to use precise nutritional targeting to treat Long Covid, the pandemic has dramatically changed many people’s spending habits, and four years ago today, then President Trump was touting hydroxychloroquine as a cure for SARS-CoV-2.
TODAY IN COVID HISTORY
On March 31, 2020, more than 80% of the U.S. population – some 262 million Americans – were under a stay-at-home order as of this date, according to a tally by the Coronavirus Morning News Brief.
There were at least 811 new deaths attributable to SARS-CoV-2 that day.
Nurses at two major U.S. hospitals – St. Joseph’s Hospital in Denver and Johns Hopkins in Baltimore – told reporters that they are running out of sedation drugs because they’ve had to intubate so many people since the start of the pandemic.
Then President Trump once again touted his favorite anti-malarial drugs as a treatment for the coronavirus, despite a lack of evidence that they were effective in such treatment.
“It’s been out there for a long time,” Trump said at of the drug chloroquine and a related drug, hydroxychloroquine, speaking at a press briefing. “Very powerful drug. But it’s been out there, so it’s tested in the sense that you know it doesn’t kill you.”
Finally, as of that date, the pandemic death toll in New York City crossed the 1,000 mark.
LONG COVID
A new study describes several bioactive nutritional interventions that could reset virus-induced human metabolic reprogramming and dysregulation in Long Covid patients.
The study, which was published on Saturday in the journal npj Science of Food and led by A Satyanarayan Naidu , the Director of N-terminus Research Laboratory in California, suggests multiple nutritional strategies such as nutritional targeting of mitochondrial metabolism that could serve as an effective treatment regimen in Long Covid patients.
“We have described a few evidence-based, human RCT tested, bioactive nutritional interventions for resetting of virus-induced HMRD in PASC through precision nutrition,” the study’s authors wrote.
UNITED STATES
Data from the Bureau of Economic Analysis released on Sunday shows that consumer spending continues to increase while the personal savings rate fell to levels last seen during the Great Depression. Be it doom spending, YOLOing, or carpe diem syndrome, there has been a dramatic change in what people splurge on and how much they spend.
Consumers spent $145.5 billion more in February than they had in the first month of the year, the biggest increase in more than a year.
The amount spent on international travel and live entertainment rose by 30% last year, five times the overall rate of increase on spending.
OTHER HEALTHCARE NEWS
The U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention issued a health advisory on Thursday concerning a rise in rare but severe forms of meningococcal infections, or meningitis. These bacterial infections can cause potentially life-threatening inflammation of the membranes surrounding the brain and spinal cord.
The U.S. Food and Drug Administration issued ist highest-level alert earlier this month about a heart pump associated with reports of 49 deaths and dozens of serious injuries. The agency shared updated information and instructions from the device’s manufacturer to doctors on how they should use the device.
“The FDA has identified this as a Class I recall, the most serious type of recall,” the agency said in a statement. “Use of these devices may cause serious injuries or death.”
The Impella pumps are tiny devices used temporarily to help support a patient’s heart, such as during high-risk procedures or after a severe heart attack. If the pump is used incorrectly, it could cut the wall of the heart’s left ventricle, a key cardiac chamber that helps pump blood full of oxygen to the body, the FDA said.
NorthShore University HealthSystem and Swedish Covenant Hospital allowed an obstetrician-gynecologist to continue practicing medicine unsupervised for more than a year while police investigated reports that he had sexually assaulted two patients, according to a new lawsuit. In addition, during that period of time, the now former physician, Fabio Ortega, reportedly abused at least six additional patients.
GLOBAL STATISTICS
Now here are the daily statistics for Sunday, March 31.
As of Sunday, at press time, the world has recorded 704.54 million Covid-19 cases, a figure that is virtually unchanged in the last 48 hours, and 7.01 million deaths, according to Worldometer, a service that tracks such information. In addition, 675.4 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 Sunday at press time is 22,133,757, a decrease of 1,000 in the past 48 hours. Out of that figure, 99.8%, or 22,098,789, are considered mild, and 0.2%, or 34,968, 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 Sunday, recorded 111.77 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, 533,543.
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 24.91 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 4.0%, and the trend in test positivity is -0.6% in the most recent week. Meanwhile, the percentage of emergency department visits that were diagnosed as SARS-CoV-2 was 0.6%, and the trend in emergency department visits is -21.1%.
The number of people admitted to hospital in the United States due to SARS-CoV-2 in the same 7-day period was 9,345, a figure that is down 13.9% over the past 7-day period. Meanwhile, the percentage of deaths due to SARS-CoV-2 was 1.5%, a figure that is down 16.7% in the same period.
VACCINATION SPOTLIGHT
Some 70.6% of the world population has received at least one dose of coronavirus vaccine by Sunday, 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 11,909 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
Paul Riegler 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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