Coronavirus Daily News Brief – April 21: Cases Surge in Bangkok, ‘The Invisible Enemy,’ Pupils Lost the ‘School’ Habit During Lockdowns

Tourists in Rome, Italy
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 1,502nd day.
In news we cover today, new SARS-CoV-2 cases are surging in Bangkok, Trump suspended legal immigration four years ago to fight an “invisible enemy,” and some pupils have apparently lost the habit of going to school thanks to lengthy school closures.
Where Has All the Data Gone?
We regret to inform that, as of April 15, 2024, the Global Daily Statistics data in the Coronavirus Daily News Brief are no longer being updated. Over the past 15 months, as more and more politicians and governments sought to place SARS-CoV-2 in the rear-view mirror, pandemic data reporting sputtered out and we are now at the point where it is simply not feasible to provide statistically valid case data on a global scale.
We are developing potential new and authoritative sources that we will present once they have been properly vetted, so stay tuned to this space. In the meantime, our Long Covid and pandemic coverage will remain much the same.
TODAY IN COVID HISTORY
On April 21, 2020, then President Trump announced he would suspend legal immigration for an unspecified period of time, saying he was taking the drastic move “in light of the Invisible Enemy.
The day before, U.S crude futures for May 2020 plummeted to -$37, the lowest price in history.  The almost 300% decline came as plunging demand pushed storage facilities to their limits. The downturn then spread to other oil markets the following day.
In Europe, countries including Austria, Denmark, and Germany began to cautiously relax some restrictions, including the reopening of smaller shops with the proviso that social-distancing be observed, not knowing that the worst was yet to come. In Italy, however, Italy, then Prime Minister Conte refused to bow to business pressure and extended the restrictions there until at least May 3, as the country struggled to fully contain the spread of the virus.
Finally, as of this date, the number of coronavirus cases across the globe stood at 2.5 million, of which 659,595 had recovered, based on data compiled by the Coronavirus Morning News Brief. The death toll stood at 171,812.
GLOBAL NEWS
In the United Kingdom, far too many pupils who lost the habit of regularly attending school during pandemic closures are now taking it out on their teachers after being forced to return to classrooms. The number of suspensions there reached a record high with 263,904 suspensions in the spring term during the 2022/23 versus 201,090 during the same period in the period school year, the country’s Department for Education said.
There were also 3,039 permanent exclusions, a year-over-year increase from 2,179.
New SARS-CoV-2 cases in Bangkok surged this week after Songkran, the country’s Department of Disease Control reported on Sunday.
The number of new inpatient cases was 1,004, a daily average of 143 new cases. There were also three deaths from Covid.
Health authorities said that virtually all cases were from the JN.1 sublineage of omicron. JN.1 is currently the dominant sublineage in the United States. The symptoms associated with the JN.1 strain are quite flu-like, which may have stopped people from getting tested for SARS-CoV-2 and isolating themselves.
Drugmaker Moderna said Moderna it would not proceed with plans to build a vaccine manufacturing site in Kenya following a steep drop in demand for its coronavirus vaccines.
The biotech company said it has not received any vaccine orders destined for Africa since 2022 and noted that it had taken over $1 billion in losses and write-downs related to the cancellation of previous orders from the continent.
A Dutch man who had SARS-CoV-2 for at least 613 days died at the age of 72.
Researchers at the Centre for Experimental and Molecular Medicine at the Amsterdam University Medical Center in the Netherlands said in a report released on April 18, 2024 the man had “the longest SARS-CoV-2 infection duration to date, although several cases of hundreds of days have been previously recorded.”
OTHER HEALTHCARE NEWS
TRULY FRIGHTENING PUBLIC-HEALTH SCENARIOS
Rat urine is not exactly a discussion topic for the dinner table, but leptospirosis, a life-threatening bacterial infection typically spread through rat urine, sickened a record number of people in New York City last year, according to a report issued by the New York City Department of Health and Mental Hygiene. Based on current figures, it appears that the number of patients diagnosed with leptospirosis will reach another all-time high in 2024.
Starting with the year 2001 and ending with the year 2020, there was an average of three cases per year. In 2023, there were 24 such  cases.
People infected with leptospirosis may experience a wide range of symptoms, including fever, headache, chills, muscle aches, vomiting, diarrhea, and cough. However, if the condition is left untreated, it can cause kidney failure, liver damage, jaundice, hemorrhage, conjunctival suffusion, respiratory distress, and death.
Transmissible spongiform encephalopathies,  also known as prion diseases , are a group of progressive, incurable, and fatal conditions that are associated with prions.  The conditions can affect the brain and central nervous system of many animals including humans, cattle, and sheep.
Now it appears that the condition can be zoonotically transmitted to humans from deer.
A new study reports on two cases of prion disease in deer hunters that could have been caused after the victims ate the meat of their kills.
The study, entitled “Two Hunters from the Same Lodge Afflicted with Sporadic CJD: Is Chronic Wasting Disease to Blame?” and published in the journal Neurology, examines the case of a 72-year-old man who consulted with various physicians after he began to rapidly experience confusion and aggression sometime in 2022. Although he received treatment for his symptoms, which included seizures, his condition deteriorated quickly and he died one month later. An autopsy later determined that he had developed a sporadic form of Creutzfeldt-Jakob disease, the most common prion disease in humans.
This case is made far more remarkable after researchers learnt that a friend of the man who was a member of the same hunting lodge and recently died of CJD and had also eaten venison from the same deer population.
EARTH SCIENCE
A new study reports that nearly half of China’s major cities are sinking.
The study, published in the journal Science, found 45% of China’s urban areas are sinking over 3 millimeters per year, while 16% are sinking over 10 millimeters per year. The researchers used satellite data from 2015 to 2022 and said the cause of the sinking was partly due to the weight of buildings and groundwater extraction.
The Middle Kingdom has a long history of having to deal with subsiding land: Both Shanghai and Tianjin showed evidence of sinking back in the 1920s. Shanghai has sunk more than 10’ (3 m) over the past century.
The cities facing the most subsidence are Beijing, Changchun, Fuzhou, Harbin, and Tianjin, among others.
PANDEMIC STATISTICS
CURRENT U.S. COVID STATISTICS AT A GLANCE
In the United States, in the week ending April 13, 2024, the test positivity rate was, based on data released on April 19 from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention was 3.4%, and the trend in test positivity is -0.1% in the most recent week. Meanwhile, the percentage of emergency department visits that were diagnosed as SARS-CoV-2 was 0.4%, and the trend in emergency department visits is -19.9%.
The number of people admitted to hospital in the United States due to SARS-CoV-2 in the same 7-day period was 6,604, a figure that is down 13.8 % over the past 7-day period. Meanwhile, the percentage of deaths due to SARS-CoV-2 was 1.0%, a figure that is down 9.1% 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 2,238 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 April 14, 2024, only Turkmenistan in Central Asia is only state that has not reported any cases of SARS-CoV-2 infections whatsoever, although it is strongly suspected that the virus is present there. Meanwhile, the last territory in the world to have its first ever SARS-CoV-2 infection was Tokelau, a dependency of New Zealand that reported its first five cases on December 21, 2022.
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Paul Riegler contributed reporting to this issue.
The Coronavirus Daily News Brief is a publication of the Center for Long Covid Research. www.longcov.org
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