Coronavirus Daily News Brief – April 22: Children’s Young Nose Cells May Fight Off Covid, Pandemic Didn’t Significantly Delay Child Development

Kiosk no. 2 British red telephone boxes or booths in Covent Garden, desgined by Sir Giles Gilbert Scott in 1926
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 1,504th day as well as Earth Day and the first night of Passover
Earth Day is an annual event on April 22 to demonstrate support for environmental protection that was first held in 1970. The official theme for Earth Day this year is “Planet vs. Plastics,” its organizers said.
Meanwhile,  Passover is a joyous celebration of the Exodus, the story of how the Israelites were delivered from slavery in Egypt and left for the promised land, “a land flowing with milk and honey.”
In news we cover today, a U.K. study shows that increased drinking in the early years of the pandemic resulted in 2,500 additional deaths, the pandemic may not have delayed young children’s development, and the nose cells in children appear to be better suited than those in adults in warding off Covid.
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regret to inform that, as of April 15, 2024, the Global Daily Statistics data in the Coronavirus Daily News Brief are no longer being updated.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 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 22, 2020, researchers said they found that nine people who were sitting near one another at a restaurant in China were infected by the novel coronavirus and that it likely spread with the help of the restaurant’s air-conditioning system. The findings were published in the journal Emerging Infectious Diseases earlier this month and they have severe implications for the restaurant and hotel industries.
The first known death from the novel coronavirus was in early February, shifting the timeline in the United States. Officials in Santa Clara County, California, announced that two residents there died of the virus in early and mid-February.
As the death toll there passed the 15,000 mark, officials in New York City introduced measures to protect tenants, small businesses, essential workers and the homeless.  Meanwhile the mayor’s announcement that, despite the outbreak, the Macy’s Fourth of July fireworks celebration would take place, was greeted with fireworks.
A steep drop in oil prices amidst the pandemic along with a worldwide oil glut is poised to create economic and political instability.
Meanwhile, mayors of large cities are opposing plans by the governors of their states to reopen businesses.  In Georgia, Savanna Mayor Van Johnson called the plan “reckless, premature, and dangerous.”
In addition, officials in Germany announced the start of the country’s first clinical vaccine trials for the novel coronavirus.
Finally, the number of coronavirus cases across the globe as of that date stood at 2.6 million, of which 713,802 had recovered, based on data compiled by the Coronavirus Morning News Brief. The death toll stood at 182,113.
UNITED STATES
A new study from Johns Hopkins University that the coronavirus pandemic did not delay child development nearly as much as had been believed in children aged 5 and under.
The study, which analyzed data from 50,000 children using the Ages and Stages Questionaire-3, found only slight declines in communication, problem-solving, and personal-social skills, with no significant change in motor skills.
GLOBAL NEWS
A new study found that children are less likely than adults to develop severe cases of Covid. This is because the cells in their noses are better at fighting off the virus, the study, entitled “Age-Specific Nasal Epithelial Responses to SARS-CoV-2 Infection” which was published in the journal Nature on April 15 of this year, suggests.
Lab tests show aging adult nose cells contain 100 times more virus in the first few days after an infection. The researchers’ discovery could serve to explain why older adults suffer far worse from Covid while children are very rarely very ill.
The study was led by researchers at University College in London.
The U.K. Office for National Statistics reported that alcohol killed a record number of people in the country in 2022. Compared with statistics from 2019, before the start of the pandemic, nearly 2,500 more people died from drinking. The ONS also said that the pandemic caused already heavy drinkers to increase their intakes even more.
Also 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 previous school year, the country’s Department for Education said.
There were also 3,039 permanent expulsions, 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.
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.
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 at press time, 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 2,510 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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Anna Breuer 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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