Coronavirus Daily News Brief – May 19: New Cases in Singapore Double in One Week, New York Finds Millions in Overcharges for Pandemic Relief Food

In front of a shuttered McDonald’s restaurant on 42nd Street in Manhattan, a man demonstrates the proper way to wear a face mask.
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 1,530th day.
In news we cover today , Singapore is experiencing a significant wave of new cases, an emergency food supplier to New York City residents overcharged the city by $9 million, and cretins are running to purchase and drink raw milk believing they will gain immunity from the avian flu.
TODAY IN THE FIRST YEAR OF COVID HISTORY
On May 19, 2020, New York City’s then mayor, Bill De Blasio, said the city may meet the criteria to begin to reopen the economy there in the first half of June.
In his daily briefing on this day, New York Governor Andrew Cuomo said that Joseph La Lima, a barber in Kingston, New York, who defied the state’s lockdown measures and continued to cut hair from the back of his shop, appears to have infected over a dozen people.  The Ulster County district attorney’s office has launched an investigation into whether La Lima violated public health laws, a criminal offense, and whether any of his customers may also face penalties.
In Illinois, the state’s governor said he will charge owners of bars, restaurants, and other establishments who open their businesses while pandemic restrictions such as closures are in place with a Class A misdemeanor.
Overseas, economic reports showed that Japan’s economy had fallen into a recession. The economy there had contracted by 3.4% in the first three months of the year, the government said on Monday.
McDonald’s outlined ways in which it will minimize contact and maintain social distancing measures in its restaurants. The measures include limiting capacity once dining rooms reopen, keeping children’s play areas closed, cleaning bathrooms every half hour, and cleaning kiosks and tables between each use.
Hawaiian officials announced stricter enforcement of the two-week self-quarantine for those visiting or returning to the islands.  A tourist from New York was arrested after he posted photographs of him on the beach on Instagram while he was supposed to be in quarantine.
The number of coronavirus cases across the globe stood at 4.84 million, of which 1.87 million have recovered, based on data compiled the Coronavirus Morning News Brief. The death toll stood at 317,304.
In the United States and its territories, the number of confirmed cases stood at 1.53 million, while the death toll stood at 91,061. Russia had the third highest number of cases in the world, with 290,678, with a death toll of 2,722, which officials in the United States believed to be a significant undercount.
UNITED STATES
In New York, an audit revealed that an emergency food distributor overbilled the city by $9 million. Comptroller Brad Lander found in an audit that Driscoll Foods received $9 million more than had been due from the city’s Department of Social Services.
Driscoll, also known as Metropolitan Foods, received a total of $90 million from the city in the period July 2020 through June 2022.
The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention said that data suggests that SARS-CoV-2 cases are increasing in Alaska, Arizona, California, Florida, Georgia, Hawaii, Minnesota, Nevada, New Jersey, Oregon, Texas, Washington, and Washington, D.C.
While the data is up compared to the past few months, it is still significantly lower than one year earlier. In the seven days ending May 10, an average of 0.3% of emergency room patients were diagnosed with the virus nationwide, far below last summer’s peak at nearly 3% in late August.
GLOBAL NEWS
In Singapore, health officials said that the city-state was facing a new Covid wave, with 25,9000 cases reported in one week. The number of cases nearly doubled week-over-week, based on the numbers provided.. Meanwhile, the government has issued a health advisory asking people to don face masks again, local media reported.
OTHER HEALTHCARE NEWS
Despite warnings from the CDC and FDA that raw milk could contain the H5N1 avian flu virus while pasteurized milk is safe to consume, sales of the product are up some 21% since bird flu was first confirmed in dairy cattle in the United States in late March, according to research from NielsenIQ. The increased sales are being driven by idiots who believe that exposure to H5N1 will give them immunity to the virus and therefore drink it. Apparently, this year’s Darwin Awards may have to be awarded to a fairly large cohort.
A new study of the public health toll due to exposure to nitrogen dioxide pollution from gas and propane stoves found that gas stoves contribute to approximately 19,000 adult deaths each year. They also increase long-time exposure to nitrogen dioxide to 75% of the World Health Organization’s and U.S. Environmental Protection Agency’s benchmarks.
Size matters here. People living in residences that are smaller than 800 square feet (74 square meters) in size incur four times more long-term NO 2  exposure than people in residences larger than 3,000 square feet (279 square meters).
A common and inexpensive drug taken by millions for diabetes control may do more than merely lower blood sugar. Research suggests metformin has anti-inflammatory properties  that could help protect people against some common age-related diseases. The list of potential conditions includes heart disease, cancer, and cognitive decline.
New York State recently enacted a law will bans natural gas stoves in most new homes and buildings by 2026, the first jurisdiction in the country to do so. Meanwhile, California is considering a law that would place warning labels on gas stoves.
PANDEMIC STATISTICS
CURRENT U.S. COVID STATISTICS AT A GLANCE
In the United States, in the week ending May 11, 2024, the test positivity rate was, based on data released on May 17 from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention was 3.2%, a figure is up 0.1 percentage points from the previous 7-day period, 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 0.3%, and the trend in emergency department visits is -5.2%.
The number of people admitted to hospital in the United States due to SARS-CoV-2 is no longer being reported as of the end of May. Meanwhile, the percentage of deaths due to SARS-CoV-2 was 0.6%, a figure that is down 14.3%.
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, 13.58 billion doses of the vaccine have been administered on a global basis and 8,173 doses are now administered each day.
Meanwhile, only 32.8% 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.
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.
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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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