A classic photograph of Thurman Munson, a 7-time All Star catcher with the New York Yankees who played 11 seasons with the team from 1969 until his death in 1979 when the plane he was piloting crashed, as depicted in the 1974 Baseball Dope Book.
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 1,531st day.
In news we cover today , China’s leading SARS-CoV-2 expert is studying climate change in order to prepare for the next pandemic, Covid may persist in the body and result in the development of Long Covid some studies suggest, and baseball had to put a player on the seven-day “Covid injured list.”
TODAY IN THE FIRST YEAR OF COVID HISTORY
On May 20, 2020, the World Health Organization’s director-general, Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus, said the agency had received reports of more cases in the last 24 hours than any other time since the outbreak had begun.
“In the last 24 hours, there have been 106,000 cases reported to WHO – the most in a single day since the outbreak began,” he said, adding that “[A]lmost two-thirds of these cases were reported in just four countries.”
The four countries were, in fact, the United States, Russia, Brazil and India.
The U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention promulgated guidance for schools, businesses, and mass transit systems as opposed to what was released last week, this document provides specific guidance and instructions for different sectors to detect and trace the virus based on exposure and risk after the pandemic. The language in the document was somewhat watered down from what had been in the original document, with changes from “ensure social distancing” to “promote social distancing,” for example.
In New York, then Governor Andrew Cuomo announced what at the time appeared to be promising figures: “We’re basically back to where we started before this tragedy descended upon us,” he said in his morning briefing, after announcing that the number of coronavirus deaths had been 105 on the previous day and the lowest figure since March 26. Other key indicators such as the number of total hospitalizations and the net change in total hospitalizations were also significantly lower.
Finally, as of this date, over 4.9 million cases of SARS-CoV-2 had been recorded across the globe, including at least 327,000 deaths, according to data compiled by the Coronavirus Morning News Brief. Out of that last figure, over 93,000 deaths had occurred in the United States, representing 28% of the total.
LONG COVID
The Covid infection could linger in the body far longer than has previously been believed.
A study published in April in the journal Lancet Infectious Diseases found that 25% of Covid-infected people had SARS-CoV-2 antigens in their blood for up to 14 months after infection
Viral persistence suggests that some people don’t fully clear the coronavirus after acute infection and pieces linger in a viral reservoirs and evidence of persistent viral antigens — spike and nucleocapsid — and viral RNA are being detected in various tissues of patients with Long Covid via biopsy and autopsy.
The study compared 171 immunocompetent people who had had Covid with 250 pre-pandemic samples from people who, of course, had never been exposed to Covid.
UNITED STATES
Although the strain of Covid virus continues to be in flux, a Moderna spokesman said an August launch would still be feasible, regardless of which strain the FDA’s advisors might choose. The Food and Drug Administration delayed its mid-May strain selection meeting to June 5, date ten days earlier than last year’s, which was on June 15.
The FLiRT subvariants including KP.2 and KP.1 are the most prevalent in the United States, and an informal survey by the Daily News Brief of infectious disease doctors found that the most common symptoms patients who now contract SARS-CoV-2 have include a cough, sore throat, fever, and fatigue, which do not differ terribly much from prior sublineages of omicron. It’s important to keep in mind that people who have comorbidities can end up with far more severe cases and that anyone who has had Covid can end up with Long Covid as a result.
GLOBAL NEWS
In China, the country’s leading SARS-CoV-2 expert is studying climate change to prepare for the next global pandemic. Infectious diseases specialist Zhang Wenhong is looking at how the environmental shift affects pathogens. Simply put, as Earth heats up, bacterial, viral, and fungal infections are expected to evolve and mutate, and spread to new habitats, and Zhang wants to be ready for them.
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.
SPORTS AND ENTERTAINMENT
Covid remains a factor in Major League Baseball. On Tuesday, the New York Yankees had to put right-handed relief pitcher Ian Hamilton on the seemingly rarely used seven-day “Covid injured list.”
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 5,431 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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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
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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