Coronavirus Daily News Brief – May 30: Study Reveals Persistent Risk of Death 3 Years After Infection, House Panel Wants Dr. Fauci’s Private Emails

National Statuary Hall, U.S. Capitol
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 1,541st day.
In news we cover today , a House subcommittee wants access to the personal e-amil and mobile phone records of Dr. Anthony Fauci, a new study shows a persistent risk of death and other Long Covid symptoms three years after infection, and the United States announced a global bust that broke up a major botnet criminal enterprise, seizing $34 million in luxury goods and property.
TODAY IN THE FIRST YEAR OF COVID HISTORY
On May 30, 2020, Israeli health officials reported a spike in new coronavirus infections that followed the lifting of lockdown restrictions. The country recorded at least 101 new cases on May 29 and 79 on May 28, after several days where the number of new cases was at 20. Officials there blamed the increase on a lack of discipline in complying with social distancing guidelines.
Canada announced it would extend its ban on cruise ships and ferries that are carrying more than 100 people with overnight capacity from operating in its waters through the end of October.
When Japanese theme parks reopen, they will ask visitors to not make loud noises such as screams when on rides.In addition, park officials will perform body temperature and wellness checks of visitors upon arrival.  The move was made in an attempt to reduce the amount of aerosols guests emit during their visits.
Finally, the number of coronavirus cases across the globe stood at 6.1 million, of which 2.7 million had recovered, based on data compiled the Coronavirus Morning News Brief. The death toll stood at 369,127.
In addition, for the first time since the start of the pandemic, there were more closed coronavirus cases than active ones. There were 3.02 million active cases worldwide and 3.07 million closed cases.  Out of the active cases, 2.98 million were mild and 2% or 53,466 were severe.
LONG COVID
A new study found that t hree years after their initial Covid infections , patients who ha d once been hospitalized with the virus remained at “significantly elevated ” risk of death or worsening health from complications from Long Covid.
The study, published on May 30 in the journal Nature Medicine, found that, even among a cohort whose initial cases didn’t require a hospital stay, the threat of Long Covid and several of its associated issues remained real.
“People are developing new-onset disease as the result of an infection that they had three years ago,” said  Dr. Ziyad Al-Aly, a clinical epidemiologist at Washington University in St. Louis and lead author of the study. “It challenges the notion that these viruses are sort of self-contained or that after the acute first phase, they become inconsequential.”
With over 130,000 patients who were tracked, the study is by far the largest to date to examine the progress of the virus in patients  over a full three-year period.
At the two-year mark, Dr. Al-Aly found that patients had elevated risk for Long-Covid-related conditions, a list that includes diabetes, lung problems, fatigue, blood clots, and gastrointestinal, and musculoskeletal disorders.
UNITED STATES
In Washington, D.C., the House subcommittee investigating the origins of the coronavirus pandemic is asking for access to Dr. Anthony Fauci’s personal email and mobile records. The move comes after his former adviser at the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases gave testimony last week saying that the two had had “secret back channel” communications.
A global cybercriminal network that facilitated pandemic-relief funds fraud was busted with the arrest of a 35-year-old Chinese man in Singapore in a court-authorized international law enforcement operation.
Law enforcement agents seized about $4 million worth of watches, sports cars and other luxury assets, including a Ferrari and a Rolls-Royce, and $30 million in real estate properties across East Asia, the Middle East, the Caribbean and the United States, as part of the global raid on the network, the U.S. Department of Justice said on Wednesday.
The group had created a botnet that had infected over 19 million different IP addresses The botnet was used by tens of thousands of people to commit pandemic and unemployment fraud as well as for cyberattacks, child exploitation, harassment, bomb threats, and export violations.
According to an indictment unsealed on May 24, in the period 2014 through July 2022, Chinese national YunHe Wang and others created and disseminated malware to compromise and amass a network of millions of residential Windows computers worldwide that were associated with more than 19 million unique IP addresses. Wang then generated millions of dollars in fees by renting the infected IPs to cybercriminals.
A consortium of scientists at Texas Biomedical Research Institute, the University of Alabama at Birmingham, and Columbia University have developed a promising new human monoclonal antibody that appears a step closer to a universal antibody cocktail that works against all strains of SARS-CoV-2.
“This antibody worked against the original SARS-CoV-2 strain, omicron and SARS-CoV, providing strong evidence that this antibody will continue to work against future strains, especially if paired with other antibodies,” said Dr. Luis Martinez-Sobrido, a professor at Texas Biomed and co-lead author of the research, which was published as a preprint on bioRxiv.
PANDEMIC STATISTICS
CURRENT U.S. COVID STATISTICS AT A GLANCE
In the United States, in the week ending May 18, 2024, the test positivity rate was, based on data released on May 24 from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention was 3.4%, and the trend in test positivity is -0.2% 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 +7%.
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 unchanged over the past week.
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 209 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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