Coronavirus Daily News Brief – May 31: $1.6 Billion Long Covid Initiative Fails to Meet Early Goals, Covid Positivity Rate in U.S. Trends Upward

The Lindauer Lichtturm, or Lindau Lighthouse, the southernmost lighthouse in Germany, on Lake Constance and the only lighthouse in Bavaria
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 1,542nd day.
In news we cover today , the Covid test positivity rate is up, a new look at the NIH “RECOVER” Long Covid initiative shows a program that was designed to fail, and a new study shows a persistent risk of death and other Long Covid symptoms three years after infection.
BRIEFLY NOTED
If you don’t typically dive into our statistics section because you don’t think you’ll find anything new, you’re probably in the majority and that’s why we are also giving one change in statistics prominent mention here.
For the week ending May 25, which is the latest for which the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention has reported,  the test positivity rate was 4.2%, and the trend in test positivity is +0.8%. That is a small but noticeable increase in both the test positivity rate, which had been 3.4% and the trend in test positivity, which had been -0.2%.
While a one-week change is not particularly meaningful, it does coincide with increases of SARS-CoV-2 in wastewater across the country so it may yet be another signpost that an early summer wave of cases is heading our way.
TODAY IN THE FIRST YEAR OF COVID HISTORY
On May 30, 2020, Pope Francis appeared in person to bless a socially-distanced audience in Saint Peter’s Square. “Today since the square is open we can return,” he told them. Afterwards, he recited a prayer and blessed the crowd.
Spanish police said that Prince Joachim of Belgium had tested positive for the novel coronavirus after attending a lockdown party in the southern city of Córdoba.  The police department had launched an investigation into the event announced that those individuals found to have flouted lockdown rules would be subject to a €10,000 ($11,134) fine. There was no word if Prince Joachim would be fined or whether just having caught Covid would be enough of a punishment.
On the cultural front, a month-long run of 28 programs at a drive-in theater that had served as a parking lot for a vegetable market concluded with a show performed by the Národní divadlo, the Czech National Theater.  In the course of the month-long offering, over 11,000 people attended in their autos. The final show included excerpts from several plays including “Faust” and “Oedipus.”
Finally, the number of coronavirus cases across the globe stood at 6.22 million, of which 2.78 million hadrecovered, based on data compiled by Frequent Business Traveler. The death toll stood at 372,509.
In the United States and its territories, the number of confirmed cases stood at 1.83 million, while the death toll was 105,926.
LONG COVID
RECOVER, the three-year-old National Institutes of Health program to address Long Covid, has reportedly not met its early goals.
A new report published in the online publication Stat, which covers health, medicine, and scientific discovery and is backed by the Boston Globe, said that experts who reviewed the contracts and project documents made available via the Freedom of Information Act relating to budgets and project management believe that the agency set itself up for failure because it did not include scientists who were experienced in earlier post-infectious chronic diseases on the team of researchers.
RECOVER stands for “Researching Covid to Enhance Recovery.”
A new study found that t hree years after their initial Covid infections , patients who had 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.
UNITED STATES
A new report shows that concentrations of the virus responsible for Covid-19 are on the rise in 29 wastewater treatment facilities in the state of Washington.
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.
PANDEMIC STATISTICS
CURRENT U.S. COVID STATISTICS AT A GLANCE
In the United States, in the week ending May 25, 2024, the test positivity rate was, based on data released on May 31 from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention was 4.2%, and the trend in test positivity is +0.8% 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 +5.1%.
The number of people admitted to hospital in the United States due to SARS-CoV-2 was 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 remains unchanged over the past two weeks.
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 5,128 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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