Coronavirus Daily News Brief – June 6: Positive Test Not Needed for Long Covid Diagnosis, Condition May Be More Devastating Than We Thought

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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 1,548th day.
EDITOR’S NOTE: Starting this week, given that the H5N1 virus poses a grave risk to humans if contracted because it is a highly pathogenic strain, we will include news related to the avian flu in the same sections where we cover SARS-CoV-2 news.  While at the present time, the total number of cases of humans infected with H5N1 is low – the figure is currently 463 – more than half of these resulted in death.—B.A.
In news we cover today , a positive coronavirus test is no longer a requirement for patients to obtain a Long Covid diagnosis, a new report finds that Long Covid appears to be far more serious than most people had thought, and New York State is set to limit when minors can receive social-media feeds and alerts.
TODAY IN THE FIRST YEAR OF COVID HISTORY
On June 6, 2020, the World Health Organization reversed course and began to encourage the use of face masks, saying the general public should wear cloth masks in high-risk areas or wherever social-distancing would not be possible.
The WHO also recommended that all health workers, not just those caring for Covid-19 patients, should don masks in clinical settings.
In California, the Department of Public Health said that it would allow film and television show production to restart on June 12.
In New York State, then Governor Andrew Cuomo said that the state was “doing so well with the metrics” when he announced he would accelerate the opening of synagogues, churches, and mosques. Houses of worship across the state would be allowed to reopen with up to 25% occupancy provided all social-distancing measures were observed.
Meanwhile, the speed at which Operation Warp Speed – the federal government’s program to develop vaccines at a speed faster than the medical establishment had previously been able to develop immunizations, was starting to become the target of vaccine skeptics after its messaging began to sound somewhat chaotic. Still, the program successfully developed two vaccines that were shown to be highly effective and the two became available by the end of the year.
Finally, the number of coronavirus cases stood at 6.7 million cases, according to data from the Coronavirus Morning News Brief.
LONG COVID
People do not need to have tested positive for the coronavirus to be considered for a diagnosis of Long COVID. This was an additional outcome from the National Academies of Sciences, Engineering and Medicine study that we reported on in Wednesday’s Brief. The panel of experts assembled by the National Academies prepared the report at the behest of the U.S. Social Security Administration.
A new report from t he National Academies said Long Covid could involve up to 200 symptoms and make it difficult for people to work and exist for months or years. The organization issued a 265-page report that recognizes the seriousness and persistence of the condition for millions of Americans.
“Long Covid can impact people across the life span, from children to older adults, as well as across sex, gender, racial, ethnic and other demographic groups,” the report read, concluding that “Long Covid is associated with a wide range of new or worsening health conditions and encompasses more than 200 symptoms involving nearly every organ system.”
Using data from 2022 the report said that nearly 18 million adults and nearly one million children in the United States have had or currently have long Covid at some point. The group believes that approximately 8.9 million adults and 362,000 children currently suffer from the condition.
UNITED STATES
The fall Covid vaccine will target the JN.1 subvariant. A panel of external advisors to the U.S. Food and Drug Administration unanimously voted to have the agency tell vaccine makers to prepare a formula that targets this subvariant, which was dominant in February, even though newer sublineages such as KP.2 and KP.3 are now dominant.
The committee was asked to vote on the question, “For the 2024-2025 Formula of COVID-19 vaccines in the U.S., does the committee recommend a monovalent JN.1-lineage vaccine composition?” All 16 members voted “yes.”
A strain of avian flu that had n ot previously detected in humans took the life of a person in Mexico, the World Health Organization said Wednesday.  This was the first confirmed human case of H5N2, which differs from the strain currently infecting cattle. The deceased was  a 59-year-old male with no previous exposure to poultry or other animals. He died on April 28.
OTHER HEALTHCARE NEWS
New York State will soon restrict social-media automated fees and late-night notifications to minors in an effort to address both sleep and mental health issues that young people face thanks to the never-ending onslaught of information available through channels such as Instagram and Facebook. Parental consent would be required in order to bypass the restriction on algorithms that serve automated feeds.
An experimental HIV vaccine developed at Duke University triggered an elusive type of broadly neutralizing antibody in a small group of people enrolled in a 2019 clinical trial. The findings were recently published in the journal Cell.  Since it was first identified in 1983, HIV has infected over 85 million people and caused some 40 million deaths worldwide.
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 7,088 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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