The entrance to Los Angeles International Airport
Good morning. This is Jonathan Spira reporting. Here now the news of the pandemic from across the globe on the 1,099th day of the pandemic.
When the President Donald Trump on April 20, 2020 infamously asked William Bryan, then head of science and technology for the Department of Health and Human Services, suggested the “injection” of disinfectant into the human body to kill the coronavirus, Dr. Deborah Birx, then the White House coronavirus response coordinator, looked dejected and disheartened on camera in front of a national audience..
“And then I see the disinfectant, where it knocks it out in one minute. And is there a way we can do something like that, by injection inside or almost a cleaning, because you see it gets in the lungs and it does a tremendous number on the lungs, so it’d be interesting to check that, so that you’re going to have to use medical doctors with, but it sounds interesting to me. So, we’ll see, but the whole concept of the light, the way it kills it in one minute. That’s pretty powerful,” Trump said during a televised press conference.
Birx later said she felt “paralyzed” when Trump made that comment. In a subsequent interview with ABC News, she called that moment “a tragedy on many levels.”
Trump also suggested “we hit the body with a tremendous supposing it’s ultraviolet or just a very powerful light… and supposing you brought the light inside the body.
If you thought that was the end of that, you’d be sadly mistaken.
Some uninsured Americans are turning to quack cures such as drinking bleach or a fad supplement known as Miracle Mineral Solution whose ingredients are – you guessed it – more akin to bleach than a health supplement. The U.S. Food and Drug Administration has been warning consumers about MMS since 2010, yet, according to a report by Bloomberg News, more and more Americans – tens of thousands of people who have no health insurance, are turning to MMS as a “trusted health solution.”
MMS, which has been available since the 1990s, increased in popularity immediately after Trump’s disinfectant comment.
In addition, Reckitt Benckiser, the company that makes Lysol and Dettol, publicly urged consumers not to consume its cleaning products immediately following Trump’s comment, fearing what could happen if people did.
“As a global leader in health and hygiene products, we must be clear that under no circumstance should our disinfectant products be administered into the human body (through injection, ingestion or any other route),” the company said in a statement at the time.
In other news we cover today, felony charges were filed against a California senior care facility after 14 people died from Covid there, a Long Covid patient is suffering from prosopagnosia, and adenovirus is raging rampant in West Bengal.
LONG COVID
In what is the first documented report of this disorder as a result of Long Covid, an artist found herself suffering from prosopagnosia.
In a report published in the journal Cortex, researchers describe the case of Annie, a 28-year-old woman who had no difficulty recognizing faces prior to contracting SARS-CoV-2 in March 2020. Two months later, she began to suffer the symptoms of prosopagnosia, a condition also known as face blindness, a cognitive disorder of face perception in which the ability to recognize familiar faces, such as those of friends and family members, as well as one’s own face, is impaired.
UNITED STATES
Prosecutors in Los Angeles announced felony charges against an assisted living facility in connection with a deadly outbreak of SARS-CoV-2 in the early days of the pandemic. The charges, which include felony elder endangerment, come after a two-and-a-half-year investigation into the outbreak at the Silverado Senior Living Management facility, Los Angeles County District Attorney George Gascón said during a press briefing Tuesday.
OTHER HEALTHCARE NEWS
The U.S. Department of Justice sued Rite Aid, a pharmacy chain, for reportedly filling opioid prescriptions that exhibited “obvious red flags.” The complaint filed in court alleges that pharmacists at the company filled hundreds of thousands of unlawful prescriptions between 2014 and 2019.
In West Bengal, a state in eastern India, an outbreak of adenovirus left thousands in hospital and 19 children dead. The Indian state is finding itself in crisis after the virus has already infected 12,000 people this year. Adenoviruses are common causes of respiratory illness, but most infections are not severe, the CDC said on its website.
TODAY’S STATISTICS
Now here are the daily statistics for Wednesday, March 15.
As of Wednesday morning, the world has recorded 681.8 million Covid-19 cases, an increase of 0.1 million from the previous day, and 6.81 million deaths, according to Worldometer, a service that tracks such information. In addition, 654.9 million people worldwide have recovered from the virus, an increase of 0.2 million.
The reader should note that infrequent reporting from some sources may appear as spikes in new case figures or death tolls.
Worldwide, the number of active coronavirus cases as of Wednesday at press time is 20,104,548, a decrease of 90,000. Out of that figure, 99.8%, or 20,064,410, are considered mild, and 0.2%, or 40,138, are listed as critical. The percentage of cases considered critical has not changed over the past three months.
The United States reported 13,115 new coronavirus infections on Tuesday for the previous day, compared to 1,005 reported on Monday, 1,489 reported on Sunday, 10,161 reported on Saturday, 55,447 reported on Friday, and 63,372 reported on Thursday, according to data from the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services. The 7-day incidence rate is now 28,713. Figures for the weekend (reported the following day) are typically 30% to 60% of those posted on weekdays due to a lower number of tests being conducted.
The average daily number of new coronavirus cases in the United States over the past 14 days is 28,313, a figure down 18% over the past 14 days, based on data from the Department of Health and Human Services, among other sources. The average daily death toll over the same period is 387, an increase of 13% over the same period, while the average number of hospitalizations for the period was 23,398, a decrease of 14%. In addition, the number of patients in ICUs was 3,117, a decrease of 12% and the test positivity rate is now 7.5%, a figure that is down by 17% over the same period.
In addition, since the start of the pandemic the United States has, as of Wednesday, recorded just under 105.7 million cases, a higher figure than any other country, and a death toll of 1.15 million. India has the world’s second highest number of officially recorded cases, 44.7 million, and a reported death toll of 530,789.
The newest data from Russia’s Rosstat state statistics service showed that, at the end of July, the number of Covid or Covid-related deaths since the start of the pandemic there in April 2020 is now 823,623, giving the country the world’s second highest pandemic-related death toll, behind the United States. Rosstat last reported that 3,284 people died from the coronavirus or related causes in July 2022, down from 5,023 in June, 7,008 in May and 11,583 in April.
Meanwhile, France is the country with the third highest number of cases, with over 39.6 million, and Germany is in the number four slot, with just under 38.3 million total cases.
Brazil, which has recorded the third highest number of deaths as a result of the virus, 699,310, has recorded 37.1 million cases, placing it in the number five slot.
The other five countries with total case figures over the 20 million mark are Japan, with 33.3 million cases, South Korea, with just under 30.7 million cases, placing it in the number seven slot, and Italy, with just over 25.6 million, as number eight, as well as the United Kingdom, with 24.4 million, and Russia, with just over 22.4 million.
VACCINATION SPOTLIGHT
The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention said that, as of the past Thursday, 269.6 million people in the United States – or 81.2% – have received at least one dose of the coronavirus vaccine. Of that population, 69.3%, or 230.1 million people, have received two doses of vaccine, and the total number of doses that have been dispensed in the United States is now 672.1 million. Breaking this down further, 92.1% of the population over the age of 18 – or 237.8 million people – has received at least a first inoculation and 79% of the same group – or just under 204 million people – is fully vaccinated. In addition, 19.6% of the same population, or 50.5 million people, has already received an updated or bivalent booster dose of vaccine, while 22.7 million people over the age of 65, or 41.4% of that population have also received the bivalent booster.
Starting on June 13, 2022, the CDC began to update vaccine data on a weekly basis and publish the updated information on Thursdays by 8 p.m. EDT, a statement on the agency’s website said.
Some 69.7% of the world population has received at least one dose of coronavirus vaccine by Wednesday, according to Our World in Data, an online scientific publication that tracks such information. So far, 13.33 billion doses of the vaccine have been administered on a global basis and 448,328 doses are now administered each day.
Meanwhile, only 28.3% 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 start of vaccinations in North Korea in late September, Eritrea remains the only country in the world that has not administered vaccines.
Anna Breuer contributed reporting to this story.
(Photo: Accura Media Group)
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