A patient in the waiting room of at a doctor’s office in New York City
Good morning. This is Jonathan Spira reporting. Here now the news of the pandemic from across the globe on the 1,107th day of the pandemic.
Just when you think things are quieting down, something breaks the monotony.
In this case, it’s a new subvariant of SARS-CoV-2 that is surging in India and alarm bells are ringing there.
At a high-level meeting on Wednesday, Prime Minister Narendra Modi said that the new variant, XBB 1.16, has been found recently in 76 samples.
The XBB 1.16 variant was first encountered in January when two samples tested positive for the variant while in February, a total of 59 samples were found in the wild.
The variant has been found across India in Karnataka with 30, Maharashtra with 29, Puducherry with 7, Delhi, the capital city, with 5, Telangana with 2, and Gujarat , Himachal Pradesh, and Odish each with 1, data from the Indian SARS-CoV-2 Genomics Consortium showed.
In other news we cover today, former Prime Minister Boris Johnson is trying to convince the House of Commons that the ban on gatherings during the early lockdowns didn’t really ban gatherings for farewell parties, additional testing in nursing homes would have prevented unnecessary deaths, and Apple is trying to force workers to comply with a requirement limiting telecommuting to two days per week.
LONG COVID
New research shows that people who are fully vaccinated or who take the antiviral Paxlovid after contracting SARS-CoV-2 have a lower risk of developing Long Covid, according to new research published Thursday in JAMA Internal Medicine. Researchers analyzed data from 41 studies, covering a total of 860,000 people across the globe. Of the four studies with vaccination information of nearly 250,000 people, those who had been vaccinated against Covid-19 had almost half the risk of long Covid than people who weren’t vaccinated.
UNITED STATES
A new study says that more coronavirus testing of nursing home staff would have reduced deaths from SARS-CoV-2.
The study, led by researchers at Harvard’s T.H. Chan School of Public Health, University of Rochester Medical Center, and the Anderson School of Management at the University of California Los Angeles, published in the New England Journal of Medicine, found that 1.1 million more staff tests per week nationwide would have saved 427 lives each week during the worst period of nursing home outbreaks, from November 2020 to mid-January 2021.
GLOBAL
While under questioning by the U.K. parliament’s privileges committee, former Prime Minister Boris Johnson suggested that “unsocially distanced farewell gatherings” were allowed under coronavirus pandemic rules in the early months of the pandemic. Johnson said it would have been up to individual organizations to decide how they would implement the guidance. The committee is investigating whether Johnson deliberately misled the House of Commons about breaches of coronavirus rules at No. 10.
In Hong Kong, visitors to public hospitals and nursing homes will no longer be required to undergo rapid antigen coronavirus tests before entering. The change goes into effect on Saturday.
TECH
Apple is taking steps to reduce the number of workers performing their jobs remotely by having supervisors closely monitor attendance via badge records. Employees are required to come to the office at least three times per week under current rules.
TODAY’S STATISTICS
Now here are the daily statistics for Thursday, March 23.
As of Thursday morning, the world has recorded over 682.9 million Covid-19 cases, an increase of 0.1 million from the previous day, and 6.82 million deaths, according to Worldometer, a service that tracks such information. In addition, 655.9 million people worldwide have recovered from the virus, an increase of 0.2 million from the previous day.
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 Thursday at press time is 20,245,898, an increase of 9,000. Out of that figure, 99.8%, or 20,205,844, are considered mild, and 0.2%, or 40,054, are listed as critical. The percentage of cases considered critical has not changed over the past five months.
The United States reported 18,373 new coronavirus infections on Wednesday for the previous day, compared to 9,787 reported on Tuesday, 1,424 reported on Monday, 1,175 reported on Sunday, and 18,756 reported on Saturday, according to data from the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services. The 7-day incidence rate is now 22,391. 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 20,771, a figure down 32% over the past 15 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 257, a decrease of 20% over the same period, while the average number of hospitalizations for the period was 22,522, a decrease of 14%. In addition, the number of patients in ICUs was 3,013 a decrease of 11% and the test positivity rate is now 7.2%, a figure that is down by 14% over the same period.
In addition, since the start of the pandemic the United States has, as of Thursday, recorded 106 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 530,816.
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 39.7 million, and Germany is in the number four slot, with 38.3 million total cases.
Brazil, which has recorded the third highest number of deaths as a result of the virus, 699,917, 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 33.4 million cases, South Korea, with 30.7 million cases, placing it in the number seven slot, and Italy, with just under 25.7 million, as number eight, as well as the United Kingdom, with 24.4 million, and Russia, with just under 22.6 million.
VACCINATION SPOTLIGHT
The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention said that, as of the past Thursday, 269.7 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 230.2 million people, have received two doses of vaccine, and the total number of doses that have been dispensed in the United States is now 673 million. Breaking this down further, 92.2% of the population over the age of 18 – or 237.9 million people – has received at least a first inoculation and 79% of the same group – or 204.1 million people – is fully vaccinated. In addition, 19.8% of the same population, or 51.1 million people, has already received an updated or bivalent booster dose of vaccine, while 22.9 million people over the age of 65, or 41.8% 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 69.8% of the world population has received at least one dose of coronavirus vaccine by Thursday, according to Our World in Data, an online scientific publication that tracks such information. So far, 13.34 billion doses of the vaccine have been administered on a global basis and 683,555 doses are now administered each day.
Meanwhile, only 28.4% 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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