Kinkakuji, the Golden Pavilion, in Kyoto
Good morning. This is Jonathan Spira reporting. Here now the news of the pandemic from across the globe on the 1,118th day of the pandemic and American Circus Day.
As we near the end of the first month of year four of the coronavirus pandemic, it’s clear that the fat lady has yet to sing, and some scientists are painting a dismal scenario of what her encore might be.
A new study published in China warns of a possible combination between the highly contagious but not very lethal SARS-CoV-2 virus and its rarer cousin, MERCS-CoV, a highly lethal but not very contagious virus. A potential combination could have the most dangerous qualities of both, namely highly contagious and deadly.
The study, led by Qiao Wang, a virologist at the Shanghai Institute of Infectious Diseases, which is part of Fudan University, called attention to the risk in a peer-reviewed study that appeared in the journal Signal Transduction and Targeted Therapy last month.
SARS-CoV-2 tends to favor a receptor called ACE2, while MERS-CoV tends to favor the DPP4 receptor and most cells in the human body have one or the other. However, a few cell types in the lungs and intestines have both ACE2 and DPP4 receptions, providing an opportunity for co-infection by both SARS-CoV-2 and MERS-CoV.
This hypothetical co-infection “may result in the emergence of recombined [betacoronavirus],”, a kind of SARS-CoV-2 or MERCS-CoV-2, Wang and his coauthors wrote in the study.
This new (and still hypothetical) virus “may bear high SARS-CoV-2-like transmissibility along with a high MERS-CoV-like case-fatality rate, which would have catastrophic repercussions,” they concluded.
In other news we cover today, a study out of Japan reports that 1.5 million people now live as recluses, many because of the pandemic; major cities in California will continue mask mandates for now; and Hong Kong is seeing an increase in people wanting coronavirus inoculations two weeks before they will only be available to those who are willing to pay for one.
UNITED STATES
While California ended its publish health emergency on Monday, bringing an end to state-wide mask mandates in all healthcare-related facilities, two major cities in the state, namely Los Angeles and San Francisco, have issued their own mandates that went into force immediately and continue the requirement.
Although the public health emergency occasioned by the coronavirus pandemic is expiring in May along with waivers that expanded telehealth care, such services will continue in Virginia despite the change, health officials said.
Virginia officials said last week that most of the services that the waivers allowed, such as telehealth, have been signed into state law and will remain available for patients with either Medicaid or private insurance.
GLOBAL
A government survey in Japan shows that approximately 1.5 million people are living as recluses. One-fifth of the so-called hikikomori cases are a result of pressures unleashed by the coronavirus pandemic. The twenty percent said that they had become hikikomori due to changes in lifestyle imposed during the pandemic. Hikikomori are people who have withdrawn from society and spend all or almost all of their time isolated at home. They account for 2% of people in the age range 15 through 62, the survey found.
Hong Kong is seeing a surge in people getting coronavirus booster shots, the South China Morning Post is reporting. The increase comes two weeks before the jabs come with a bill attached, doctors are saying.
Dr Lam Wing-wo, a physician who sits on the Centre for Health Protection’s vaccine committee, told a radio program on Monday that more people had made reservations at community vaccination centers before the Easter holiday.
“They may want to travel and enhance their protection a week or two before the long holiday,” he said.
TODAY’S STATISTICS
Now here are the daily statistics for Monday, April 3.
As of Monday morning, the world has recorded 684.1 million Covid-19 cases, an increase of 0.1 million from the previous day, and 6.83 million deaths, according to Worldometer, a service that tracks such information. In addition, just over 657.1 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 Monday at press time is 20,201,678, an increase of 6,000. Out of that figure, 99.8%, or 20,161,774 are considered mild, and 0.2%, or 39,904, are listed as critical. The percentage of cases considered critical has not changed over the past five months.
The United States reported 138,481 new cases in the period March 23 through March 29, a figure that is down 16% over the same period one week earlier, according to data from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. The death toll for the same period is 1,596, a figure that is down 12%. The average number of hospital admissions from Covid was 5,713 on March 31, a figure that is down 7% over the preceding 14 days. Finally, the test positivity rate is 7.1%, up 5% over the 14 days preceding March 28.
Starting on March 25, 2023, the Morning News Brief began to update case data as well as death tolls on a weekly basis.
In addition, since the start of the pandemic the United States has, as of Monday, recorded just under 106.3 million cases, a higher figure than any other country, and a death toll of over 1.15 million. India has the world’s second highest number of officially recorded cases, 44.7 million, and a reported death toll of 530,881.
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 39.8 million, and Germany is in the number four slot, with 38.4 million total cases.
Brazil, which has recorded the third highest number of deaths as a result of the virus, 700,239, has recorded 37.3 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 33.5 million cases, South Korea, with 30.8 million cases, placing it in the number seven slot, and Italy, with 25.7 million, as number eight, as well as the United Kingdom, with 24.4 million, and Russia, with just under 22.7 million.
VACCINATION SPOTLIGHT
The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention said that, as of last Thursday, over 269.9 million people in the United States – or 81.3% – have received at least one dose of the coronavirus vaccine. Of that population, 69.4%, or 230.4 million people, have received two doses of vaccine, and the total number of doses that have been dispensed in the United States is now 674 million. Breaking this down further, 92.2% of the population over the age of 18 – or 238.1 million people – has received at least a first inoculation and 79% of the same group – or 204.2 million people – is fully vaccinated. In addition, 20% of the same population, or 51.6 million people, has already received an updated or bivalent booster dose of vaccine, while 23.1 million people over the age of 65, or 42.1% 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 Mondays 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 Monday, according to Our World in Data, an online scientific publication that tracks such information. So far, 13.36 billion doses of the vaccine have been administered on a global basis and 1.3 million doses are now administered each day.
Meanwhile, only 28.5% 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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