Good morning. This is Jonathan Spira reporting. Here now the news of the pandemic from across the globe on the 1,123rd day of the pandemic and Easter, also known as Pascha, a Christian festival and cultural holiday that commemorates the resurrection of Jesus from the dead, according to the New Testament.
Across the globe, as coronavirus pandemic-induced curbs and restrictions are relaxed, many memories of the earliest days of the pandemic – those filled with lockdowns, school closures, social distancing, wiping down surfaces, and constant hand-washing – are fading into oblivion.
It’s true that we are approaching a point where SARS-CoV-2 will be considered endemic and the fat lady will sing, signifying a declaration by the World Health Organization that the pandemic is over.
Many may forget a time when the daily death toll in many countries exceeded the entire population of some small towns, a time when hospital morgues required refrigerated trailers to store the dead, a time when there were no vaccines and no antivirals.
The hippocampus and cerebral cortex play a key role in forming memories based on our experiences and the cortex is what keeps track of new information and passes it onto the hippocampus, where a kind of sorting and filing take place. Over time, our memories of the pandemic’s earliest days will – for some – fade into oblivion while, for others, especially those who lost a friend or family member to Covid, experienced a particularly severe case of the virus, or was a front-line worker treating patients in some of the pandemic’s earliest epicenters – those memories will stay with us, despite our best efforts to push them into the cobwebbed corners of the mind’s attic.
However, the pandemic is still a pandemic and it’s still not over. As long as the world is continuing to experience thousands of deaths from Covid each week as well as hundreds of thousands of new cases, one thing is clear: There remains a lot of work yet to be done before calling the fat lady in to sing.
In news we cover today, Los Angeles will hire non-vaccinated deputies and firefighters and Hong Kong is seeing an increase in Covid’s reproductive number.
UNITED STATES
Officials in Los Angeles County announced the end of pandemic-induced coronavirus employee vaccination requirements. The move will allow various county departments and offices to hire individuals who have not yet gotten inoculated against the virus. This includes sheriff’s deputies and firefighters.
The change took effect last Monday as the county ended its pandemic emergency.
“There is no longer a Covid-19 vaccination requirement for new hires or existing county employees, unless otherwise mandated by federal, state or local regulations or orders,” said Jesus Ruiz, a spokesman with L.A. County’s chief executive office.
The Los Angeles County Board of Supervisors voted on Tuesday to repeal a rule requiring certain contractors for the county to have their employees vaccinated against the coronavirus or to have received a medical or religious exemption.
GLOBAL
In Hong Kong, cases of SARS-CoV-2 are on the rise once again and the R 0 , pronounced R naught, is now 2.07, based on data published on the interactive web-based Covid-19 case tracker run by the University of Hong Kong. That figure is the highest since March 2022 and could indicate another surge.
Professor David Hui Shu-cheong, a Hong Kong government pandemic advisor, told reporters that the increase on the end of pandemic-induced restrictions as well as waning immunity.
“This is expected,“ Hui said. „That is why we encourage people, especially high risk groups, to receive a booster six months after the last dose or infection.“
TODAY’S STATISTICS
Now here are the daily statistics for Sunday, April 9.
As of Sunday morning, the world has recorded 684.95 million Covid-19 cases, an increase of 0.05 million from the previous day, and just under 6.84 million deaths, according to Worldometer, a service that tracks such information. In addition, just over 657.7 million people worldwide have recovered from the virus, an increase of 0.1 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 Sunday at press time is 20,378,495, a decrease of 55,000. Out of that figure, 99.8%, or 20,338,792are considered mild, and 0.2%, or 39,703, 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 5,673 on April 3, a figure that is down 6% over the preceding 14 days. Finally, the test positivity rate is 6.8%, up 2% over the 14 days preceding March 31
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 Sunday, recorded just under 106.4 million cases, a higher figure than any other country, and a death toll of just 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 530,965.
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, 700,556, 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 30.9 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 22.7 million.
VACCINATION SPOTLIGHT
The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention said that, as of the past Thursday, over 270 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 674.4 million. Breaking this down further, 92.2% of the population over the age of 18 – or 238.2 million people – has received at least a first inoculation and 79.1% of the same group – or 204.2 million people – is fully vaccinated. In addition, 20.1 of the same population, or 52 million people, has already received an updated or bivalent booster dose of vaccine, while 23.3 million people over the age of 65, or 42.4% 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 69.9% of the world population has received at least one dose of coronavirus vaccine by Sunday, according to Our World in Data, an online scientific publication that tracks such information. So far, 13.38 billion doses of the vaccine have been administered on a global basis and 865,317 doses are now administered each day.
Meanwhile, only 29.2% 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.
Paul Riegler contributed reporting to this story.
(Photo: Accura Media Group)
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