A nurse at LaGuardia Airport
Good morning. This is Jonathan Spira reporting. Here now the news of the pandemic from across the globe on the 1,126th day of the pandemic
The pandemic may be winding down (warning: the fat lady has yet to sing) but that doesn’t mean healthcare officials across the globe aren’t as concerned about the potential impact of new coronavirus variants as they have been over the past three years.
As a result, the U.S. government said it would spend $5 billion in an effort to speed up the development of new vaccines and treatments, a spokesman for the Department of Health and Human Services in the United States said on Monday.
The investment is being made under the rubric “Project NextGen,” and was first announced by White House officials in an interview with the Washington Post this week.
The program aims to provide individuals with better protection from coronaviruses, including the one that causes SARS-CoV-2.
The project has 3 primary goals: 1.) To develop a nasal vaccine to prevent infection as well as severe disease; 2.) to develop longer-lasting vaccines; and 3.) to create “broader” vaccines that protect against all variants and several coronaviruses.
“While our vaccines are still very effective at preventing serious illness and death, they are less capable of reducing infections and transmission over time,” the HHS spokesperson said.
“New variants and loss of immunity over time could continue to challenge our healthcare systems in the coming years.”
The administration will spend at least $5 billion in a manner similar to Project Warp Speed, the program created by the Trump administration that developed the highly successful mRNA vaccines currently in use.
“Project NextGen will accelerate and streamline the rapid development of the next generation of vaccines and treatments through public-private collaborations,” said the administration official.
In other news we cover today, a nurse speaks out after becoming the unwilling icon of the anti-vaxxer movement, President Biden signed a bill ending the coronavirus national emergency, and there is a shortage of pink bubblegum flavored amoxicillin just as strep cases are on the rise.
UNITED STATES
A nurse who became an icon in the anti-vax movement broke her silence after several years.
If the name “Tiffany Dover” rings a bell, it’s because she is the nurse who became the unwilling icon of the anti-vax movement. Nurse Manager Tiffany Dover was one of the first healthcare workers to get inoculated against SARS-CoV-2 in late 2020 and received the Pfizer-BioNTech vaccine while being filmed by multiple television news crews. She fainted shortly after receiving the shot and thousands of social media users then claimed that she was dead. The Catholic Health Initiatives Memorial Hospital in Chattanooga, where Dover works, confirmed then that she was alive and well.
In an interview on MSNBC this week, Dover had a message for the crazies: “I am alive,” she said. “I am alive and well.”
Meanwhile, on Monday, President Joseph Biden signed into law a bill that immediately ends the coronavirus national emergency, something first enacted during the Trump administration in early 2020.
Earlier in the year, the administration announced plans to extend both the Covid-19 national emergency as well as the public health emergency through May 11, 2023. But on the heels of that announcement, House Republicans put forth bills that would end both immediately.
Meanwhile, the only bill that Biden signed into law Monday ended the national emergency, which will have significant impact on everything from healthcare and hospitals to immigration. For many, the end of the national emergency will be evident in higher prices for coronavirus tests and inoculations.
The change will also be marked by the return of pre-pandemic rules for hospitals and clinics, and surveillance of the spread of SARS-CoV-2 will also be curtailed, because labs will no longer be required to report testing data to the Department of Health and Human Services.
The law Biden signed Monday did not affect the public health emergency, which is still set to expire in May, along with the Trump-era Title 42 border policy.
Then President Trump declared a public health emergency under the Public Health Service Act on January 3, 2020.
OTHER HEALTHCARE NEWS
Strep throat is more prevalent this year as people leave their face masks at home, and a shortage of the antibiotic used to treat it, amoxicillin, isn’t helping things. Drug makers didn’t make sufficient quantities of the bubblegum pink antibiotic.
Strep, short for Streptococcus, typically causes a bacterial infection that typically leads to a sore throat, fever, and swollen tonsils. It typically affects school-aged children but can also be contracted by adults.
This year, the CDC is tracking an especially invasive form of the bacteria, appropriately enough named invasive group A strep.
TODAY’S STATISTICS
Now here are the daily statistics for Tuesday, April 11.
As of Tuesday morning, the world has recorded 685.1 million Covid-19 cases, an increase of 0.1 million from the previous day, and 6.84 million deaths, according to Worldometer, a service that tracks such information. In addition, 657.9 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 Tuesday at press time is 20,327,996, a decrease of 29,000. Out of that figure, 99.8%, or 20,288,342 are considered mild, and 0.2%, or 39,654, are listed as critical. The percentage of cases considered critical has not changed over the past five months.
The United States reported 120,530 new cases in the period March 30 through April 5, a figure that is down 23% 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 1,773, a figure that is down 22%. The average number of hospital admissions from Covid was 5,396 on April 3, a figure that is down 8% over the preceding 14 days. Finally, the test positivity rate is 6.4%, down 6% over the 14 days preceding April 7.
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 Tuesday, 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 531,000.
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 just over 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 Tuesday, 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 164,686 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.
Anna Breuer contributed reporting to this story.
(Photo: Accura Media Group)
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