Today is Dictionary Day.
Good morning. This is Jonathan Spira reporting. Here now the news of the pandemic from across the globe on the 1,129th day of the pandemic as well as Dictionary Day, the 195th anniversary of the publication of Webster’s American Dictionary of the English Language, the first major lexicon to include distinctly American words such as skunk, hickory, and chowder. Webster urged reforms in spelling, arguing that some conventions were needless and confusing. Examples of this included changing musick to music, centre to center, and plough to plow.
There’s more proof that the fat lady isn’t quite ready for her aria: Scientists at the Coronavirus Variants Rapid Response Network, known as CoVaRR-Net, are predicting a bump in Covid infections this spring. However, they are stressing that they don’t see signs of major evolutionary changes in the virus that would alter the course of the pandemic in the same manner that the omicron variant did in late 2021, when all hell broke loose after a good part of the world tried to wish the pandemic away.
“The current modelling suggests that it’s going to continue at this sort of relatively high level as people have waning immunity and as these variants adapt,” Fiona Brinkman, a professor of genomics and bioinformatics at Simon Fraser University, told the Globe and Mail this week.
In other news we cover today, a church is facing millions in fines over pandemic violations and the former head of the Chinese CDC said that there’s no evidence yet as to which animal the coronavirus moved from zoonotically.
UNITED STATES
A judge in California ordered Calvary Chapel San Jose to pay fines amounting to $1.2 million for violating Santa Clara County’s public health order that mandated mask wearing indoors in the early days of the pandemic. The church defied the county’s Public Health Department’s mask order during much of the first years of the pandemic and claimed that it was exempt on religious grounds.
The county sued and, on Wednesday, Judge Evettee Pennypacker, a Superior Court judge, sided with the county, noting that “culpability is plain.”
This is not the church’s only pandemic-related court case: The county separately filed suit over the church’s refusal to follow public health restrictions on indoor gatherings.
In Connecticut, Danbury Hospital said it will receive more than $2.6 million from the government to cover “unplanned expenses” relating to the pandemic.
Finally, in Idaho, the state’s two largest healthcare systems, St. Luke’s and Saint Alphonsus, said they have ended their universal masking requirements. The move came more than three years after the pandemic first reached the Gem State. Employees will don face masks at the request of patients and both patients and employees are welcome to wear them at any time. Masks will continue to be mandatory in infection-control settings such as the surgical theater.
GLOBAL
The former head of the Chinese Center for Disease Control and Prevention, George Gao, said Friday that there is no evidence yet that shows which animal the coronavirus might have jumped from zoonotically, speaking at a London summit on pandemic preparedness.
“Even now, people think some animals are the host or reservoir,” said Gao. “Cut a long story short, there is no evidence which animals (were) where the virus comes [from].”
TODAY’S STATISTICS
Now here are the daily statistics for Friday, April 14.
As of Friday morning, the world has recorded 685.5 million Covid-19 cases, an increase of 0.2 million from the previous day, and 6.84 million deaths, according to Worldometer, a service that tracks such information. In addition, 658.2 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 Friday at press time is 20,432,414, an increase of 38,000. Out of that figure, 99.8%, or 20,392,857are considered mild, and 0.2%, or 39,605, 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 10, 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 Friday, recorded just under 106.5 million cases, a higher figure than any other country, and a death toll of just under 1.16 million. India has the world’s second highest number of officially recorded cases, 44.8 million, and a reported death toll of 531,064.
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 39.8 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, 700,811, has recorded just under 37.4 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 just under 33.6 million cases, South Korea, with just under 31 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 over 22.7 million.
VACCINATION SPOTLIGHT
The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention said that, as of Thursday, 270.1 million people in the United States – or 81.4% – have received at least one dose of the coronavirus vaccine. Of that population, 69.4%, or 230.5 million people, have received two doses of vaccine, and the total number of doses that have been dispensed in the United States is now 674.7 million. Breaking this down further, 92.3% 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, 20.2% of the same population, or 52.2 million people, has already received an updated or bivalent booster dose of vaccine, while 23.3 million people over the age of 65, or 42.6% 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 Fridays 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 Friday, according to Our World in Data, an online scientific publication that tracks such information. So far, 13.37 billion doses of the vaccine have been administered on a global basis and 251,328 doses are now administered each day.
Meanwhile, only 29.3% 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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