A Louis Vuitton Petit Damier scarf
Good morning. This is Jonathan Spira reporting. Here now the news of the pandemic from across the globe on the 1,131st day of the pandemic as well as Easter Sunday in accordance with the Julian calendar used by much of Eastern Orthodoxy. 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.
China, home to the original epicenter of SARS-CoV-2, has mandated face masks on public transit since the start of the pandemic. It apparently now believes that the virus is no longer at a level serious enough to be a threat to humans. On the heels of that announcement, Beijing’s public transit authority ended the mandatory mask mandate for passengers starting Sunday.
The pandemic is coming to an end, said Wu Zunyou, chief epidemiologist at the Chinese Center for Disease Control and Prevention, according to the China Daily. Wu based his comment on data from the World Health Organization, he said.
So far, however, the positivity rate in the country for the current month is up a bit, but not enough to be of concern apparently. Still, as noted so many times before in this space, the virus tends to surprise us and Dena Dietrich said so many times on American television, “It’s not nice to fool Mother Nature.”
In other news we cover today, researchers are investigating zoonotic diseases to better understand the threat to humans, luxury goods are selling well in post-lockdown China, and some actors and sports figures are getting caught in conspiracy theories about their death and coronavirus vaccinations.
UNITED STATES
In various parts of the country, researchers have been testing wild animals for Covid in an effort to learn more about how the virus spreads and mutates. USA Readers of this space know that zoonotic diseases such as SARS-CoV-2 and monkeypox are on the rise and researchers are attempting to better understand the threat to both the human and animal population. USA Today reported that a U.S. Department of Agriculture biologist, working with a team of researchers, located bear dens and gently sedated the bears in order to swab them for PCR tests. Elsewhere, scientists have examined domestic animals such as cats and dogs, minks on mink farms, where infections spread like wildfire; and white-tailed and mule deer among other animals.
GLOBAL
In China, luxury shoppers have returned with a vengeance, after the country’s draconian lockdowns that curbed shopping activity ended in December. While all luxury goods retailers apparently doing well, Hermès and LVMH Moët Hennessy Louis Vuitton both reported stellar results for the first quarter of 2023, led by sales in the Chinese market.
ENTERTAINMENT
The death last month of actor Lance Reddick of natural causes is now getting swept up in so-called “died suddenly” social media fringe lunatic movement. The actor, best known for his roles in “The Wire,” “Bosch,” “Lost,” and “Oz,” among others, died of a heart condition according to the medical examiner but rumors swirled around Twitter, as they had after the deaths of the athlete Victoria Lee and the cardiac arrest of Buffalo Bills football player Damar Hamlin, that it was caused by the coronavirus vaccine.
The so-called movement takes its name from “Died Suddenly,” a 2022 American anti-vaccine propaganda film produced by Stew Peters that promotes false claims about coronavirus vaccines.
TODAY’S STATISTICS
Now here are the daily statistics for Saturday, April 16.
As of Saturday morning, the world has recorded over 685.6 million Covid-19 cases, an increase of 0.5 million from the previous day, and 6.84 million deaths, according to Worldometer, a service that tracks such information. In addition, 658.4 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 Saturday at press time is 20,431,323, a decrease of 12,000. Out of that figure, 99.8%, or 20,391,785 are considered mild, and 0.2%, or 39,538, 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 Saturday, 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 531,114.
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 39.9 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 Saturdays 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 Saturday, 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 238,508 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.
Paul Riegler contributed reporting to this story.
(Photo: Accura Media Group)
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