The set of “Harry Potter and the Cursed Child” in London’s West End
Good morning. This is Jonathan Spira reporting. Here now the news of the pandemic from across the globe on the 1,136th day of the pandemic. Yesterday was 420 (pronounced four-twenty and based on the U.S. format of month date year for dates), an international counterculture holiday based on the celebration and consumption of weed. For the life of me, I cannot figure out how I forgot to mention it, but I digress…
To be filed under “things we really shouldn’t have to tell you,” the U.S. Food and Drug Administration is reminding people not to put eye drops containing amniotic fluid, well, into your eyes.
What is amniotic fluid, I hear you all cry? Why, it’s nothing more than fetal urine, at least after week ten. Prior to that, it’s a variety of fetal and maternal excretions and secretions.
The FDA has found at least two companies selling eye drops with amniotic fluid – Regener-Eyes and M2 Biologics – and sent warning letters to both.
If you want to use such ingredients, you might be better off consulting Shakespeare, not your local chemist’s shop.
The image of a witch toiling over a bubbling cauldron filled with less conventional and non-FDA approved ingredients is present in “Macbeth,” specifically in Act IV, with the “Double, double toil and trouble” speech by three witches representing evil, darkness, chaos, and conflict. They list dozens of ingredients that include eye of newt, the tongue of a dog (with apologies to Snickers the Wonderdog), and the scale of a dragon (good luck finding that one).
In other news we cover today, several physicians in the United States stole hundreds of millions of dollars in pandemic funds, masks are back at a Bay Area hospital, and the newest omicron sublineage may cause pinkeye.
UNITED STATES
A Bay Area hospital has reinstated its mask mandate after an outbreak of SARS-CoV-2 among staff and patients. Kaiser Permanente Santa Rosa Medical Center issued a memorandum saying that all doctors and staff must don masks while providing direct care to patients in the Santa Rosa hospital and emergency department. The facility has approximately 3,500 healthcare workers.
Further south, health officials in Los Angeles reported the first cases of the XBB.1.6 sublineage of the omicron variant. XBB.1.16 was first detected in India, where it is causing a surge in cases there. This latest subvariant has been linked to a rare Covid-19 symptom, conjunctivitis.
Eighteen people, including several physicians, submitted hundreds of millions of dollars in fraudulent healthcare claims for reimbursement.
In an action that spanned nine federal judicial districts, the Department of Justice criminally charged the 18 with undertaking fraudulent schemes that “exploit the Covid pandemic,” the agency said.
In California, Anthony Hao Dinh, a physician, was charged with submitting approximately $230 million in fraudulent claims to the federal Health Resources and Services Administration’s Covid-19 Uninsured Program. Some of the claims Dinh submitted were for services that were not rendered or deemed not medically necessary, prosecutors said. Dinh also billed the program for the treatment of patients who were insured.
Also in California, Lourdes Navarro, a laboratory owner, has submitted more than $358 million in false claims for lab testing to Medicare and to a private insurance company, prosecutors said.
Meanwhile, Dinh and two other individuals were charged with having submitted more than 70 fraudulent loan applications that obtained more than $3 million under the federal Paycheck Protection Program and Economic Injury Disaster Loan Program.
TODAY’S STATISTICS
Now here are the daily statistics for Friday, April 21.
As of Friday morning, the world has recorded 686.3 million Covid-19 cases, an increase of almost 0.2 million from the previous day, and over 6.85 million deaths, according to Worldometer, a service that tracks such information. In addition, 658.8 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 20,607,100, an increase of 80,000. Out of that figure, 99.8%, or 20,567,588, are considered mild, and 0.2%, or 39,512, are listed as critical. The percentage of cases considered critical has not changed over the past five months.
The United States reported 101,445 new cases in the period April 6 through April 12, a figure that is down 26% 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 13%. The average number of hospital admissions from Covid was 4,778 on April 20, a figure that is down 13% over the preceding 14 days. Finally, the test positivity rate is 5.9%, down 7% over the 14 days preceding April 17.
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 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, over 44.8 million, and a reported death toll of 531,258.
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, 701,215, has recorded 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 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 under 22.8 million.
VACCINATION SPOTLIGHT
The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention said that, as of Thursday, 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 230.5 million people, have received two doses of vaccine, and the total number of doses that have been dispensed in the United States is now 675 million. Breaking this down further, 92.2% of the population over the age of 18 – or 238 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 52.1 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.
For the week ending April 20, 2023, the CDC made slight adjustments downward in several of the data points we include here, although the total number of doses increased by 0.3 million.
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 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 240,086 doses are now administered each day.
Meanwhile, only 29.5% 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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