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Good morning. This is Jonathan Spira reporting. Here now the news of the pandemic from across the globe on the 1,139th day of the pandemic.
To save you the trouble of scrolling up, I will confirm before you continue to read that this is the Coronavirus Morning News Brief, a scientific publication steeped in reason and fact, not the Onion or the Postillon.
A doctor who contended that vaccinated people become magnetized is now, perhaps not unsurprisingly, facing suspension of her license by the State Medical Board of Ohio.
To review, Tenpenny, whose views could just as well be that Jewish space lasers interface with coronavirus vaccines, had her 15 minutes of fame after testifying to state lawmakers in June 2021 that coronavirus vaccinations made people magnetic.
“I’m sure you’ve seen the pictures all over the Internet of people who have had these shots and now they’re magnetized,” Tenpenny said in the course of her testimony. “You can put a key on their forehead [and] it sticks. You can put spoons and forks all over and they can stick because now we think there is a metal piece to that.”
Tenpenny didn’t stop there, however. She said there may be an “interface – yet to be defined” between the components of the vaccines and “all of the 5G towers,” noting that the connection is “not proven yet” but that “we’re trying to figure [it] out.”
The good doctor has now refused to cooperate with the medical board’s investigation, which is why she is likely to see her license taken away by magnets and posted on a 5G tower where she cannot reach it. Or perhaps she will be able to if she were to get vaccinated, because then she too would be magnetized.
In other news we cover today, the U.S. death toll from Covid is at its lowest point since late March 2020, the CDC has made its website more user-focused and data drive, and Mexico’s president contracted SARS-CoV-2 for the third time.
UNITED STATES
The number of deaths from SARS-CoV-2 hit a new low. An estimated, 1,160 Americans died from the virus this past week, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention reported.
The reported figure is the lowest since late March 2020, close to the onset of the pandemic. The next lowest point was the week of March 18, 2020, during which 169 people died from Covid.
Meanwhile, the CDC announced last week multiple changes as part of its overhaul with a stated goal to make strides in releasing data on a timely basis and retraining staff to ensure a nimble response to future crises.
Speaking at a Kaiser Family Foundation event last week, CDC Director Rochelle Walensky said that the agency’s website has been redesigned and overhauled in order to make it more user-focused and data driven. In addition, the CDC will reduce the amount of time it takes by 50% to complete scientific reviews of data.
In addition, the CDC, Walensky said, will strive to get ahead of potential misinformation that might arise in response to reports or data being released with a communications strategy to “set the stage” and anticipate that.
GLOBAL
The World Health Organization named the fast-growing omicron sublineage XBB.1.16 as a new variant of interest. What’s more worrisome is that the WHO said that XBB.1.16 is outcompeting XBB.1.5, the previously dominant sublineage, in many parts of the world.
The reason that XBB.1.16 is more concerning than predecessors is because it’s a descendant of the recombinant XBB, which itself is a recombination of two BA.2 sublineages.
XBB.1.16 is, as we’ve reported in recent days, surging in India. It is the dominant variant there and causing a wave of mostly mild illness although the death toll there has had an uptick. It’s also been confirmed in 32 other countries, including the United States, where it currently comprises 10% of all new cases.
Despite this, the WHO says that overall risk from this sublineage is low. Research over the past year has taught us that the question of whether a subvariant will cause a wave of cases in a country depends on the overall immunity of the population as well as which subvariant was last dominant there.
Meanwhile, south of the border in Mexico, Presidente Andrés Manuel López Obrador said on Sunday that he had tested positive for SARS-CoV-2. This is the third time he has had Covid. Although he said that he was not seriously ill, he did add that he would take a few days off.
López Obrador, who is 69, had a serious heart attack in 2013 and reported mild symptoms from both of his previous bouts of Covid at the height of the pandemic.
“It’s not serious,” he wrote on his official Twitter account. “My heart is at 100%.”
TODAY’S STATISTICS
Now here are the daily statistics for Monday, April 24.
As of Monday morning, the world has recorded just under 686.6 million Covid-19 cases, an increase of 0.1 million from the previous day, and 6.86 million deaths, according to Worldometer, a service that tracks such information. In addition, 659.1 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 Monday at press time is 20,593,135, an increase of 28,000. Out of that figure, 99.8%, or 20,553,650, are considered mild, and 0.2%, or 39,485, 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 Monday, recorded 106.5 million cases, a higher figure than any other country, and a death toll of 1.16 million. India has the world’s second highest number of officially recorded cases, 44.9 million, and a reported death toll of 531,345.
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 39.9 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 over 33.6 million cases, South Korea, with 31.1 million cases, placing it in the number seven slot, and Italy, with over 25.7 million, as number eight, as well as the United Kingdom, with over 24.5 million, and Russia, with 22.8 million.
VACCINATION SPOTLIGHT
The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention said that, as of the past 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 Monday, 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 97,338 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.
Paul Riegler contributed reporting to this story
(Photo: Accura Media Group)
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