The Old Senate Chamber in the Capitol
Good morning. This is Jonathan Spira reporting. Here now the news of the pandemic from across the globe on the 1,142nd day of the pandemic. Today would also have been the 56th birthday of our company’s and, indirectly the Morning News Brief’s, co-founder, Greg Spira, my brother, who succumbed in 2011 to polycystic kidney disease, also known as PKD.
Simply put, PKD is a genetic disorder in which the renal tubules become structurally abnormal. This results in the development and growth of multiple cysts within the kidney and the cysts can grow quite large and crush nearby normal tubules, thereby rendering them non-functional and causing kidney failure.
The condition is a particularly insidious one.
Just within my short lifetime, Greg, my mother, her brother (my uncle), her mother (my grandmother), and one cousin all died of complications from PKD. Only Greg and my mother had had life-saving kidney transplants. Greg’s transplant ultimately reached its expiration date and caused complications while my mother died at the age of 83 with her transplant still functional.
While I thankfully do not have PKD, I do suffer from kidney stones (this kept me from being a kidney donor to Greg) and my Long Covid condition resulted in a diagnosis of acute renal failure last year.
There is a lot known about PKD but there is no cure. The same cannot be said for Long Covid: Very little is known and many people who have it don’t even know, nor do their physicians.
To that end, I helped establish the Center for Long Covid Research to serve as a voice for those with Long Covid and to put accurate and authoritative information and research front and center.
You can learn more about Long Covid and support the work of the Center with a contribution at www.longcov.org
In other news we cover today, face masks are making a return in schools in Malaysia, some wild rats in New York City’s sewers have Covid, and China is seeing a resurgence of Covid cases.
UNITED STATES
Perhaps to no one’s surprise, researchers reported that some wild rats in urban areas are infected with SARS-CoV-2. A study by scientists at the University of Missouri found that 16% of wild rats captured in two trapping sessions in New York City wastewater in the fall of 2021 tested positive for the virus. Given that most rats will refuse to don face masks (yes this is a metaphor), it’s likely that the percentage of wild rats in New York City carrying the coronavirus has increased somewhat since then.
“Our work in this space shows that animals can play a role in pandemics that impact humans, and it’s important that we continue to increase our understanding so we can protect both human and animal health,” said Professor Henry Wan, director of the Center for Influenza and Emerging Infectious Diseases at the University of Missouri.
Since cats have also been found to carry the virus, it’s unlikely that the Big Apple would release members of the species felis catus into the vast underground sewer network.
Meanwhile, AstraZeneca’s CEO said that the company is moving quickly to launch its new antiviral, LAAB or Long Acting Anti-Body, later this year, subject to trial readouts and regulatory reviews. An estimated 2% of the global population – which translates into 140 million people – is considered at increased risk of an inadequate response to current coronavirus vaccinations and therefore could benefit from monoclonal antibodies for protection against the virus.
LAAB was granted conditional marketing approval for the treatment of SARS-CoV-2 in Thailand in the fall of 2022.
Meanwhile, speaking of rats, the House Select Subcommittee on the Coronavirus Pandemic interviewed the president of the American Federation of Teachers, Randi Weingarten, for her role in the closing and subsequent reopening of schools at the height of the pandemic.
Republican members of the committee cited Weingarten’s lack of medical knowledge in connection with language she provided to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention on how to proceed with school closures and protect immunocompromised teachers.
“We knew that remote education was not a substitute for opening schools, but we also knew that people had to be safe,” Weingarten said during the hearing.
“It made sense to consult with the CDC. And it was not only appropriate for the CDC to confer with educators, it would be irresponsible not to.”
GLOBAL
Here we go again. China is seeing a significant rise in cases of SARS-CoV-2.
The percentage of people testing positive rose to 1.7% on April 20, up a full percentage point from 0.7 per cent three weeks earlier.
Healthcare experts there say it’s unclear how serious this outbreak will be, but many believe that it is unlikely to have a major impact on the country’s economic recovery.
Malaysia’s health ministry is planning to reintroduce a mask mandate in schools. The country’s health minister, Dr. Zaliha Mustafa, said that the move was to avoid the resurgence of the coronavirus amidst the appearance of the highly-contagious XBB.1.16 sublineage of the omicron variant.
OTHER HEALTHCARE NEWS
A new malaria vaccine was approved by two countries and more nations are likely to follow. An estimated 619,000 people died of malaria in 2021, the latest year for which annual figures are publicly available. The new vaccine was developed at Oxford University and given the green light by drug regulators in Ghana and Nigeria. This will be the second vaccine on the market. The first, cleverly named Mosquirix, was rolled out in 2019 and comes from drugmaker GSK. Malaria is a mosquito-borne disease that can cause jaundice, comas, and death. Initial symptoms include fever, fatigue, vomiting, and headache.
TODAY’S STATISTICS
Now here are the daily statistics for Thursday, April 27.
As of Thursday morning, the world has recorded 686.7 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, 659.2 million people worldwide have recovered from the virus, an increase of less than 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 Thursday at press time is 20,568,705, a decrease of 18,000. Out of that figure, 99.8%, or 20,529,297, are considered mild, and 0.2%, or 39,408, are listed as critical. The percentage of cases considered critical has not changed over the past five months.
The United States reported 94,140 new cases in the period April 13 through April 19, 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 1,160, a figure that is down 34%. The average number of hospital admissions from Covid was 4,569 on April 24, a figure that is down 13% over the preceding 14 days. Finally, the test positivity rate is 5.4%, down 12% over the 14 days preceding April 21.
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 Thursday, recorded just under 106.6 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 531,369.
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 Thursday, 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 269,353 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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