San Francisco skyline at night
Good morning. This is Jonathan Spira reporting. Here now the news of the pandemic from across the globe on the 1,145thday of the pandemic and Eeyore’s Birthday.
Where is Saint Walpurgis when you need her the most?
For the uninitiated, Walpurga was an Anglo-Saxon missionary to the Frankish empire. She was canonized on May 1, 870 by Adrian II. Sankt Walpurgisnacht, or Saint Walpurgis Night, is the name for her the eve of her feast day, which in the Medieval period coincided with May Day. Her feast is no longer celebrated on that day but the name is still used to connote the night before May 1.
Walpurga was hailed by the Christians of Germany for battling “epidemics such as pest, rabis, and whooping cough, as well as against witchcraft,” according to a contemporary publication of Goethe’s poem Die erste Walpurgisnacht, which was famously set to music by Felix Mendelsohn as a secular cantata.
The Walpurgisnacht is observed in Northern and Central Europe with bonfires to ward off witches and evil spirits and plagues. Given that we are past the third year mark with the SARS-CoV-2 plague and nothing else has managed eradicated it, may I humbly suggest, dear reader, that you light a bonfire tonight?
In other news we cover today, it appears San Francisco may be one of the slowest recovering cities and China continues to report an uptick in new cases as it approaches the Labour Day holiday.
UNITED STATES
The city of San Francisco continues to struggle with its recovery from the darkest days of the pandemic. Thanks to how the tech industry and other companies have embraced telecommuting, downtown has seen a return of people stuck at one-third of pre-pandemic levels. The figures come from a new study from the Institute of Government Studies at the University of California that uses mobile phone data as a measure. San Francisco is at the very bottom of a list of 50 major cities and is immediately preceded by Portland, Indianapolis, Calgary, and Seattle, with 37%, 38%, 43%, and 44%, respectively. The top five on the list are San Diego, Baltimore, Columbus, Las Vegas, and New York City with 99%, 95%, 93%, 79% and 74%, respectively.
GLOBAL
The Chinese Centers for Disease Control and Prevention said on Sunday that there has been an “upward trend” in new Covid cases as the country approaches the Labour Day holiday.
Experts believe that the risk of infection remains low despite the increase, thanks to the immunity provided by previous infections and vaccinations.
TODAY’S STATISTICS
Now here are the daily statistics for Sunday, April 30.
As of Sunday morning, the world has recorded 687.1 million Covid-19 cases, a figure that is largely unchanged from the previous day, and 6.86 million deaths, according to Worldometer, a service that tracks such information. In addition, 659.6 million people worldwide have recovered from the virus, a figure that is also largely unchanged from the prior 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 Sunday at press time is 20,593,000, a decrease of 27,000. Out of that figure, 99.8%, or 20,553,693, are considered mild, and 0.2%, or 39,307, 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 Sunday, recorded 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 531,508.
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 just under 40 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, 701,494, 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 33.7 million cases, South Korea, with just under 31.2 million cases, placing it in the number seven slot, and Italy, with just under 25.8 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, just over 270 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 675.4 million. Breaking this down further, 92.2% of the population over the age of 18 – or 238.1 million people – has received at least a first inoculation and 79.1% of the same group – or 204.3 million people – is fully vaccinated. In addition, 20.3% of the same population, or 52.3 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 Thursdays by 8 p.m. EDT, a statement on the agency’s website said.
Some 70% of the world population has received at least one dose of coronavirus vaccine by Sunday, according to Our World in Data, an online scientific publication that tracks such information. So far, 13.38 billion doses of the vaccine have been administered on a global basis and 230,400 doses are now administered each day.
Meanwhile, only 29.7% 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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