The Rippowan River runs through Downtown Stamford.
Good morning. This is Jonathan Spira reporting. Here now the news of the pandemic from across the globe on the 1,150th day of the pandemic as well as several odd “holidays,” if you would, including International No Diet Day, National Crêpes Suzette Day, and National Homebrew Day, so have at it.
Regular readers know they can count on this space for a sobering look at what’s to come in the world of the coronavirus pandemic.
It appears that there’s as much of a 40% chance if not more that, within the coming two years, we will see a SARS-CoV-2 outbreak that will rival the omicron wave in illness and death.
The White House spoke with leading virologists and epidemiologists about whether the virus would once again develop new mutations that would allow it to evade current immunity from vaccines and treatments. These meetings were first reported by the Washington Post and came at the twilight of the public health emergency that was declared at the beginning of the pandemic in 2020.
No one at the White House or the World Health Organization, for that matter, believes that the pandemic is over and no one believes that the chances of such a virulent wave are tiny or infinitesimal. On the other hand, such a wave is also not a certainty, either.
If there’s anything we’ve learnt from the current situation, it’s that we have to be far more responsive, we need to be nimble, and we have to be able to pivot on a dime using the learnings we’ve acquired over the period 2020 through 2023 and not do what we did in late 2019 and early 2020, which was effectively nothing
Officials in the federal government and at national health agencies have emphasized the need to take heed and guard against the next viral threat, whatever it may be, even if we are “over” the coronavirus pandemic.
To wit…
“One of my biggest worries is that we are losing time in preparing for the next pandemic,” said Dawn O’Connell, assistant secretary for preparedness and response at the Department of Health and Human Services, a Senate committee hearing on Thursday.
Meanwhile, Rochelle Walensky, the director of the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention who announced on Friday that she was stepping down from her position, told the committee that the CDC continues to face numerous challenges including limitations on the collection of data from hospitals and local health departments concerning potential viral outbreaks.
“We can’t act swiftly, nimbly, robustly if we can’t see what is happening from a data standpoint,” Walensky said.
In other news we cover today, CDC Director Dr. Rochelle Walensky is leaving the agency, the WHO declared an end to the Covid emergency but not to the pandemic itself, and the CDC said it is changing what pandemic-related data it will be able to report in the future.
UNITED STATES
Dr. Rochelle Walensky said she would be stepping down as director of the CDC in June, the agency said on Friday. The decision came, after two plus years in the position, as the Biden administration plans to end the national emergency status around the pandemic on May 11, just hours after the World Health Organization announced that the crisis – but not the pandemic itself – was over.
Connecticut officials are enacting legislation that will permit pharmacist sin the state as well as their technicians to be allowed to provide coronavirus tests and vaccinations. The move comes as the authority currently granting them the authority to do so now will end on May 11 when the federal pandemic emergency order expires.
Finally, the CDC earlier his week unveiled a scaled-down Covid-19 surveillance system for the post-pandemic emergency era. The CDC will continue to monitor the pandemic based on emergency room visits, Covid hospitalizations, and wastewater surveillance from local sewage plants. It will also tally reliable statistics on Covid-related deaths, although that information will lag behind other data.
GLOBAL
The World Health Organization on Friday declared an end to the Covid-19 emergency. While the WHO did not say that the pandemic itself was over, it does signal that what was one of the most deadly and economically devastating pandemics in modern history is receding.
Meanwhile, in Hong Kong, the number of fatal and severe Covid-19 cases in Hong Kong last week was almost double the figure that had been recorded in the previous seven days, health authorities there said. The numbers, health officials cautioned, can be misleading because the frequency of testing has declined greatly and only Covid cases with serious symptoms are coming forward.
TODAY’S STATISTICS
Now here are the daily statistics for Saturday, May 6.
As of Saturday morning, the world has recorded 687.7 million Covid-19 cases, an increase of 0.1 million from the previous day, and 6.87 million deaths, according to Worldometer, a service that tracks such information. In addition, 660.1 million people worldwide have recovered from the virus, an increase of under 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 20,674,297, a decrease of 23,000. Out of that figure, 99.8%, or 20,635,103, are considered mild, and 0.2%, or 39,194, are listed as critical. The percentage of cases considered critical has not changed over the past five months.
The United States reported 88,210 new cases in the period April 20 through April 26, a figure that is down 13% 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 1,052, a figure that is down 20%. The average number of hospital admissions from Covid was 4,198 on May 2, a figure that is down 15% over the preceding 14 days. Finally, the test positivity rate is 5.1%, down 14% over the 14 days preceding April 28.
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 over 106.7 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, just under 45 million, and a reported death toll of 531,659.
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 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, 701,833, has recorded 37.5 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 33.8 million cases, South Korea, with over 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 over 22.8 million.
VACCINATION SPOTLIGHT
The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention said that, as of the past 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, 69.5%, or 230.6 million people, have received two doses of vaccine, and the total number of doses that have been dispensed in the United States is now 676 million. Breaking this down further, 92.2% 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 204.3 million people – is fully vaccinated. In addition, 20.3% of the same population, or 52.6 million people, has already received an updated or bivalent booster dose of vaccine, while 23.5 million people over the age of 65, or 42.9% 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 Saturday, 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 110,352 doses are now administered each day.
Meanwhile, only 29.8% 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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