An iHealth Covid test kit showing a negative coronavirus test result
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 the day of the Five Boro Bike Tour in New York City.
Today, tens of thousands of cyclists of various skill levels from beginner to advanced will gather from around the world to cycle through every borough of New York City on streets totally free of automobiles.
The tour starts in Lower Manhattan, then heads into the Bronx, crossing over to Queens and Brooklyn, then it ends on Staten Island. Despite the misspelling of “borough” in the official name, it’s great exercise and great fun and I speak from the personal experience of having done it once.
The global public emergency proclaimed by the World Health Organization in 2020 and caused by SARS-CoV-2 may be officially over but the pandemic will likely be with us for many years.
It’s true that the change in status reflects the fact that the acute phase of the coronavirus pandemic is now at an end. The virus itself, however, lives on.
Regular readers of this space will note that I yesterday discussed the possibility of another SARS-CoV-2 outbreak that will rival the omicron wave in illness and death. This is not a shot in the dark.
One leading virologist said that it appears that there’s as much of a 40% chance of this happening if not greater.
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 last week and came at the twilight of the public health emergency that was declared at the beginning of the pandemic in 2020.
It merits more than a passing mention that, at its peak, in January 2021, the global death rate had reached over 100,000 people per week. That figure is now approximately 3,500.
Immunity from both prior infection and inoculation is short-lived and the world has slackened in mandating vaccination as well as in keeping in place some restrictions that would prevent people from infecting each other.
This is why, scientists warn, another omicron-like wave is inevitable.
I was going to again quote what Rochelle Walensky, the outgoing director of the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention said at a Senate hearing last week concerning the need for governments to be nimble and to act swiftly but I much prefer what Betty Davis said in the 1950 American drama, “All About Eve,” which won a record 14 Academy Award nominations. [Editor’s note: The film also features Marilyn Monroe in one of her earliest roles.]
“Fasten your seat belts, it’s going to be a bumpy night.”
In other news we cover today, in the United States the FDA is recalling some at-home Covid test kits and the entire academic board of a major medical journal resigned en masse over high publication fees for authors.
UNITED STATES
The latest New York City Housing and Vacancy Survey shows that 1 in 4 New Yorkers, or some two million residents, lost at least one person – defined in the survey as a friend, family member, colleague or neighbor – to the virus, and more than 1 in 10 New Yorkers, almost 900,000 residents, lost three or more people.
New York City was the epicenter of the pandemic in the country at the dawn of the pandemic, and SARS-CoV-2 caused the city’s retail stores, restaurants, and entertainment venues including Broadway theaters to shut down in mid-March 2020.
Meanwhile, if you have a Pilot branded at-home Covid test kit, it may be contaminated.
The Food and Drug Administration issued a warning to consumers and healthcare providers to stop using and dispose of certain lots of recalled SD Biosensor Pilot Covid-19 At-Home Tests. The test kits were istributed by Roche Diagnostics.
The FDA said that it has significant concerns regarding potential bacterial contamination in the Pilot Covid-19 At-Home Test liquid solution that is provided in the test kit.
“Direct contact with the contaminated liquid solution may pose safety concerns and the bacterial contamination could impact the performance of the test,” the agency said in a statement.
OTHER HEALTHCARE NEWS
The entire academic board of the journal Neuroimage resigned en mass in protest of what they termed the “greed” of its publisher, Elsevier, a Dutch academic publishing company specializing in scientific, technical, and medical content. The former board members include professors from Oxford University, King’s College London, and Cardiff University and the resignations came after Elsevier refused to reduce publication charges.
Many academics applauded the move against what some say are the huge profit margins enjoyed by academic publishers. Neuroimage, a leading publication for brain-imaging research, no longer has a paywall but it charges authors over £2,700 ($3,413) to publish a paper. The now former editors say this fee is “unethical” and does not realistically represent the costs involved in publishing the journal.
Finally, cannabis-related emergency-room visits in New York State increased approximately 44% from 2019 to 2021, reaching nearly 84,000 visits statewide in 2021. The increase contributed contributing to the pandemic-era strain on hospitals. In an unrelated study, senior citizens in California are being treated in emergency rooms in significantly higher numbers for adverse side effects from cannabis consumption. The side-effects include dizziness and falling, palpitations, and panic attacks.
TODAY’S STATISTICS
Now here are the daily statistics for Sunday, May 7.
As of Sunday morning, the world has recorded 687.8 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, 660.2 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 Sunday at press time is 20,666,077 20,674,297, a decrease of 8,000. Out of that figure, 99.8%, or 20,626,954, are considered mild, and 0.2%, or 39,123, 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 Sunday, 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 531,680.
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 just under 22.9million.
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 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 171,526 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.
Paul Riegler contributed reporting to this story.
(Photo: Accura Media Group)
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