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Good morning. This is Jonathan Spira reporting. Here now the news of the pandemic from across the globe on the 1,156th day of the pandemic.
OP-ED ON THURSDAY
As of Thursday, the public health emergency in the United States is officially over, but that is a bureaucratic and administrative change that doesn’t at all imply the pandemic has suddenly come to an end. Indeed, there is no real mechanism for declaring an end to a pandemic or an epidemic. It just happens retrospectively when certain data points are hit.
It’s worthy of note that, over the past week, the country’s effective reproductive number – referred to as R 0 or R naught – an epidemiological metric that estimates the average number of people each infected person passes the virus to, is currently above 1. R 0 should vary between <1 if the disease is controlled or not spreading too quickly. If R 0 is 1, then one person is capable of spreading to one other person on average.
The test positivity rate is currently at 5.3, which means that over 5% of all coronavirus tests report that the patient is positive for the virus.
“I can’t believe it. Are you sure the war is over,” a puzzled and skeptical sounding Major Hochstetter (portrayed by Howard Caine) says to someone he believes is a German general but is really Corporal Peter Newkirk (Richard Dawson), in episode 83 of “Hogan’s Heroes,” titled War Takes a Holiday. Newkirk is a prisoner in Stalag 13 who regularly intercepts the camp’s inbound and outbound communications. “Sure, I’m sure,” he says in an exaggerated German accent. “Don’t you think I know when the war is over?”
The prisoners of Stalag 13 may have been able to pull a fast one over Colonel Klink and Major Hochstetter and President Joseph Biden may have declared that “[t]he pandemic is over” last summer, but there was an average of over 600 deaths per day in the period from April 27 through May 5 of this year and over 120,000 new reported cases each day. In the United States alone, the pandemic continues to claim over 1,000 lives per week.
Clearly we are in a much better place now than we were three years ago or even when the president, at the Detroit Auto Show, prematurely declared the pandemic’s end. In some respects, what we have now may not even meet the full definition of “pandemic” but we also lack a word to describe the situation, so pandemic it is and pandemic it will be for the foreseeable future.
Eventually, it will be a predictable endemic disease but the end of the global public health emergency is unsettling as we are confined between these two classifications.
Just like television views in the Golden Age of television heard at the end of many programs, “To be continued Next Week! Same time. Same channel.”
In other news we cover today, a pandemic memorial opened at Green-Wood Cemetery in New York City, the Big Apple will continue to operate its Long Covid treatment centers even after the public health emergency ends, and health experts say that the extreme heat wave in Asia will result in high excess morbidity.
LONG COVID
New York City will continue to operate its three Long Covid centers – one each in Brooklyn, Queens, and the Bronx – after the end of the public health emergency, and continue to treat patients with the condition. In addition, NYU Langone and Mount Sinai hospitals will also continue to operate their Long Covid centers as well.
UNITED STATES
While the end of the public health emergency will mean the end of free care and services for many, New York City plans to keep distributing free at-home coronavirus test kits at libraries and other locations while supplies last. The city’s public hospitals will continue to provide low-cost or free care to an estimated 200,000 people without health insurance in the city, as it does for other illnesses, and vaccinations against SARS-CoV-2 will remain free for almost all New Yorkers, because preventative services are covered by the Affordable Care Act, although it’s advisable to follow one’s insurance company requirements and guidelines in order to avoid any out-of-pocket costs. Finally, the city will continue to operate its Vaccine finder website to help people locate facilities and make appointments for their jab.
Also in New York City, a new memorial at Green-Wood Cemetery remembers the victims of the coronavirus pandemic. The memorial combines the dozens of memorials created in the spring of 2021 by “Naming the Lost Memorials,” a volunteer group of artists. The memorials, which had personalized photographs and drawings by family and friends of those lost to SARS-CoV-2, are now on display on the cemetery’s historic wrought-iron fence near its main entrance. People are welcome to add their own memorials alongside these.
OTHER HEALTHCARE NEWS
Women should start to get regular mammograms at age 40, the U.S. Preventive Services Task Force said earlier in the week, a reversal of a 2009 recommendation to wait until age 50. The group, comprised of volunteer primary care physicians, develops recommendations for clinical preventive services based on extensive reviews of the evidence of effectiveness of treatments.
Finally, extreme heat in Southeast Asia is likely to result in significant excess mortality. Laos, Thailand, Cambodia, and Vietnam all experienced temperature spikes, in some places of 110° F (43° C) for multiple days. The intersection of heat stress and pre-existing vulnerabilities is already starting to take its toll on the most vulnerable of the population, and the heat wave is coming at the same time that parts of the region are suffering from worryingly high levels of air pollution.
Climate historian Maximiliano Herrera said on social media that the episode is “one of the most brutal heat event[s] the world has ever witnessed,” adding that “records are being pulverized.”
TODAY’S STATISTICS
Now here are the daily statistics for Thursday, May 11.
As of Thursday morning, the world has recorded over 688.1 million Covid-19 cases, an increase of under 0.1 million from the previous day, and 6.87 million deaths, according to Worldometer, a service that tracks such information. In addition, 660.5 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 Thursday at press time is 20,728,550, a decrease of 25,000. Out of that figure, 99.8%, or 20,689,494, are considered mild, and 0.2%, or 39,056, are listed as critical. The percentage of cases considered critical has not changed over the past five months.
The United States reported 77,212630 new cases in the period April 27 through May 3, a figure that is down 22% 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 1,109, a figure that is down 11%. The average number of hospital admissions from Covid was 4,287 on May 10, a figure that is down 2% over the preceding 14 days. Finally, the test positivity rate is 5.3%, up 3% over the 14 days preceding May 7.
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 106.8 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 531,736.
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, 702,116, 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 33.8 million cases, South Korea, with just under 31.3 million cases, placing it in the number seven slot, and Italy, with 25.8 million, as number eight, as well as the United Kingdom, with over 24.5 million, and Russia, with 22.9 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 Thursday, 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 58,841 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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