At-home coronavirus test kits
Good morning. This is Jonathan Spira reporting. Here now the news of the pandemic from across the globe on the 1,163rd day of the pandemic.
In news we cover today, the WHO recommended that this year’s coronavirus vaccines target the XBB subvariants, some senior citizens have reported the receipt of multiple Covid test kits that they didn’t order but were billed to Medicare, and former U.K. Health Secretary Matt Hancock continues to remain in hot water over favoritism for Tory donors in issuing government pandemic-related contracts.
OP-ED ON THURSDAY
For the past three years, the World Health Organization has been one of the most mentioned global agencies in this space.
Now it’s time to give the World Meteorological Organization its due and it’s once again time to fasten your seatbelts as it’s going to be a bumpy and hot ride.
The WMO, which sadly does not form a TLA that is also a rock group, is warning that a warming El Niño is expected to develop in the coming months and will likely cause global temperatures to surge to record levels through 2027.
“A warming El Niño is expected to develop in the coming months, and this will combine with human-induced climate change to push global temperatures into uncharted territory,” said WMO Secretary-General Petteri Taalas in a statement.
The U.N. agency said on Wednesday that there is a 98% chance of at least one in the next five years beating the global temperature record set in 2016, a year when there was an exceptionally strong El Niño. The chances for the five-year mean for 2023-2027 to be the hottest on record are also 98%.
The WMO also said there is a 66% chance that the annual average near-surface global temperature the next five years will be more than 1.5° C (2.7° F) above pre-industrial levels for at least one year.
El Niño, literally “The Boy” in Spanish, is the warm phase of the El Niño-Southern Oscillation, or ENSO, and is associated with a band of warm ocean air that develops in the central and east-central equatorial Pacific between the International Date Line and 120° W, including the area of the western coast of South America. The ENSO is the cycle of warm and cold sea-surface temperatures of the tropical central and eastern Pacific Ocean.
While El Niño phases are known to last close to four years, records demonstrate that the cycles have lasted between two and seven years.
The ENSO cycle, which includes both El Niño and La Niña, causes global changes to temperature and rainfall.
In other news we cover today, the WHO recommended changes to coronavirus vaccines, Covid at-home test kits are new evidence of Medicare fraud, and new data shows a high degree of effectiveness of the smallpox/monkeypox vaccine.
UNITED STATES
The Department of Health and Human Services’ Office of Inspector General confirmed it has received numerous complaints from around the country about unsolicited coronavirus tests being billed to Medicare, indicating that a large number of Medicare numbers are accessible via the dark web. NPR reported that one person reported receiving 32 at-home test kits in a ten-day period as the benefit’s cut-off date neared. Morning News Brief Editorial Director Basilio Alferow reported having received four such kits. There were numerous other such reports as well, officials said.
In Pennsylvania, Allegheny County officials announced plans to end the county’s coronavirus vaccine requirements for new hires and employees, as well as its coronavirus leave plan that was implemented at the start of the pandemic in 2020.
GLOBAL
A World Health Organization advisory group recommended on Thursday that this year’s coronavirus booster shots be updated to target one of the currently dominant and circulating XBB variants.
The new formulations of the vaccine should aim to produce antibody responses to the XBB.1.5 or XBB.1.16 variants, the group said, adding that other formulations or platforms that achieve neutralizing antibody responses against XBB lineages could also be considered. The recommendations also state that coronavirus vaccines should no longer target the original virus because the virus no longer circulates in human beings and shots targeting the strain produce “undetectable or very low levels of neutralizing antibodies” against currently circulating variants.
Drug companies including Moderna and Pfizer-BioNTech are already developing versions of their respective vaccines targeting the latest XBB strains in circulation.
Meanwhile, in the United Kingdom, newly-released e-mails and text messages between Tory donors and former Health Secretary Matt Hancock show the extent to which the donors enjoyed ministerial access when the government was in the process of awarding coronavirus-related contracts.
The Guardian reported that two major donors to the Conservative Party, Mustafa Mohammed and Mohamed Amersi, had direct access to Hancock, and used it to promote companies offering coronavirus pandemic-related services with which they were involved. Amersi also had a phone meeting with James Bethell, a health minister at the time, in which he put forward projects with which he was connected.
OTHER HEALTHCARE NEWS
In the United States, new data from the CDC shows that two doses of monkeypox vaccine were 86% effective against infection, The data shows that one dose of the JYNNEOS vaccine was 75% effective and two doses of the vaccine were 86% effective, while among patients who are immunocompromised, one dose of the vaccine was 51% effective and two doses were 70.2% effective.
JYNNEOS is an attenuated, live, non-replicating smallpox and monkeypox vaccine that elicits humoral and cellular immune responses to orthopoxviruses
TODAY’S STATISTICS
Now here are the daily statistics for Thursday, May 18.
As of Thursday morning, the world has recorded 688.6 million Covid-19 cases, an increase of 0.1 million from the previous day, and over 6.87 million deaths, according to Worldometer, a service that tracks such information. In addition, over 660.9 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 20,774,591 20,754,297, an increase of 20,000. Out of that figure, 99.8%, or 20,736,054, are considered mild, and 0.2%, or 38,537, are listed as critical. The percentage of cases considered critical has not changed over the past eight months.
The United States reported 72,136 new cases in the period May 4 through May 10, a figure that is down 26% 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 840 , a figure that is down 20%. The average daily number of hospital admissions from Covid was 4,073 on May 15, a figure that is down 5% over the preceding 14 days. Finally, the test positivity rate is 5.2%, up 5% over the 14 days preceding May 11.
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, starting on May 15, the Morning News Brief has pressed pause on certain data sets as we assess the update of changes in reporting by U.S. health authorities at the CDC.
Since the start of the pandemic the United States has, as of Thursday, recorded over 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 531,814.
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 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, 702,421, has recorded over 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 31.5 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 just under 24.6 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 676.7 million. Breaking this down further, 92.23% 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, 20.5% of the same population, or just under 53 million people, has already received an updated or bivalent booster dose of vaccine, while 23.9 million people over the age of 65, or 43.3% 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 44,018 doses are now administered each day.
Meanwhile, only 29.9% 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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