Coronavirus Daily News Brief – April 19: Man Dies After 613 Days With Covid, U.S. States Need No Longer Post SARS-CoV-2 Hospitalization Data
Street scene: A sign for a hotel in the West Village in Manhattan
Good afternoon. This is Jonathan Spira, director of research at the Center for Long Covid Research, reporting. Here now the news of the pandemic from across the globe on its 1,500th day.
In news we cover today, U.S. states are no longer required to post Covid hospitalization data after the end of April, a Dutch man died after setting a record for having the longest lasting SARS-CoV-2 case on record, and the disappearance of new pandemic-related data continues.
WHERE HAS ALL THE DATA GONE?
We regret to inform that, as of April 15, 2024, the Global Daily Statistics data in the Coronavirus Daily News Brief are no longer being updated. Over the past 15 months, as more and more politicians and governments sought to place SARS-CoV-2 in the rear-view mirror, pandemic data reporting sputtered out and we are now at the point where it is simply not feasible to provide statistically valid case data on a global scale.
We are developing potential new and authoritative sources that we will present once they have been properly vetted, so stay tuned to this space. In the meantime, our Long Covid and pandemic coverage will remain much the same.
TODAY IN COVID HISTORY
On April 19, 2020, health officials in the United States reported that some Covid-19 patients were also experiencing kidney failure as a result of contracting the virus, leading to a shortage of dialysis machines, fluids, and supplies.
Then President Donald Trump called people who were protesting their states’ social distancing rules – which are in keeping with federal recommendations – “great people.”
Trump was asked if he was worried that his tweets about “liberating” Kentucky, Michigan, and Virginia might in any way helping to incite potential violence, as some governors had received death threats, and responded: “I’ve seen the people. I’ve seen interviews of the people. These are great people,” adding that they have cabin fever and they want their lives back.
Meanwhile, the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services, announced that nursing homes would be required to report to patients, their families and the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) when any coronavirus cases arise.
In Washington, D.C., then Vice President Mike Pence said that the White House task force overseeing the coronavirus pandemic believed that several large metro areas were stabilizing in terms of Covid cases.
“The New York metro area, including New Jersey, New York, Long Island, Connecticut, and Rhode Island all appear to be past their peak,” Pence said at a White House briefing. “The Detroit metro area also appears to be past its peak and is stable, New Orleans metro area actually is the most stable of all areas where we had a major metropolitan outbreak. The Denver metro area is [also] stable.”
In Afghanistan, dozens of staffers in the country’s presidential palace tested positive for the novel coronavirus, sending President Ashraf Ghani into isolation. Despite a national lockdown and ban on gatherings of more than five people, tens of thousands of people attended a funeral service for a Bangladeshi politician, gathering in the town of Sarail without facemasks or other protective gear.
In China, amidst accusations that the country has underreported the number of novel coronavirus infections, the government launched a testing program with an eye towards capturing the true scale of the outbreak there. The serological survey involved blood tests from sample groups to see if they would generate antibodies to fight the virus, a sign that they had had Covid-19.
Finally, the number of coronavirus cases across the globe stood on that date at 2.37 million, of which 612,415 have recovered, based on data compiled by the Coronavirus Morning News Brief. The death toll stood at 163,673.
With close to 80,000 fatalities, France, Italy, Spain, and the United Kingdom continued to account for 49% of the global death toll.
In the United States and its territories, the number of confirmed cases was 742,732, while the death toll stands at 39,660, roughly 5.25%.
Put differently, Belgium had the highest number of deaths per million members of the population, 490, followed by Andorra with 466, and Spain at 437. Italy, France, the United Kingdom, the Netherlands, and Switzerland had 391, 302, 237, 215 and 160 deaths per million respectively, while China, Germany, and the United States reported three, 54, and 120 deaths per million respectively.
LONG COVID
A recently published study in the journal Clinics suggests that HDL-C and ferritin are linked to an increased severity in Long Covid and may be markers for same.
The study, entitled “Reduced HDL-Cholesterol in Long Covid-19: A Key Metabolic Risk Factor Tied to Disease Severity,” examined health data from 88 patients across varying degrees of initial disease severity ranging from mild to moderate to severe) compared to a control group comprising 29 healthy individuals. HDL-C and ferritin emerged as leading predictors of disease severity.
UNITED STATES
The federal regulation that requires hospitals to report weekly Covid-19 hospitalizations will end after April 30, contributing even further to a data void for pandemic researchers.
California said on Thursday that it will stop posting weekly Covid hospitalization figures and other states are likely to follow.
California officials said they will continue to track SARS-CoV-2 test positivity and deaths and post that information on the dashboard, “at least in the short term,” state epidemiologist Dr. Erica Pan said on Tuesday at a briefing with the California Medical Association.
GLOBAL
A Dutch man who had SARS-CoV-2 for at least 613 days died at the age of 72.
Researchers at the Centre for Experimental and Molecular Medicine at the Amsterdam University Medical Center in the Netherlands said in a report released on April 18, 2024 the man had “the longest SARS-CoV-2 infection duration to date, although several cases of hundreds of days have been previously recorded.”
PANDEMIC STATISTICS
CURRENT U.S. COVID STATISTICS AT A GLANCE
In the United States, in the week ending April 13, 2024, the test positivity rate was, based on data released on April 19 from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention was 3.4%, and the trend in test positivity is -0.1% in the most recent week. Meanwhile, the percentage of emergency department visits that were diagnosed as SARS-CoV-2 was 0.4%, and the trend in emergency department visits is -19.9%.
The number of people admitted to hospital in the United States due to SARS-CoV-2 in the same 7-day period was 6,604, a figure that is down 13.8 % over the past 7-day period. Meanwhile, the percentage of deaths due to SARS-CoV-2 was 1.0%, a figure that is down 9.1% in the same period.
VACCINATION SPOTLIGHT
Some 70.6% of the world population has received at least one dose of coronavirus vaccine by Tuesday, according to Our World in Data, an online scientific publication that tracks such information. So far, 13.57 billion doses of the vaccine have been administered on a global basis and 8,385 doses are now administered each day.
Meanwhile, only 32.7% 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 beginning of vaccinations in North Korea in late September, 2023, Eritrea remains the only country in the world that has not administered vaccines in any significant number
Finally, as of April 14, 2024, only Turkmenistan in Central Asia is only state that has not reported any cases of SARS-CoV-2 infections whatsoever, although it is strongly suspected that the virus is present there. Meanwhile, the last territory in the world to have its first ever SARS-CoV-2 infection was Tokelau, a dependency of New Zealand that reported its first five cases on December 21, 2022.
=======================================
Anna Breuer contributed reporting to this issue.
The Coronavirus Daily News Brief is a publication of the Center for Long Covid Research. www.longcov.org
If you have Long Covid and need to talk to someone, call the Long Covid Patient Peer Counseling Phone Line, or HOPELINE. The HOPELINE is our free, confidential support and information service.
☏ 844 LONGCOV (844 566-4268)
(Photo: Accura Media Group)
