Written by rjs, MarketWatch 666
The news posted last week for the coronavirus 2019-nCoV (aka SARS-CoV-2), which produces COVID-19 disease, has been surveyed and some important articles are summarized here. The articles are more or less organized with general virus news and anecdotes first, then stories from around the US, followed by an increased number of items from other countries around the globe. Economic news related to COVID-19 is found here.
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Summary:
The number of new cases of Covid continues to decline briskly in most countries around the globe, despite the prevalence of more infectious strains in most regions. Deaths attributed to the virus are also falling, albeit not quite as rapidly.
In the US, new cases during the week ending June 5th were 34.0% lower than those recorded during the week ending May 29th, and were occurring at barely 5% of the rate we were seeing during the worst week of January; new US cases are also lower than any time over the history of the pandemic in the US after March 2020, before the virus really took hold in this country. Similarly, US deaths attributed to Covid-19 this week were down 30.4% from the prior week, and lower than any time after March 2020..
New Covid cases worldwide over the past week were 14.7% lower than the prior week, and down 46.1% from the late April peak; global deaths from the virus were 10.9% lower this week, and down 27.4% from the end of April. Again, lower cases and deaths in India, which still accounts for 31.2% of new cases worldwide, underpins the drop globally; India’s new cases were 32% lower this week than last, while their Covid deaths fell by 19% over the same period. New cases continue to rise in South America, with new cases in Brazil, Argentina, and Columbia accounting for more than 25% of the global total. New cases were also higher in a handful of southeast Asian countries.
We should also note that new cases in the UK are also now higher for the 3rd consecutive week, rising by 40% this week alone. The highly contagious Indian variant (now called “Delta”) is responsible for the latest surge there, as it has become the dominant strain, replacing the Kent strain (“Alpha”), which itself was said to be more than 50% more infectious than the original. Since vaccination rates in the UK are similar to those in the US, that should be a warning to us that we’re not out of the woods just yet.
The chart below from WorldoMeter shows the daily number of new cases for the US, updated through 05 June.
The graphics presented by Johns Hopkins have been changed to a new format. Global new cases, global deaths, and global cummulative vaccinations now all appear in a consolidated chart.
According to Johns Hopkins (first graph below), new cases globally have peaked. The same for global deaths (second graph below), while global vaccinations continue to increase (third graph below).
Note: We have not seen an explanation of the anomylous spike in deaths on June 2; it is suspicious that the spike is almost exactly 10x the number of deaths on June 1 – this raises the suspicion that the spike is simply a misplaced decimal point in the data. As long as that spike remains and the graphic display is as presently formated, the deaths graphic has little use in visually presenting trends without seeing the actual numbers.
Steven Hansen continues to summarize and link the latest news related to the pandemic every day, 7 days a week, plus displays over a dozen important graphics updated at least daily. The most recent article at the time this is published: 05 June 2021 Coronavirus Charts and News: Covering Headlines Today On Teen Vaccinations. Why It Will Be Two More Weeks To Understand Where The U.S. Stands On COVID Progress.
This article leads the daily newsletter from Global Economic Intersection every day. Newsletter subscription is free.
Here are the rest of the articles for the past week reviewed and summarized:
COVID-19 cases and deaths are down but rate of infection is the same as it was in December for unvaccinated – Coronavirus cases, deaths, and hospitalizations have been on the decline as more and more Americans get vaccinated against the virus, but rates have not shifted significantly for those unvaccinated,The Washington Post reported. More than 62% of US adults have had at least one shot of a COVID-19 vaccine, with over 51% being completely vaccinated. Out of the entire US population, 40.5% of all people are fully vaccinated, according to data from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. In an analysis, the Post found that if vaccinated people are removed from assessing the data, the case rate for unvaccinated Americans is similar to the case rate for all residents on December 31.In the past week, the US has averaged a little over 20,000 cases per day, the CDC reported. The Post found that the rate among those unvaccinated is 73% higher than figures being publicized. Their analysis found that in states with high unvaccinated populations, the pandemic is ongoing at the same pace it was during the last surge. Taking into account the adjustments for vaccinated people, cases are still going down but the national death rate would actually be the same as it was two months ago, while hospitalizations are as high as they were three months ago. Lynn Goldman, dean of the Milken Institute School of Public Health at George Washington University told the Post that unvaccinated people are mistakenly thinking it’s safe for them to not wear masks because the numbers are low. “It looks like fewer numbers, looks like it’s getting better, but it’s not necessarily better for those who aren’t vaccinated,” Goldman said.
COVID-19 Vaccine Breakthrough Infections –With the COVID-19 vaccine rollout continuing, there is an aspect of the vaccine that has not received much coverage in the mainstream media. Here is the report from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention: [ … ]As background, according to the CDC, as of April 30, 2021, approximately 101 million Americans have been fully vaccinated against the SARS-CoV-2 virus. Up to April 30, 2021, a total of 10,262 SARS-CoV-2 infections had been detected and reported in individuals that had been fully vaccinated from 46 states. This means that (at least) one out of every 9,842 vaccinated individuals has experienced a breakthrough COVID-19 infection in the United States. The data can be further broken down as follows:
- Females – 6,446 cases (63 percent)
- Median patient age – 58 with a range of 40 to 74 years
- Asymptomatic cases – 2,725 (27 percent)
- Hospitalizations – 995 (10 percent)
- Hospitalizations for other reasons – 289
- Deaths – 160 (2 percent)
- Deaths median age – 82 years
- Sequencing data available – 555 cases (5 percent)
- Infections with variants of concern (of the 555 cases) – 356 cases
While the number of breakthrough infections may appear to be relatively minor (unless you have the misfortune of being one of those who experiences COVID-19 after vaccinations), the CDC notes that there are at least three limitations to the data:
- 1.) the number of reported COVID-19 vaccine breakthrough cases is likely a substantial undercounting of all SARS-CoV-2 infections among fully vaccinated persons given that the national vaccine surveillance system relies on voluntary reporting.
- 2.) Many persons with vaccine breakthrough infections (particularly those who have mild cases or are asymptomatic) may not seek out testing.
- 3.) As noted above, SARS-CoV-2 sequencing data is only available for 555 cases or 5 percent of the total vaccine breakthrough cases reported to the CDC.
To confuse the issue further, beginning on May 1, 2020, the CDC transitioned from monitoring all COVID-19 vaccine breakthrough infections to investigating only the cases of patients that are either hospitalized or die since the CDC claims that these are the cases that are of the highest clinical and public health significance. This means that, ultimately, there will be no reporting of the actual COVID-19 vaccine breakthrough cases making it difficult for researchers to determine an accurate assessment of the vaccine’s effectiveness.Nonetheless, the CDC states that: “The number of COVID-19 cases, hospitalizations, and deaths that will be prevented among vaccinated persons will far exceed the number of vaccine breakthrough cases.“
Little-Known Illnesses Turning Up in Covid Long-Haulers –The day Dr. Elizabeth Dawson was diagnosed with Covid-19 in October, she awoke feeling as if she had a bad hangover. Four months later she tested negative for the virus, but her symptoms have only worsened. Dawson is among what one doctor called “waves and waves” of “long-haul” Covid patients who remain sick long after retesting negative for the virus. A significant percentage are suffering from syndromes that few doctors understand or treat. In fact, a yearlong wait to see a specialist for these syndromes was common even before the ranks of patients were swelled by post-Covid newcomers. For some, the consequences are life altering.Before fall, Dawson, 44, a dermatologist from Portland, Oregon, routinely saw 25 to 30 patients a day, cared for her 3-year-old daughter and ran long distances.Today, her heart races when she tries to stand. She has severe headaches, constant nausea and brain fog so extreme that, she said, it “feels like I have dementia.” Her fatigue is severe: “It’s as if all the energy has been sucked from my soul and my bones.” She can’t stand for more than 10 minutes without feeling dizzy.Through her own research, Dawson recognized she had typical symptoms of postural orthostatic tachycardia syndrome, or POTS. It is a disorder of the autonomic nervous system, which controls involuntary functions such as heart rate, blood pressure and vein contractions that assist blood flow. It is a serious condition – not merely feeling lightheaded on rising suddenly, which affects many patients who have been confined to bed a long time with illnesses like Covid as their nervous system readjusts to greater activity. POTS sometimes overlaps with autoimmune problems, which involve the immune system attacking healthy cells. Before Covid, an estimated 3 million Americans had POTS.Many POTS patients report it took them years to even find a diagnosis. With her own suspected diagnosis in hand, Dawson soon discovered there were no specialists in autonomic disorders in Portland – in fact, there are only 75 board-certified autonomic disorder doctors in the U.S.Using contacts in the medical community, Dawson wrangled an appointment with a Portland neurologist within a week and was diagnosed with POTS and chronic fatigue syndrome (CFS). The two syndromes have overlapping symptoms, often including severe fatigue. Dr. Peter Rowe of Johns Hopkins in Baltimore, a prominent researcher who has treated POTS and CFS patients for 25 years, said every doctor with expertise in POTS is seeing long-haul Covid patients with POTS, and every long-Covid patient he has seen with CFS also had POTS. He expects the lack of medical treatment to worsen.”Decades of neglect of POTS and CFS have set us up to fail miserably,” said Rowe, one of the authors of a recent paper on CFS triggered by Covid.
Coronavirus mutated 32 times inside South African HIV-positive woman over course of seven months –A 36-year-old woman with advanced HIV carried the novel coronavirus for 216 days, during which the virus accumulated more than 30 mutations, a new study has found. The case report, which has not been peer-reviewed, was published as a preprint on medRxiv on Thursday. The woman, who has not been named, was identified as a 36-year-old living in South Africa. The coronaviruses gathered 13 mutations to the spike protein, which is known to help the virus escape the immune response, and 19 other mutations that could change the behaviour of the virus. It is not clear whether the mutations she carried were passed on to others, the Los Angeles Times reported. If more such cases are found, it raises the prospect that HIV infection could be a source of new variants simply because the patients could carry the virus for longer, Tulio de Oliveira, a geneticist at the University of KwaZulu-Natal in Durban and the study’s author, told the Times. But it is probably the exception rather than the rule for people living for HIV, because prolonged infection requires severe immunocompromise, Dr Juan Ambrosini, associate professor of infectious diseases at the University of Barcelona, said. Indeed, the woman in the case study was immunosuppressed.
Expert warns of ‘COVID-32’ if origins of COVID-19 not found – A full investigation into the origin of COVID-19 in China is “absolutely critical” in order to prevent future pandemics – and avoid “COVID-32,” an expert warned Sunday.”There’s going to be COVID-26 and COVID-32 unless we fully understand the origins of COVID-19. This is absolutely critical,” Dr. Peter Hotez, dean of the National School of Tropical Medicine at Baylor College of Medicine, told NBC’s “Meet the Press.”Hotez said that he believes the US needs to do more than launch an intelligence investigation into theories that the virus emerged naturally from animals or escaped from a lab in Wuhan, China.”I’m personally of the opinion that we’ve pushed intelligence as far as we can,” Hotez said, saying that the US needs to send experts to the original epicenter of the pandemic in Wuhan.”We need a team of scientists, genealogists, biologists, bat ecologists in the Hubei province for six months to a year-long period and fully unravel the origins of COVID-19.”Hotez, however, acknowledged that China may be resistant to a full investigation. A World Health Organization team probing the site earlier this year was stymied from independent digging due to interference from Beijing.”I think we have to really put a lot of pressure on China, including possible sanctions to allow a team of outstanding epidemiologists and virologists in China with unfettered access to the animals, the people, to samples [and] the lab,” Hotez said.He warned that without “full access,” the origins may never be uncovered. “I think you really need to have detailed analysis about the bat populations – all of the possible reservoir animals and people – and without that, it’s going to be really hard to work this out,” he said.
Debate over origin of COVID highlights catastrophic systemic risks -I do not claim to know where the COVID-19 virus originated. And, I don’t think we will ever know for sure. But claims and counterclaims about its origin highlight a systemic problem that goes far beyond the details of this debate. In this case, those positing a possible laboratory origin believe that scientists manipulating coronaviruses for research purposes may have carelessly let one of their altered viruses infect them. The scientists then unknowingly carried the virus out of the lab into the streets of China.What’s important about this scenario – and again, we have no definitive evidence it happened – is that it could occur in any of the special laboratories worldwide which study dangerous infectious diseases. A recent report highlighting the problem listed 59 biosafety level 4 labs (the highest level), a tally that includes those planned and under construction. Some 42 are believed to be currently operating. These labs “are designed and built to work safely and securely with the most dangerous bacteria and viruses that can cause serious diseases and for which no treatment or vaccines exist.” (For a very brief primer on biosafety levels, read this.)So, how closely are these labs monitored? The report continues, “There is, however, currently no requirement to report these facilities internationally, and no international entity is mandated to collect such information and provide oversight at a global level. Moreover, there are no binding international standards for safe, secure, and responsible work on pathogens in maximum containment labs.”Only one lab needs to make one mistake with a serious and easily communicable disease for which there is no treatment to inflict a catastrophe on the world population.The key element not present in other risky pursuits is that viruses and bacteria self-propagate, that is, they reproduce themselves independently of our efforts, thus spreading themselves in human populations. And, that spread is something that we’ve made so exceptionally efficient in our hyperconnected world that infectious micro-organisms will be forgiven for believing that our modern societies were designed by a virus for the convenience of viruses and other infectious agents.In all the furor over laboratory safety, few people understand that we have taken other organisms genetically altered by humans and intentionally spread them worldwide with virtually no safety testing beforehand. These organisms are called genetically engineered crops and animals. We are now undergoing a global uncontrolled experiment to see how they affect 1) the health of humans and animals to which we are feeding these crops and 2) habitats which are impacted by the spread of novel engineered genes to wild and domesticated plants through pollen. The champions of this kind of unbridled risk-tasking cannot guarantee that there will not be any catatrophic consequences. But they do say that the risk of any real and significant problem is a million to one – or some such number.
Covid-19 Update — May 30, 2021 —Link here. The Sunday report: vaccinations continue to drop precipitously.
- Today’s report: 1,223,790 vaccinations given in past 24 hours;
- Last Sunday: 1,779,363 vaccinations given in same time period.
- Previous Sunday, May 16, 2021: 2,712,865 vaccinations given.
- Prior to that, Sunday, May 9, 2021: 2,369,784 vaccinations given.
1,223,790 / 2,369,784 = 52%. Exactly what the LA Times reported today.
US COVID-19 vaccination campaign drastically slowing – President Joe Biden has set July 4 as his goal to see 70 percent of all adults in the United States with at least one dose of the COVID-19 vaccines. However, he is confronting a lagging vaccination rate that has been declining week to week since the peak in vaccinations in mid-April. In a plea to all unvaccinated people last month, he declared, “This is your choice. It’s life and death.” On June 3, the seven-day average of reported vaccine doses administered fell below the threshold of one million doses per day. On June 2, only a half-million doses were given. There has been a 33 percent decline from the previous week. With 2.05 billion doses of the vaccines thus far administered across the globe, almost 298 million doses (14.5 percent) have been given just in the US, a rate of 90 doses per 100 people. More than 368 million doses have been distributed throughout the country, indicating 70 million doses waiting for recipients. In a sleight of hand, the more than 60 percent vaccinated figure being heavily promoted by the White House does not reflect the population as a whole but only those over 18 with at least one dose. In reality, 50.9 percent of the population has received at least one dose and only 41.2 percent have been fully vaccinated. Of those 18 years or older, 63 percent have received at least one dose and it is this figure that is being advertised. According to the White House’s calculations, another 20 million more adults need to be inoculated for Biden to reach his goal in the next month. However, this is a meaningless figure in that the theoretical herd immunity threshold of 70 percent would require 70 percent of the population to be vaccinated and this does not account for the new strains of the more transmissible coronavirus that are quickly becoming dominant, which would raise this threshold. In reality, the herd immunity threshold remains unknown and scientists speculate it may be unattainable. Breakthrough infections with the new variants such as the B.1.617.2 Delta variant may be considerable among individuals with only a single dose, according to recent studies on neutralization antibodies against variants. Though full vaccination is critical to prevent serious disease, breakthrough infections may be much higher with these newer variants. Recent reporting indicated new variants of interest have also been detected in Vietnam. Also, those 18 years old and younger can very well become infected, become very ill and die, as well as transmit the contagion. The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) reported Friday through their Morbidity and Mortality Weekly Report (MMWR) that there has been an increase in the rates of hospitalizations among teenagers in March and April. Dr. Rochelle Walensky remarked, “I am deeply concerned by numbers of hospitalized adolescents and saddened to see the number of adolescents who required treatment in intensive care units or mechanical ventilation.” The Delta variant has been estimated to be 50 to 70 percent more transmissible than the B.1.1.7 Alpha variant. Individuals infected with the Delta variant also have a 2.7 times higher risk of needing hospitalization than those with the Alpha variant. While the Delta variant is now the dominant strain in India and the UK, genetic sequencing is demonstrating a sharp rise in this variant in the United States.
Biden administration rolls out new vaccine incentives – About 63% of Americans have gotten at least one dose of the COVID-19 vaccine. The Biden administration would like to get that number up to 70% by July 4. One way it’s trying to do that is through incentives.There are lots of incentives now to get the vaccine, aside from the fact that it’ll protect you from getting COVID-19. Free baseball tickets, gift cards, donuts, beer. Also the chance to win a free cruise, or a year of free flights, or $1 million.First things first: There are some people who, no matter what, are not going to get vaccinated. So incentives will not work on them. “And in fact, for people who philosophically believe that vaccines are problematic, and the government is not trustworthy, [incentives] may even make them more suspicious,” said Jennifer Chatman, who teaches at the University of California, Berkeley’s Haas School of Business. But there are also people who wanted to wait a little longer or just haven’t gotten around to getting vaccinated yet.”It’s generally believed that these kinds of incentive approaches could help sway many of those people in the middle,” said Kevin Volpp, director of the Penn Center for Health Incentives and Behavioral Economics.He said there is early data from Ohio that its vaccine lottery with a million-dollar prize is working. The state says it saw a 44% jump in first doses among people 16 and older in the week after the lottery was announced. Volpp said lotteries and sweepstakes might be particularly effective. “They capture people’s imaginations. People start dreaming about how my life would be changed if I won this lottery.” Even though the chance of winning is pretty small.
New York City will offer Covid vaccines at some public schools. -New York City, with the nation’s largest school district, is hoping to increase vaccination rates among children age 12 to 17 before they close their books and head out for the summer on June 25.”We want to make schools a place where kids can get vaccinated,” Mayor Bill de Blasio said in announcing the plan Wednesday during a news conference at City Hall. Later, he added, “We’re going to get the most done we can between now and the end of school later this month.”Mr. de Blasio said that the program would start on Friday with mobile vaccination vehicles at four schools in the Bronx.Meisha Porter, the city’s schools chancellor, said on Twitter on Thursday that the mobile vaccination clinics would be available on Friday from 10 a.m. to 6 p.m. at Bronx Writing Academy; Junior High School 22; Junior High School 118; and Middle School 180.Ms. Porter added that mobile clinics would be stationed at an additional three schools from 8 a.m. to 6 p.m. on Sunday and Monday: Intermediate School 90 in Manhattan; Middle School 88 in Brooklyn; and Public School 214 in the Bronx.According to city data, the Bronx has the lowest rate of fully vaccinated residents, with 35 percent, below the citywide rate of 44 percent. (Brooklyn has 38 percent, Staten Island 41 percent, Queens 48 percent and Manhattan 55 percent.)This data echoes what officials have seen nationwide suggestingthat vaccines have been given disproportionately in areas with wealthy and white residents, even though the pandemic hit low-income communities of color the hardest. The program is being conducted in collaboration with the city’s education and health departments, as well as the teacher’s union, the mayor said.
Ejected from a troubled plant, AstraZeneca is in talks about producing vaccine for U.S. government at another site. -The British-Swedish company AstraZeneca is negotiating with the federal government to shift production of its coronavirus vaccine from a troubled plant near Baltimore to a factory owned by the pharmaceutical company Catalent, according to people familiar with the government’s plans.Catalent already produces AstraZeneca’s vaccine for export at a factory in Harmans, Md., south of Baltimore. It is now in discussions to retrofit a production line there to make the vccine for the federal government, taking over for Emergent BioSolutions, which was forced to stop manufacturing AstraZeneca’s vaccine more than six weeks ago after a major production mishap.While it is unclear when the new line could begin operating, any extra doses that Catalent produces for the government are also likely to be exported because the United States has not yet authorized the AstraZeneca vaccine for domestic distribution and has enough of other vaccines to meet demand.AstraZeneca has been searching for a new manufacturing partner since the federal authorities decided that Emergent, which has received hundreds of millions of dollars from the federal government to manufacture vaccines, was not capable of producing the AstraZeneca and Johnson & Johnson’s vaccines simultaneously. The decision came after Emergent workers accidentally contaminated a batch of Johnson & Johnson’s vaccine, ruining 15 million doses.That episode has led to cascading problems for Emergent, Johnson & Johnson and AstraZeneca. Federal regulators asked Emergent to halt all production at its plant while they inspected it. Inspectors returned on Wednesday for another on-site review, according to people familiar with the process. Regulators are also insisting that Johnson & Johnson and AstraZeneca provide extensive proof that batches of their vaccines produced by Emergent meet regulatory standards before allowing them to be released either for domestic use or for export. While no doses of any vaccine produced by Emergent have been distributed in the United States, the Biden administration had been counting on tens of millions of AstraZeneca doses to fulfill its promise to help other countries in need.
Anti-vaxxer hospitalised with Covid after saying vaccines would wipe out ‘stupid people’ — Rick Wiles, a right-wing Christian talk show host and anti-vaxxer has been hospitalised with Covid-19 after saying vaccines would wipe out “stupid people”.Less than a month ago, Mr Wiles said he would never get vaccinated. His website, TruNews, announced over the weekend that had been infected and taken to hospital where he had been given oxygen. The announcement was reported by Right Wing Watch.TruNews has pushed conspiracy theorists considered to be racist, antisemitic, homophobic, and Islamophobic. The outlet has called President Obama a “demon from hell” multiple times. Mr Wiles has said that Mr Obama “spiritually sodomised the nation”.The right-wing broadcaster told his audience last month that he wasn’t getting vaccinated because he believed the vaccines were being used to commit a “genocide,” to kill hundreds of millions of people.”I am not going to be vaccinated,” Mr Wiles said. “I’m going to be one of the survivors. I’m going to survive the genocide … The only good thing that will come out of this is a lot of stupid people will be killed off. If the vaccine wipes out a lot of stupid people, well, we’ll have a better world.”TruNews has said that eternal damnation would await anyone mocking Mr Wiles’s affliction.”Already, the naysayers and mockers have started with their taunts,” the website said. “Let them speak their foolish words and let them mock. It will only serve to be used to fuel their flames of torment in hell unless they repent.”TruNews suddenly suspended its broadcast last week, announcing that it was “experiencing a sudden cluster of flu and COVID among some employees and their relatives”. The outlet then said on Sunday that Mr Wiles had been hospitalised.
Highly contagious India COVID variant spreads rapidly in US — The highly contagious COVID-19 variant that first emerged in India is spreading at a rapid rate in the US – and now makes up 7 percent of new cases, data shows.The dramatic rise of the B.1.617.2 variant comes after it accounted for only 1 percent of new cases stateside at the start of May, according to a report from Outbreak.info.The data revealed that the variant, which experts suspect is 60 percent more transmissible, reached its high of 7 percent of samples sequenced on May 26.The World Health Organization last week classified the variant as being one of global concern and requiring heightened tracking and analysis.”There is some available information to suggest increased transmissibility,” Maria Van Kerkhove, WHO technical lead on COVID-19, told reporters.It is now predominant in some parts of India and believed to be a driving factor in the country’s devastating second wave.The cases have overwhelmed the health care system, forcing patients to wait for beds in some regions.Footage emerged this week of the disastrous conditions at a hospital in the eastern district of Mayurbhanj, where patients were seen naked in their beds and collapsed on the floor waiting for assistance from staffers.
Coronavirus dashboard for June 2: most of US approaches herd immunity threshold; COVID still spreading among the remaining idiots — In the past week new COVID-19 cases declined almost 30%, by about 7,000 to 17,289/day; however, deaths actually increased by about 10% to an average of 589/day, mainly due to a data dump by California 5 and 6 days ago – thus I expect a new low in deaths within the next several days: Total deaths are 595,213. Over 60% of all adults have received at least one dose, and over half are fully vaccinated. Slightly over half of the US population, including all children, has received at least one dose. But the overall situation masks a large divergence between States where there have been the most vaccinations vs. States with the least. Here is the map of vaccination administration by State as of one week ago: In the Northeast, only NY, at 67.9%, is slightly below 70% of all adults who have received at least one dose of vaccine. California also is over 70%. And here are the results: cases in the Northeastern States have rapidly declined to their best levels since the beginning of the pandemic. Only Maine and Pennsylvania, while still showing sharp declines, are lagging: Meanwhile California has also seen over a 95% decline in cases since winter, when they averaged over 110 new cases per 100,000 population daily: At the other end, there are 8 States which have seen *no* meaningful declines in cases over the past 8 weeks: Four of them – WA, WY, LA, and AZ – are among the 10 worst States for new cases, which MO close behind. AR, MS, and AL are roughly in the middle of the pack. Note that with the exception of Washington State*, all of them are among those with the lowest rate of vaccinated population. *A perusal of news sources in Washington State suggests that the recent increase in new cases is due to the admission of unvaccinated new residents to long term care facilities. When the disease is re-introduced into the facility, with close quarters and recirculated air among the most immune-compromised population, the disease spreads even among the vaccinated (although there is no indication of increased deaths among that group). Basically, most of the US is at least very close to achieving herd immunity, while the disease continues to spread among those with recalcitrant populations, and if the new cases are all or virtually all among those who have voluntarily decided not to get vaccinated, then the disease is spreading among them at rates similar to last spring and summer, with little decline at all.
Americans are partying again. But elsewhere, the pandemic is getting worse. – – In the United States, life is returning to normal. Restaurants and bars are filling up again, vacations are being booked and flights are selling out. A majority of Americans have received at least one dose of a coronavirus vaccine, and daily new infections and deaths are at their lowest levels in almost a year. The pandemic is slowly receding from the daily lives of many Americans as businesses open up and local authorities ease restrictions. “Throughout history, pandemics have ended when the disease ceases to dominate daily life and retreats into the background like other health challenges.” But the pandemic is hardly in retreat elsewhere. The emergence of more virulent variants of the virus in countries like Brazil and India and the slowness of vaccination efforts in many places outside the West have contributed to deadly new waves. Coronavirus case counts worldwide are already higher in 2021than they were in 2020. The death toll almost certainly will be. Southeast Asia, once a bastion of resistance to the virus as it ravaged Western countries, is in the grip of a harrowing spike in infections. Cases in Thailand and Vietnam rose dramatically over the past month. Malaysia is now registering more new infections per million people than any medium- or large-size country in Asia, surpassing India, which remains a global hot spot. On Tuesday, the Malaysian government implemented a nationwide lockdown that will last for the next two weeks. “The economy will certainly suffer. The people will suffer even more, those who live. Many are dying and will die,” wrote columnist Munir Majid in the New Straits Times. “We are staring at the abyss.” In Africa, concerns are growing over the possible arrival of a new wave powered by a more transmissible variant of the virus, with the health systems in many countries at risk of being quickly subsumed by a surge of infections. A recent study found that the continent has the world’s highest death rate of patients critically ill with covid-19, thanks to limited intensive care facilities and reserves of vital medical supplies like oxygen. In parts of Latin America, the virus rages on, largely unabated. Peru, according to its own government-adjusted data, now has the worst covid-19 mortality rate per capita in the world. The country is slated to stage a closely contested presidential runoff election this weekend.Even in East Asia, where a handful of nations set the gold standard in preventing community spread, the virus is on the march. Taiwan has seen an explosion of cases over the past month. In Japan, which still intends to host the Summer Olympics, numerous areas including Tokyo remain under a state of emergency. It’s a sign, argue some public health experts, that the strict methods that kept places like Taiwan, South Korea and Singapore safer than their counterparts in the West for all of last year may not be sustainable in the long term.
Florida data scientist Rebekah Jones granted whistleblower status — Rebekah Jones, a former Florida Department of Health employee, has been granted whistleblower status a year after being fired for speaking out against the state government’s campaign to reopen schools and workplaces amid the COVID-19 pandemic. Inspector General Michael J. Bennett informed Jones’ attorneys May 28 that she met the criteria set down in state law for whistleblower status, which begins a process of investigation to determine whether her complaints are justified by the evidence. The Miami Herald reported Bennett said Jones’ complaints demonstrate “reasonable cause to suspect that an employee or agent of an agency or independent contractor has violated any federal, state or local law, rule or regulation.” Under the state’s whistleblower rules, Jones could be reinstated to her previous job or be eligible for compensation if an investigation finds her firing was in retaliation for the concerns she raised. In the complaint, filed July 17, 2020, Jones alleged she was fired for “opposition and resistance to instructions to falsify data in a government website.” She described being asked to bend data analysis to fit predetermined policy and delete data from public view after questions from the press – actions she claimed “represent an immediate injury to the public health, safety, and welfare, including the possibility of death to members of the public.” Jones, a geographer specializing in Geographic Information System (GIS) data science, who helped build Florida’s online presentation of its COVID-19 data, garnered national attention for refusing to strategically manipulate the information to minimize the severity of the pandemic. At the time, Florida was an epicenter of the coronavirus pandemic. Republican Governor Ron DeSantis, who had been pushing to reopen the state for commerce, bitterly denounced Jones and claimed she displayed “insubordination” and “blatant disrespect” for her colleagues. DeSantis said he felt “that it was best to terminate her employment.” Within a few weeks of being fired, Jones launched her own website to keep track of Florida’s COVID-19 information. Her website, COVID Monitor, uses the same data science software and data extraction techniques Jones had used to build the Florida Department of Health dashboard. Jones’ new website included an enhanced metric with hospital bed availability by facility, something that was not being publicly reported. Jones also continued to raise doubts about the official figures reported by the Health Department and challenge the drive to reopen schools and workplaces. The Florida Department of Health filed a complaint against Jones on November 10 alleging she gained unauthorized access to a department messaging system. The message urged health officials to “speak up before another 17,000 people are dead. You know this is wrong. You don’t have to be a part of this. Be a hero. Speak out before it’s too late.” On December 2, Jones and two colleagues published an article in US News & World Report critical of the reopening of schools across the country. The article noted that more than 1 million children had been infected with COVID-19 by that time.
Montana State University researchers find coronavirus variant that originated in Bozeman last year -Researchers at Montana State University discovered a variant that originated in Bozeman early in the pandemic. The Bozeman variant, a strain that actually weakened the effectiveness of the virus, was found by postdoctoral researchers Anna Nemudraia and Artem Nemudryi. The pair published a study on their findings last month in the journal Cell Reports Medicine.. They began the study in March 2020 and finished research in February. Nemudraia and Nemudryi are part of the research team in the lab of Blake Wiendenheft at MSU and did other other work in the height of pandemic, including measuring the county’s viral load of coronavirus through wastewater samples. Nemudraia and Nemudryi analyzed 55 samples from people who had tested positive for COVID-19 between April and July 2020, recording the entire genome of each coronavirus sample. Among those 55 samples, five had the same mutation – a change in the virus’s genome – which was significant enough to signal a variant, the researchers said. “We only saw five samples, but it doesn’t mean there were only five people in the community that had it,” Nemudryi said. Researchers compared the results against a global database of coronavirus samples and found similar mutations had already been observed elsewhere, solidifying the idea that these samples were their own strain. Without testing every single COVID-19 sample, there’s no way of knowing how many strains exist, said Dr. Neil Ku, an infectious disease specialist at the Billings Clinic. Some variants have made headlines across the globe for easier transmission or more severe symptoms. However, coronavirus mutations occur about once every two weeks, Ku said.
Ohio reports fewer than 50 COVID cases per 100,000 residents for first time since last year (WJW) – Ohio has reported a two-week statewide average of fewer than 50 coronavirus cases per 100,000 residents, Governor Mike DeWine announced Saturday. The Ohio Department of Health reported a case average of 49.5 per 100,000 residents for the period between May 22 and June 4. Prior to Saturday, the last time Ohio fell below 50 cases per 100,000 residents was on June 25, 2020. “Ohioans have shown our resilience and grit, and by continuing to get vaccinated we are coming through this pandemic stronger than ever,” DeWine said in a press release. “When I announced this goal on March 4th, I said that reaching 50 cases per 100,000 would mean we were entering a new phase of this pandemic. Vaccinations are working. That’s why cases, hospitalizations, and deaths are down. But that doesn’t mean we can let our foot off the gas. If you’re not vaccinated against COVID-19, continue to wear a mask in public and Ohioans that are able to get vaccinated should.” The governor adds that more than 5.3 million Ohioans have started the vaccination process and 4.7 million are fully vaccinated. Although DeWine says this data shows “a positive indicator in the fight against COVID-19,” he reiterates that “the threat of the virus remains” and encourages Ohioans to continue taking proper preventative measures to prevent further spread. While masking is no longer mandated, health experts say unvaccinated people should continue wearing masks indoors or in crowded settings where social distancing is not possible. Ohio businesses and organizations also may continue to require masks regardless of an individual’s vaccination status. Meanwhile, the state is still trying to encourage vaccinations through the Vax-A-Million lottery program.
WHO renames COVID variants with Greek letter names to avoid stigma -The World Health Organization has created a new system to name COVID-19 variants, getting away from place-based names that can be hard to pronounce, difficult to remember and stigmatizing to a country. The new system, which was announced Monday, is based on the letters of the Greek alphabet. The United Kingdom variant, called by scientists B.1.1.7, will now be Alpha. B.1.351, the South Africa variant will be Beta, and the B.1.617.2 variant discovered in India will now be known as Delta. When the 24 letters of the Greek alphabet are used up, WHO will announce another series. “It’s the right thing to do,” said Dr. Monica Gandhi, an infectious disease expert at the University of California, San Francisco. It may also make countries more open to reporting new variants if they’re not afraid of being forever associated with them in the mind of the public. In a release. WHO said that while scientific names have advantages, they can be difficult to say and are prone to misreporting. “As a result, people often resort to calling variants by the places where they are detected, which is stigmatizing and discriminatory,” WHO said.
As the U.S. starts a return to normal, some countries have their worst outbreaks yet — The authorities in Malaysia have barred people from venturing more than about six miles from home. Covid-19 patients are spilling into the hallways of overcrowded hospitals in Argentina. In Nepal, 40 percent of coronavirus tests are positive, suggesting that the virus is racing through the population.All three nations are experiencing their worst coronavirus outbreaks since the start of the pandemic, joining countries across Asia and South America where infections have surged to record levels – a stark counterpoint to the optimism felt in the United States as summer dawns.Deep into the second year of the pandemic, the emergence of coronavirus variants and the global gaps in access to vaccineshave plunged parts of the world back into the anxious stages of Covid-19. Argentina, Malaysia South Africa and others have reimposed lockdowns. Thailand and Taiwan, which kept the virus in check for much of 2020, have closed schools and nightspots in the face of new waves.Scores are dying daily in Paraguay and Uruguay, which now have the highest reported fatality rates per person in the world, according the Center for Systems Science and Engineering at Johns Hopkins University. India’s catastrophic second wave has killed more than 3,000 people every day for the past month, according to official statistics, and experts believe the true toll is far greater.The reasons for the surges vary across countries, but together they reflect “the challenge of maintaining vigilance against a highly transmissible, airborne virus for long periods of time, balanced against economic and social considerations,” said Claire Standley, an assistant research professor at the Center for Global Health Science and Security at Georgetown University.Globally, new infections have declined from their peak of more than 800,000 recorded cases a day in late April. Still, half a million people are reported infected with the virus daily. And countries that have kept cases low for more than a year, such as Australiaand Singapore, are seeing small pockets of infections that have prompted partial lockdowns and delayed plans to reopen borders.
Hundreds of coronavirus outbreaks in schools as new variant spreads across UK — Schools throughout Britain are reporting cases of Covid-19. This accelerated from May 17, when Boris Johnson’s Conservative government lifted most restrictions as part of stage three of its roadmap to reopen the economy completely next month. The number of outbreaks is increasing daily, despite the rollout of the vaccination programme. Most worrying is the fact that the more transmissible B.1.617.2 variant first identified in India has become the dominant strain. Department of Education figures show school attendance figures in England are falling, associated with the spread of the virus. On May 20, 91 percent of state school pupils were in class compared to 92 percent on May 12. That week, 87 percent of pupils were in secondary schools, a fall from 89 percent the previous week. In primary schools, attendance fell from 95 percent on May 12 to 94 percent. On May 20, 82,000 pupils were sent home after contact with a coronavirus case compared to 65,000 the previous week. Falling attendance in schools follows the government’s decision to lift the requirement to wear face coverings – the main protection afforded to educators and pupils since schools reopened early March. The government took this decision despite prior knowledge that the new variant was spreading in schools. Previously, teachers and pupils in secondary schools were required to wear masks in classrooms. In primary schools, mask wearing was optional but not recommended for pupils. Mask wearing is now limited to communal areas excluding classrooms. Eight hotspots have been identified across the UK: North Tyneside, Bolton in Greater Manchester and Blackburn and Burnley in the north west of England, Kirklees in West Yorkshire, Leicester in the East Midlands, Bedford in south England and Hounslow in London. Outbreaks in schools, however, are not confined to these areas, suggesting that the new variant is endemic across the UK and out of control. According to the parent-led advocacy group SafeEdForAll, between March 8 and May 24, Greater Manchester had 104 outbreaks in primary and secondary schools, the highest in the UK. Hampshire followed with 94. The outbreaks were slightly higher in primary than secondary schools.
Britain already in third wave of pandemic as Indian variant surges ahead of June 21 reopening The UK has already entered a third wave of the coronavirus pandemic, according to Professor Ravi Gupta, from the University of Cambridge. Speaking on Monday to the BBC Radio Today programme, Gupta, a member of the government’s New and Emerging Respiratory Virus Threats Advisory Group (Nervtag) said, “Of course the numbers of cases are relatively low at the moment – all waves start with low numbers of cases that grumble in the background and then become explosive, so the key here is that what we are seeing here is the signs of an early wave.” Gupta called for a delay in the “irreversible” roadmap to reopen the entire economy announced by Prime Minister Boris Johnson, culminating in an end to all legal limits on social contact in just three weeks, on June 21. A dramatic escalation in identified cases is underway due to the spread of the highly transmissible Indian variant (B.1.617.2) nationwide, since first being detected in the UK on April 1. The Office of National Statistics (ONS) published data on May 27 recording figures up to May 22 that included the number of Indian variant cases for the first time. Detected cases of this strain have doubled in the past week and by last Thursday B.1.617.2 accounted for more than half and possibly up to three quarters of all new cases. The rise of the strain to dominance in the UK has been facilitated by the Conservative government’s reckless reopening of the economy. Much of the economy has already been reopened since May 17, including pubs, cafes, restaurants, shops and non-essential retail. Nearly every day over the last week, over 3,000 new cases of Covid were recorded and last Friday 4,182 were reported. As of 9am yesterday, there had been a further 3,383 lab-confirmed cases of Covid. Separate figures published by the ONS show there have now been 153,000 deaths registered in the UK where Covid-19 was mentioned on the death certificate. The spread of the Indian variant has resulted in an increase of the R (Reproduction) value of the virus from between 0.8-1.1 to between 0.9-1.1 – a level allowing a further exponential rise in cases. In England, the virus is spreading fastest in the capital, London, and the North West, with daily growth rates of 0-3 percent and 0-4 percent every day respectively. In Croydon, 94.1 percent of positive Covid cases resulted from the Indian variant in the two weeks to May 22. A surge in Indian variant cases is responsible for driving coronavirus cases upwards in Hounslow and Hillingdon. By last week, hospital admissions for the several variants of Covid in circulation had increased 20 percent week-on-week across the UK. The North West of England saw a 25 percent rise. In Scotland, a surge of cases has seen the R rate reach 1.3 and Glasgow remains under Level 3 restrictions (with levels 2, 1 and 0 less restrictive).
Dominic Cummings: How the UK Ignored Evidence That the Virus is Airborne –“I think we are absolutely fucked. I think this country is heading for disaster. I think we’re going to kill thousands of people.” According to Dominic Cummings, those were the words spoken by the then deputy cabinet secretary Helen MacNamara on March 13 2020 when she realised that the UK had no plan for dealing with the unfolding COVID crisis. And it’s not over yet. The UK’s tally of COVID-19 cases – undoubtedly an underestimate – is now4.5 million, with over 127,000 COVID deaths. Between half and 1 million people, including 122,000 healthcare workers and 114,000 teachers – give or take a few tens of thousands – remain too sick to work full time. Highly contagious mutant variants, which entered the country recently through ineffective border controls, are spreading exponentially, causing new local outbreaks. Effective prevention measures, such as mask mandates in secondary schools, are being prematurely rolled back. The UK’s third wave is predicted to be small but could yet dwarf the previous two waves. Boris Johnson’s former chief adviser’s warts-and-all account of political backstage events during February and March 2020, raises political questions, such as what the prime minister knew and when, as well as scientific ones, such as how the UK government’s Infection Prevention and Control team could have denied for so long that SARS-CoV-2 is airborne, thereby delaying the introduction of effective measures to contain its spread.At what point, for example, would it have been reasonable to conclude, as Cummings did this week, that hand-washing and surface cleansing would be ineffective unless accompanied by additional measures to control airborne virus? The day before the alleged quote from a senior UK government official, the World Health Organization declared COVID-19 a pandemic. What scientific evidence was there at that time that the virus spreads through the air? Two days earlier, on March 9 2020, the Japanese government had introduced its “3Cs policy“: avoid closed spaces, crowded places and close contact, especially when talking or singing. These three measures were based on detailed analysis of outbreaks using not just prospective contact tracing (to identify people who may have caught the disease from an infected individual) but retrospective tracing (to find how that individual became infected). This allowed public health experts to hypothesise about a possible airborne route of transmission. The Japanese government was honest with the public, explicitly invoking the precautionary principle.
Vietnam detects highly contagious new coronavirus variant as infections surge –Vietnam’s Health Ministry announced Saturday that it had detected a highly transmissible new variant of the coronavirus that has helped fuel a recent wave of infections in the country.Genetic sequencing indicated that the new variant was a mix of the coronavirus strains first detected in the United Kingdom and India, said Health Minister Nguyen Thanh Long, according to the VnExpress newspaper.The minister said the new variant was particularly contagious via air and viral cultures have revealed it replicates extremely quickly, the newspaper reported.”The new variant is very dangerous,” Long said in a statement.The Health Ministry didn’t return a Saturday afternoon request for comment.Scientists said further study was needed to determine the effect of a variant in “real-world settings.””A lot of different mutations happen as the virus is transmitted and most of them are not of clinical significance,” said Todd Pollack, a Hanoi-based infectious-disease expert for Harvard Medical School. “Just because they say [the new variant] has features of one and the other … doesn’t mean they got together in one patient and spit out some combined hybrid ‘supervirus.’ “There were seven known coronavirus variants in Vietnam before Long’s announcement, according to Reuters. Vietnam, which has reported around 6,400 coronavirus infections and 47 deaths, has been one of the world’s coronavirus containment success stories. A well-run public health-care system, quarantine camps operated by the military and strict, targeted lockdowns kept case numbers low until late April, when a spike in infections began.
New COVID-19 variant in Vietnam highlights global danger — Vietnam’s government reported last Saturday that a highly-infectious new COVID-19 strain, a hybrid between the Indian and UK variants, is responsible for a sudden rapid spread of the disease across many parts of the country. Until recently, Vietnam was regarded as successful, in avoiding the global pandemic, as were other countries in Southeast Asia, including Malaysia and Thailand, which also are now suffering serious outbreaks. Vietnam’s announcement highlights the reality that no country is “safe” from the worldwide resurgence of the virus. New, more transmissible and deadly mutations, which may not be effectively curtailed by existing vaccines, have been able to emerge because governments around the world have repeatedly prioritised corporate profit over public health and lives. The rush to satisfy the demands of big business, by prematurely lifting public health restrictions and fully reopening workplaces, combined with inadequate vaccination programs and quarantine facilities, has created the conditions for millions more people to die, or suffer severe illness in coming months. Vietnam’s Health Minister Nguyen Thanh Long told an online media conference on Saturday that the new hybrid strain had taken the number of variants active in Vietnam to eight. The previous seven were B.1.222, B.1.619, D614G, B.1.1.7 – the variant first identified in the UK – B.1.351, A.23.1 and B.1.617.2 – the one detected in India. Long said recent outbreaks had seen the virus spreading quickly in the air, particularly in narrow, unventilated spaces. “The new variant is very dangerous,” he said. Laboratory cultures of the variant showed the virus replicated itself very quickly, possibly explaining why many new cases had appeared in a short period of time in 30 of the country’s 63 municipalities and provinces. More than half of the 6,396 COVID-19 cases reported in Vietnam, since the pandemic began, have been found in the past month, according to Johns Hopkins University. So far, there have been 47 deaths – 12 of them during May. Industrial workers are being worst affected. Most of the new transmissions were found in Bac Ninh and Bac Giang, two provinces with numerous industrial zones, where hundreds of thousands of people work for major companies, including Samsung, Canon and Luxshare, a partner in assembling Apple products. One company in Bac Giang discovered that one fifth of its 4,800 workers had tested positive for the virus.
Delta variant of COVID-19 dominant in UK, spreading rapidly with millions still unvaccinated – The highly contagious variant of COVID-19 which originated in India, now named the Delta variant by the World Health Organisation, is officially the dominant strain in Britain and is spreading rapidly. On Thursday, Public Health England announced that the number of laboratory-confirmed Delta coronavirus cases had risen by 79 percent over the last week to 12,431 and overtaken the number of cases of the Kent, or Alpha, variant. The government has gone into overdrive to portray the virus as under control, claiming that its vaccine rollout means everything must still be allowed to return to normal. But not only is the Delta variant on the rampage, on Thursday the government admitted that a Nepalese strain of the Delta variant which has acquired a new mutation is present in the UK. Delta was first detected in Britain on April 1, but the government did not make its existence public until April 15, of a piece with its overriding aim of doing nothing to prevent a further opening of the economy. This reckless reopening, ongoing for months and set to be completed in less than three weeks on June 21, has allowed a comparatively successful vaccination rollout to be derailed by the spread of a highly contagious variant. On May 17, most of the economy was reopened, including cafes, restaurants, gyms, cinemas and most non-essential sectors. Cases of Delta infections and deaths have been steadily increasing from a base of just a few infections. For the last seven days there have been at least 3,000 cases daily. On Friday May 28 this reached 4,000 cases and by Thursday had reached nearly 6,000 daily cases (5,774) – the highest number since the UK was still under a limited national lockdown in late March. On Friday, new cases reached a new high of 6,238. Deaths from Covid have also begun to rise again from the zero deaths reported on Monday – a figure the media insisted justified ending remaining lockdown restrictions without delay. Twelve deaths were reported on Wednesday, 18 on Thursday and 11 Friday. More dramatically at this point, coronavirus cases are on the increase in all but three regions of Britain, with the R (reproduction) rate rising to between 1 and 1.2 – up from between 1 and 1.1 last week. Delta cases are rising at among their fastest rate in London, with the Evening Standard reporting Friday that more than two thirds of Covid-19 cases in the capital are believed to be the Delta strain. According to the Office for National Statistics (ONS), there was a 76.5 percent surge in coronavirus cases nationally in the week to May 29. Announcing its weekly survey yesterday, the ONS said that one in 640 people (86,000) in private households in England had COVID-19 in the week to May 29 – up from one in 1,120 (48,500) in the previous week. Cases appear to be rising even faster among Scotland’s 5 million population. On Thursday, Scottish National Party First Minister Nicola Sturgeon announced another 992 people had tested positive – the highest daily figure since February 17 – with new Covid cases more than tripling in the last month. All the evidence shows that the Delta variant is, as feared, far more transmissible than the Alpha (Kent) variant discovered last year, which quickly became dominant in the UK and spread rapidly around the globe.
Prison inmates in India refuse parole over COVID-19 fears on outside -Inmates are refusing pandemic-prompted parole from prisons in India, saying that they feel better protected from COVID-19 behind bars, according to reports.The world’s second-most populous nation has been ravaged by the coronavirus in May, with daily death tolls in the thousands.The grim reality on the outside has left some prison inmates clinging to the relative safety of their cells – to the point that 21 jailbirds recently refused temporary release aimed at reducing overcrowding, according to reports.One such inmate, according to the Indian Express, is Ashish Kumar, a former teacher serving a six-year sentence in a Meerut prison for driving his wife to suicide.”We had sent his request to the government for the approval. We have received the nod, which means that Ashish Kumar will remain in the jail ’til he completes his sentence,” the facility’s senior superintendent, BP Pandey, told the outlet.China reports sudden surge in COVID-19 cases causing flight cancellations A sudden surge of COVID-19 cases in the southern region of China has caused a spate of flight cancellations.On Sunday, 27 new cases were reported by China’s national health authority, out of which only seven were imported, with the rest originating domestically in the Guangdong province, Reuters reports. Out of the 20 that originated in China, 18 were reported in the city of Guangzhou. The other two cases were reported in Foshan.Nineteen asymptomatic cases were also reported in China, though the country does not count those as confirmed cases. By the afternoon, more than 500 flights had been canceled at the Guangzhou Baiyun International Airport. These account for more than a third of total flights that were scheduled for Monday, Reuters reports.The outlet notes that the Guangzhou Baiyun International Airport has been among the busiest airports in the world during the pandemic, carrying more than 43.8 million passengers last year.On Saturday, the Guangzhou government ordered residents living on five streets in the city of Liwan to stay at home and to stop any nonessential activities. Local health officials told media that recent infections in Liwan were stemming from the fast-spreading coronavirus variant that was first detected in India
Doctors prepare to ration care as covid surge leaves Malaysia in ‘total lockdown’ – Coronavirus cases are soaring. Hospitals are growing crowded. And officials are warning that doctors may soon have to decide who lives.While India’s covid-19 crisis is far from over, the number of new coronavirus infections per million people in Malaysia has overtaken that of the more populous South Asian country. Malaysia, with its roughly 32 million people, now registers more new cases per capita than any medium- or large-sized country in Asia, according to Our World in Data, which tracks publicly available figures.Facing a record number of new cases, Malaysia’s prime minister announced a two-week “total lockdown” starting Tuesday.”There is no time to lose,” wrote one local columnist. “We are staring at the abyss.” On Saturday, Malaysia reported 9,020 new coronavirus cases – a national record for the fifth day running. Although the number fell slightly the next day, it is registering almost as many new cases as the United States – a country with 10 times its population. At least 98 covid-19 deaths were reported Saturday, setting another daily record.The outbreak is bad enough that a top health official warned over the weekend that doctors may have to allocate scarce intensive-care beds to patients with higher chances of recovery.”The number of ICU beds at covid hospitals, quarantine and treatment centers is declining and may be inadequate,” Health Director General Noor Hisham Abdullah said, according to Bloomberg News. The Health Ministry “has warned of possible situations where doctors will have to make difficult choices to prioritize ICU beds for patients with higher recovery potential.”
Death of young student on hospital floor lays bare Argentina’s COVID-19 crisis -The death of a young student in Argentina last week laid bare a health care system that is totally devastated by the coronavirus pandemic now sweeping that nation. Lara Arreguiz, a 22-year-old veterinary student from the northeastern city of Santa Fe on the Parana River, died of COVID-19 on May 21 following a tragic chain of events that lasted eight days and left her lying for many hours on a hospital floor, while waiting for a bed to become available. She died two days later, drowning with fluid-filled lungs. A photograph of her lying on the floor before being admitted to the hospital – taken by Claudia Sanchez, her mother – went viral on social media.Lara’s death adds to the list of young adult victims of the Manaus and South African variants of the COVID-19 virus, which are more virulent, more transmissible and more likely to severely affect the lungs. Among the latest young victims are not just those with underlying risk factors, such as Lara, but otherwise healthy and young individuals. On April 26, 35-year-old Joel Rutigliano, a rugby player, died in the city of La Plata, after a 19-day battle with the disease. In early May two sisters, Aldana, 21, and Marina, 29, both biology students died within days of each other in Entre R’os, across the Uruguay River. Sol Casella, 23, a journalism student at Lomas de Zamora University near Buenos Aires, died on May 1. Lara began showing symptoms of the disease on May 13. Yet she was not diagnosed with a COVID-19 infection until May 17; given antibiotics and sent home. The antibiotics were ineffective, and two days later, her parents took her to Iturraspe Hospital in Santa Fe. Attempting to explain this chain of events, the head of Iturraspe Hospital, Francisco Villano, said that the Lara’s photo revealed only an aspect of what was going on. Villano insisted that Lara had been under constant medical supervision.
Covid Updates: Peru Says Its Death Toll Is Triple the Official Number – Peru says that its Covid-19 death toll is almost three times as high as it had officially counted until now, making it one of the hardest-hit nations relative to its population. In a report released on Monday that combined deaths from multiple databases and reclassified fatalities, the government said that 180,764 people had died from Covid-19 through May 22, almost triple the official death toll of about 68,000. The new figure would mean that more people have died in Peru relative to its population than in Hungary and the Czech Republic, the countries with the highest official death tolls per person, according to a New York Times database. The report landed at a precarious moment for Peru’s government, just days before the second round of a closely watched presidential election. Peru has struggled to contain the coronavirus since the pandemic began, and its official death toll before the revised estimate was already the ninth highest per capita in the world. As early as last June, far more deaths were occurring there than would be expected in a normal year, and the gap – a figure known as excess deaths – was much larger than the number of deaths officially attributed to Covid-19, according to New York Times data. That was a warning sign to experts that Covid deaths were being undercounted. William Pan, who teaches global environmental health at Duke University, said the pandemic had underscored the deep inequality and corruption in Peru. “Long before the stories of oxygen shortages in India and Manaus, Iquitos experienced this sad reality of Covid,” said Dr. Pan, referring to the largest Peruvian city in the Amazon. “Thousands of people were being turned away last April and May due to lack of oxygen, lack of space, medical staff being totally overwhelmed and more.”Peru could be the first of several nations forced to reckon with a re-evaluation of the pandemic’s true impact. The World Health Organization said in May that deaths from Covid-19 globally were probably much higher than had been recorded. Peru’s government will start publishing more accurate daily tallies of cases and deaths based on new guidelines laid out in the report, said Oscar Ugarte, the health minister. The virus is spreading faster in South America than on any other continent, according to official data, with five nations among the top 10 globally for new cases reported per person. Its worst outbreak is in Argentina, which was supposed to host the Copa America soccer tournament, before organizers announced that they were moving it to Brazil.
Australian government belatedly moves to vaccinate aged home residents, workers – When the Australian state of Victoria re-entered a state of lockdown on May 27 after a spate of new COVID-19 infections, 29 nursing homes remained unvaccinated, despite a target date for completion of the first round of vaccinations passing six weeks earlier. The situation highlights the fiasco that is the vaccination program in Australia. Thousands of aged care residents and workers are now at risk of serious health complications and death through coronavirus infection. The elderly in aged care homes are the most vulnerable to the disease – during Victoria’s second wave of infections in 2020, 655 aged care residents died in for-profit homes. Federal Liberal-National government health minister Greg Hunt hastily tried to head off the political damage by announcing that vaccinations would be finalised in the homes within two days. It remains to be seen whether this will be enacted, or if it will represent yet another failed vaccination target. An aged care worker at a home in Melbourne’s western suburbs Arcare Maidstone was diagnosed with COVID on May 29. Her infection threw the state Labor government into a quandary, as they struggled to “confirm the nature” of her contamination. The commander of the state’s response team, Jeroen Weimar, said her case was of “significant concern,” because it could be a “mystery case” without a known link to previously identified infections. The worker had received a first but not a second dose of a coronavirus vaccine. On May 31, another worker at Arcare and at least one resident tested positive. Only one-third of the 110 staff, and 53 of the 76 residents had received their first vaccination shot – and none their second. Yesterday it was revealed that one of the positive staff members had also worked shifts at BlueCross Western Gardens nursing home in the outer working-class suburb of Sunshine while potentially infectious. The dangerous practice of low-paid casual staff being forced to work at multiple facilities resumed in November after the federal government lifted prohibitions imposed on it during last year’s pandemic.
Australia’s Victoria Extends Melbourne COVID-19 Lockdown for 2nd Week (Reuters) – Australia’s Victoria state on Wednesday extended a snap COVID-19 lockdown for a second week in Melbourne in a bid to contain an outbreak of the highly contagious virus strain first detected in India, but will ease some restrictions in other regions. Victoria, Australia’s second-most populous state, was plunged into lockdown last Thursday, initially until June 3, after the first locally acquired cases were detected in three months, infections rose steadily and close contacts reached several thousand. “If we let this thing run its course, it will explode,” Victoria state Acting Premier James Merlino told reporters in Melbourne on Wednesday. “This variant of concern will become uncontrollable and people will die.” “No-one … wants to repeat last winter,” he said, referring to one of the world’s strictest and longest lockdowns imposed in Victoria last winter to contain a second wave of COVID-19. More than 800 people died in the state’s outbreak, accounting for roughly 90% of Australia’s total deaths since the pandemic began. Snap lockdowns, regional border restrictions and tough social distancing rules have largely helped Australia to suppress all prior outbreaks and keep its COVID-19 numbers relatively low at just over 30,100 cases and 910 deaths. Though Victoria has been reporting daily cases in single digits since the lockdown was imposed, officials fear the strain of the virus in the latest outbreak could be spread even through minimal contact. Six new locally acquired cases were reported on Wednesday, versus nine a day earlier, taking the total infections in the latest outbreak to 60. Health authorities have said the strain could only take one day to pass from person to person, compared with earlier strains where transmission could take about five or six days of contact. For now, Melbourne’s five million residents face a second week of only being allowed to leave home for essential work, healthcare, grocery shopping, exercise or to get a coronavirus vaccination.
Malaysia reverses course, locking down for two weeks as virus cases surge.– Malaysia will begin a two-week national lockdown on Tuesday that will shut most of the economy and limit the movement of people, in an effort to contain the country’s worst coronavirus outbreak since the start of the pandemic.Essential services like supermarkets and hospitals will be allowed to continue operating, but offices, most retailer stores and malls, and most factories will be closed, Defense Minister Ismail Sabri Yaakob said in a televised address. The number of people at work in the country will fall to 1.5 million from 15 million, the minister said.The country’s schools were closed earlier in May.Malaysia is now reporting about 24 new coronavirus cases a day for every 100,000 people, a higher rate than any other country in Asia outside the Middle East, according to a New York Times database.New case reports have surged in recent weeks and reached more than 9,000 on Saturday; Monday’s count was about 6,800. Over the course of the pandemic, Malaysia has reported more than 570,000 cases and nearly 2,800 deaths – more than three-quarters of them have come this year.Prime Minister Muhyiddin Yassin announced the “total lockdown” on Friday evening, saying he was worried that the rapid increase in infections would overwhelm health care facilities in the nation of nearly 33 million.”With the latest rise in daily cases showing a drastically upward trend, hospital capacity for Covid-19 patients across the country is getting more limited,” he wrote on Facebook.Less than a week earlier, he had rejected the idea of a lockdown on economic grounds. “We have learned over the last year, we cannot close the economy,” he said on May 23. “We have to balance life and livelihoods.”As he reversed course, Mr. Muhyiddin said he was motivated in part by the presence of “more aggressive variants with higher and faster infectivity.” Health Minister Adham Baa told reporters on Monday that three dangerous variants that were first identified in India, Britain and South Africa were present in Malaysia. B.1.351, the variant seen first in South Africa, appeared to be spreading the most rapidly of the three, he said. Under the lockdown, which is scheduled to end June 14, no more than two people will be allowed to leave a household, and only for specified activities like buying food and medicine, or going to work for those with jobs deemed essential. No one will be allowed to travel farther than six miles from home except to receive medical services.
Pfizer vaccine produces less antibodies against Delta variant of coronavirus: Lancet study- People fully vaccinated with the Pfizer-BioNTech vaccine are likely to have more than five times lower levels of neutralising antibodies against the Delta variant first identified in India compared to the original strain, according to research published in The Lancet journal. The study also shows that levels of these antibodies that are able to recognise and fight the virus are lower with increasing age, and that levels decline over time, providing additional evidence in support of plans to deliver a booster dose to vulnerable people. It supports current plans in the UK to reduce the dose gap between vaccines since they found that after just one dose of the Pfizer-BioNTech vaccine, people are less likely to develop antibody levels against the B.1.617.2 variant as high as those seen against the previously dominant B.1.1.7 (Alpha) variant, first found in Kent. The team, led by researchers from the Francis Crick Institute in the UK, noted that levels of antibodies alone do not predict vaccine effectiveness and prospective population studies are also needed. Lower neutralising antibody levels may still be associated with protection against Covid-19, they said. The study analysed antibodies in the blood of 250 healthy people who received either one or two doses of the Pfizer-BioNTech Covid-19 vaccine, up to three months after their first dose.
Coronavirus outbreak: Mutations that can dodge vaccines – The novel coronavirus has gained “strategic” mutations that may allow it to escape immune responses and vaccines, researchers in India and the US have said in a study that they say underscores the need for continual vaccine redesign. Their study has found that the emergence of these mutations, which represent subtle changes in a viral protein structure that some scientists view as the virus’s Achilles heel, has coincided with sharp surges in infections in 12 countries, including India. The prevalence of one such mutation among coronavirus samples from Covid-19 patients in India increased 13-fold – from 1.1 per cent in February this year to 15 per cent in April – coinciding with a 15-fold surge in daily infections during the country’s second wave. Similar surge-associated mutations have been detected in at least 11 other countries, rising 38-fold in Chile, 82-fold in the UK and 114-fold in France over two or three While mutations are expected to occur over time and drive biological evolution, the study suggests the virus is also accumulating strategic mutations that alter a key protein structure called the “antigenic supersite”. This is the virus’s Achilles heel and is a common target for multiple antibodies that neutralise the virus. “This evolutionary trait appears strongly with infection surges, suggesting some immune-evasive mechanisms in play that aid rampant human-to-human transmission,” Venky Soundararajan, the scientist who led the study, told The Telegraph. Soundararajan and his colleagues at nference, a biomedical data science company with offices in Cambridge, Massachusetts and Bangalore, working with doctors at the Mayo Clinic in Rochester, Minnesota, analysed over 1.3 million coronavirus genomes from 178 countries and looked for patterns between mutations and epidemic surges. Their study, not yet peer-reviewed but posted on medRxiv, an online preprint server, is the first to connect the epidemic’s features – measured through the test positivity rate (the proportion of positive results among those tested) in specific geographic regions – with virus mutations. Their findings suggest that SARS-CoV-2, the virus that causes Covid-19, may be relying on mutations that accumulate on the antigenic supersite as a novel escape strategy to evade immune responses resulting from natural infections or mass vaccination campaigns.
Over 1K Coronavirus Mutation Cases Detected in Russia, Official Says – Over 1,000 coronavirus infections in Russia involve one of three variants believed to be more contagious, the head of Russia’s consumer protection watchdog said Thursday. The World Health Organization lists the SARS-CoV-2 mutations originating from Britain, India and South Africa as variants of concern but has not said that any of them are deadlier than the original SARS-CoV-2 strain. Out of over 1,000 identified Covid-19 mutation cases in Russia, 70% are the British strain, 24% the Indian strain and 6% the South African strain, Rospotrebnadzor head Anna Popova was quoted as saying at the St. Petersburg International Economic Forum. This means that Russia has at least 700 British strain infections, 240 Indian strain infections and 60 South African strain infections. Russian authorities have claimed that the domestically-developed Sputnik V vaccine is effective at preventing the Indian strain. A U.S. study meanwhile has said that Sputnik V is significantly less effective against the South African variant. In April, Sputnik V’s official Twitter account said the vaccine’s developer, the Russia-based Gamaleya Institute, would publish a peer-reviewed study on Sputnik’s efficacy against Covid-19 mutations by May, but it has not yet done so. Popova has previously said that patients infected with the new coronavirus strains have not experienced different symptoms than those infected with the original SARS-CoV-2 strain. Russia last month confirmed its first cases of the mutation that originated in India among a group of 130 first-year medical students from India who had arrived in Ulyanovsk in April. The Indian strain has since been found in Moscow, St. Petersburg and the Pskov region, the Izvestia newspaper reported, citing an epidemiological official.
Canada will soon allow vaccine mixing for second doses. – Facing vaccine shortages, Canada’s immunization advisory body is recommending that some Canadians follow up their AstraZeneca shots with a different vaccine on the second dose. The National Advisory Committee on Immunization said on Tuesday that people who had received a first dose of the AstraZeneca vaccine could be given either the Pfizer-BioNTech or Moderna vaccines as their second dose. It also said that the Pfizer and Moderna vaccines could be used interchangeably, although it recommended sticking with a single brand when possible. While Canada’s health care system has generally been efficient in dispensing shots, no vaccines are manufactured in the country and larger shipments did not begin arriving until the past several weeks. To ensure that the maximum number of Canadians have some protection, Canada focused on getting at least one dose to as many people as possible. While 62 percent of Canadian adults have been given at least one shot, only 5.7 percent are fully vaccinated. The advisory panel’s recommendation came as many provinces are starting to ramp up second doses, and it may resolve a potential headache. Most of the increased shipments of vaccine have come from Pfizer, while supplies of the Moderna and AstraZeneca vaccines have been in much shorter supply. To date, 19.3 million doses of Pfizer’s vaccine have come to Canada, compared with 5.7 million doses of Moderna and 2.8 million Astra Zeneca shots. The ability to substitute Pfizer’s vaccine for second doses eliminates concerns about limited supplies. The advisory panel said that its recommendation followed similar advice from Denmark, Finland, France, Germany, Norway, Spain and Sweden. Several studies have shown that mixing vaccines is safe and effective, the committee said. Seven of Canada’s 10 provinces, whose health care systems perform the vaccinations, have said they will allow people to change course between doses.
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