New York will end mask mandates for healthcare settings but most will retain masking policies regardless.
Good morning. This is Jonathan Spira reporting. Here now the news of the pandemic from across the globe on the 1,036th day of the pandemic.
Researchers at Yale found that having SARS-CoV-2 can boost your response to flu vaccines, if you are male. A study showed that a mild infection increased immune benefits from a later flu shot. In a paper published in Nature, researchers led by John Tsang, a systems immunologist at Yale University, found that Covid can impact the immune response long after the initial infection. This means it will change the way people respond to a subsequent vaccine for a completely different disease.
More specifically, Tsang’s team found that men who had recovered from a mild case of SARS-CoV-23 had a more robust response to a subsequent flu shot when compared with women.
The findings could end up helping scientists develop better vaccines in the future.
Speaking of vaccines, the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention added coronavirus vaccines to the immunization schedules for children and adults. The guidance formalizes current recommendations but does not mandate the vaccines.
In other news we cover today, New York State is ending the requirement to mask in healthcare settings, the Johns Hopkins Covid Resource Center is shutting down, and scientists found a receptor protein that sticks to the coronavirus like Velcro.
UNITED STATES
New York State officials said they plan to allow an emergency pandemic rule mandating masks in healthcare settings to lapse on February 12. The change will impact hospitals, medical practices, and other such facilities. The Morning News Brief checked with several practices and all said they plan to continue to require staff and patients to don face masks.
The Associated Press and Stanford University issued a report that said that an estimated 240,000 students in 21 states had unaccounted absences from high school as of the third year of the pandemic.
Meanwhile, after a little over three years, the Johns Hopkins Coronavirus Resource Center is shutting its doors. Its data dashboards and maps continue to be go-to sources for information on the pandemic.
Finally, it appears that millions of people across the country will lose Medicaid health coverage when the United States ends the pandemic health emergency. The Department of Health and Human Services said that up to 15 million people may be found to be ineligible once the emergency period ends. States are preparing for a massive effort to reexamine individuals’ Medicaid eligibility once the emergency designation is lifted.
GLOBAL
In Australia, scientists at the University of Sidney have found a receptor protein that “acts a bit like molecular Velcro, in that it sticks to the spike of the virus.” The research, which was published in the journal PLOS Biology and led by Greg Neely, a professor of functional genomics with the University of Sydney’s Charles Perkins Centre in collaboration with, Lipin Loo, a postdoctoral researcher, and Matthew Waller, a Ph.D. student, could explain why some people never contract SARS-CoV-2 while others suffer serious illness,.
TODAY’S STATISTICS
Now here are the daily statistics for Friday, February 10.
As of Friday morning, the world has recorded 677.2 million Covid-19 cases, an increase of 0.3 million cases, and 6.78 million deaths, according to Worldometer, a service that tracks such information. In addition, 649.7 million people worldwide have recovered from the virus, an increase of 0.2 million.
The reader should note that infrequent reporting from some sources may appear as spikes in new case figures or death tolls.
Worldwide, the number of active coronavirus cases as of Friday at press time is 20,711,115, an increase of 26,000. Out of that figure, 99.8%, or 20,669,794, are considered mild, and 0.2%, or 41,321, are listed as critical. The percentage of cases considered critical has not changed over the past 24 hours.
The United States reported 112,192 new coronavirus infections on Thursday for the previous day, compared to 31,892 on Wednesday, 24,780 on Tuesday, 2,718 on Monday, and 2,986 on Sunday, according to data from the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services. The 7-day incidence rate is now 43,770. Figures for the weekend (reported the following day) are typically 30% to 60% of those posted on weekdays due to a lower number of tests being conducted.
Data for Friday was not available at press time.
The average daily number of new coronavirus cases in the United States over the past 14 days is 39,918, a figure down 14% over the past 14 days, based on data from the Department of Health and Human Services, among other sources. The average daily death toll over the same period is 457, a decrease of 17% over the same period, while the average number of hospitalizations for the period was 29,299, a decrease of 15%. In addition, the number of patients in ICUs was 3,606, a decrease of 18% and the test positivity rate is now 11%, an increase of 1% over the same period.
In addition, since the start of the pandemic the United States has, as of Friday, recorded 104.7 million cases, a higher figure than any other country, and a death toll of 1.14 million. India has the world’s second highest number of officially recorded cases, 44.7 million, and a reported death toll of 530,750.
The newest data from Russia’s Rosstat state statistics service showed that, at the end of July, the number of Covid or Covid-related deaths since the start of the pandemic there in April 2020 is now 823,623, giving the country the world’s second highest pandemic-related death toll, behind the United States. Rosstat last reported that 3,284 people died from the coronavirus or related causes in July 2022, down from 5,023 in June, 7,008 in May and 11,583 in April.
Meanwhile, France is the country with the third highest number of cases, with over 39.5 million, and Germany is in the number four slot, with 37.9 million total cases.
Brazil, which has recorded the third highest number of deaths as a result of the virus, 697,620, has recorded 36.9 million cases, placing it in the number five slot.
The other five countries with total case figures over the 20 million mark are Japan, with 32.9 million cases, South Korea, with 30.3 million cases, placing it in the number seven slot, and Italy, with 25.5 million, as number eight, as well as the United Kingdom, with 24.3 million, and Russia, with just over 22 million.
VACCINATION SPOTLIGHT
The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention said that, as of Thursday, 269.2 million people in the United States – or 81.1% – have received at least one dose of the coronavirus vaccine. Of that population, 69.2%, or 229.8 million people, have received two doses of vaccine, and the total number of doses that have been dispensed in the United States is now 668.8 million. Breaking this down further, 92% of the population over the age of 18 – or 237.6 million people – has received at least a first inoculation and 78.9% of the same group – or 203.8 million people – is fully vaccinated. In addition, 19.2% of the same population, or over 49.5 million people, has already received an updated or bivalent booster dose of vaccine.
Starting on June 13, 2022, the CDC began to update vaccine data on a weekly basis and publish the updated information on Thursdays by 8 p.m. EDT, a statement on the agency’s website said.
Some 69.4% of the world population has received at least one dose of coronavirus vaccine by Friday, according to Our World in Data, an online scientific publication that tracks such information. So far, 13.27 billion doses of the vaccine have been administered on a global basis and 1.01 million doses are now administered each day.
Meanwhile, only 26.4% of people in low-income countries have received one dose, while in countries such as Canada, China, Denmark, France, Italy, the United Kingdom, and the United States, at least 75% of the population has received at least one dose of vaccine.
Only a handful of the world’s poorest countries – Bangladesh, Bhutan, Cambodia and Nepal – have reached the 70% mark in vaccinations. Many countries, however, are under 20% and, in countries such as Haiti, Senegal, and Tanzania, for example, vaccination rates remain at or below 10%.
In addition, with the start of vaccinations in North Korea in late September, Eritrea remains the only country in the world that has not administered vaccines.
Anna Breuer contributed reporting to this story.
(Photo: Accura Media Group)
