The Fairmont Hotel Vier Jahreszeiten on the Elbe river in Hamburg
Good morning. This is Jonathan Spira reporting. Here now the news of the pandemic from across the globe on the 1,187th day of the pandemic.
In news we cover today, a new study found that patients with Long Covid are more fatigued than those with end-stage cancer, the former captain of the aircraft carrier Theodore Roosevelt speaks out about his vessel’s 5,000 Covid cases, and a great amount of presumably quite tasty food from the Great British Bake-Off is going to waste due to pandemic rules,
LONG COVID
A new study – “Impact of Fatigue as the Primary Determinant of Functional Limitations Among Patients with Post-Covid-19 Syndrome: A Cross-Sectional Observational Study” – has uncovered just how devastating Long Covid is for patients. The researchers surveyed almost 4,000 patients who had been referred by their GPs to Long Covid clinics.
The patients reported having more trouble with activities of daily life, greater fatigue, and a lower quality of life than patients with serious and even life-threatening conditions including end-stage renal failure, Parkinson’s disease, and advanced forms of cancer.
Activities of daily living are activities related to personal care. The list of activities includes bathing, dressing, getting in and out of bed or a chair, walking, using the toilet, and eating.
Participants in the study also reported extremely low health-related quality of life, with scores roughly the same as patients with advanced cancer. Quality of life is generally better among stage 45 lung cancer patients than it is among Long Covid patients, the study’s researchers concluded.
UNITED STATES
Captain Brett Crozier, the then commander of the aircraft carrier Theodore Roosevelt who was reportedly on track to becoming an admiral but was relieved of his command after he called attention in March 2020 to the rate at which SARS-CoV-2 was spreading among the 5,000 sailors on the nuclear aircraft carrier, begging the Navy to send more help, told the San Francisco Chronicle he would do it all again, even knowing the risks to his career.
“I think in that situation, knowing what I knew at the time and the situation we were faced with, [sending] the email to help us break the logjam to get us help, then I’d like to think I would do exactly the same thing. As a leader, your No. 1 responsibility, your No. 1 priority, is to take care of the folks that work for you. It was a conscience-over-career moment.”
GLOBAL
On Monday, vaccine developer BioNTech will go to court in Hamburg to defend itself against a lawsuit from a woman who is seeking damages for side effects of the company’s coronavirus vaccine, she contends happened to her. The plaintiff, a German woman whose name was not revealed due to the country’s privacy laws, claims that she suffered upper-body pain, swollen extremities, fatigue, and sleeping disorder due to the BioNTech vaccine.
A judge on the television show the “Great British Bake-off” told the media that coronavirus pandemic rules continue to waste cakes baked on the program.
The 83-year-old writer Prue Leith told the Telegraph that this is because no food is allowed to leave the site, causing “enormous” quantities of baked goods to be binned.
“We are not allowed to take anything off site since Covid, because there were all sorts of Covid restrictions and it seems to have stuck,” Leith said.
TODAY’S STATISTICS
Now here are the daily statistics for Sunday, June 11.
As of Sunday morning, the world has recorded 690.15 million Covid-19 cases, an increase of less than 0.1 million from the previous day, and 6.89 million deaths, according to Worldometer, a service that tracks such information. In addition, 662.6 million people worldwide have recovered from the virus, an increase of 0.1 million from the previous day.
The reader should note that infrequent reporting from some sources may appear as spikes in new case figures or death tolls.
Worldwide, the number of active coronavirus cases as of Sunday at press time is 20,611,118, a decrease of 30,000. Out of that figure, 99.8%, or 20,573,522, are considered mild, and 0.2%, or 37,576, are listed as critical. The percentage of cases considered critical has not changed over the past eight months.
The United States reported 72,136 new cases in the period May 4 through May 10, a figure that is down 26% over the same period one week earlier, according to data from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.
The test positivity rate for the week ending June 3 was 8.7%, up from 6.79%, in the prior week, according to data from the CDC Respiratory Virus Laboratory Emergency Department Network Surveillance, or RESP-LENS. By comparison, the test positive rate for influenza was 2.06% and, for RSV, that figure was 0.39%.
The death toll from Covid was 1.5% in the week ending May 27, 2023, and the trend in Covid-19 deaths is up 7.1% over the same period.
Finally, the number of hospital admissions from Covid for the week ending May 30 was 7,643, a figure that is down 8.4% over the preceding 7-day period.
Starting on March 25, 2023, the Morning News Brief began to update case data as well as death tolls on a weekly basis. In addition, starting on May 15, 2023, the Morning News Brief has pressed pause on certain data sets as we assess the update of changes in reporting by U.S. health authorities at the CDC.
Since the start of the pandemic the United States has, as of Sunday, recorded 107.2 million cases, a higher figure than any other country, and a death toll of over 1.16 million. India has the world’s second highest number of officially recorded cases, just under 45 million, and a reported death toll of 531,891.
The newest data from Russia’s Rosstat state statistics service showed that, at the end of July 2022, the number of Covid or Covid-related deaths since the start of the pandemic there in April 2020 is now 823,623, giving the country the world’s second highest pandemic-related death toll, behind the United States. Rosstat last reported that 3,284 people died from the coronavirus or related causes in July 2022, down from 5,023 in June, 7,008 in May and 11,583 in April.
Meanwhile, France is the country with the third highest number of cases, with 40.1 million, and Germany is in the number four slot, with 38.4 million total cases.
Brazil, which has recorded the third highest number of deaths as a result of the virus, 703,291, has recorded 37.6 million cases, placing it in the number five slot.
The other five countries with total case figures over the 20 million mark are Japan, with 33.8 million cases, South Korea, with 31.8 million cases, placing it in the number seven slot, and Italy, with 25.9 million, as number eight, as well as the United Kingdom, with 24.6 million, and Russia, with 22.9 million.
VACCINATION SPOTLIGHT
The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention said that, as of May 11, over 270.2 million people in the United States – or 81.4% – have received at least one dose of the coronavirus vaccine. Of that population, 69.5%, or 230.6 million people, have received two doses of vaccine, and the total number of doses that have been dispensed in the United States is now over 676.7 million. Breaking this down further, 92.23% of the population over the age of 18 – or 238.2 million people – has received at least a first inoculation and 79.1% of the same group – or 204.3 million people – is fully vaccinated. In addition, 20.5% of the same population, or 53 million people, has already received an updated or bivalent booster dose of vaccine, while 23.7 million people over the age of 65, or 43.3% of that population have also received the bivalent booster.
Starting on June 13, 2022, the CDC began to update vaccine data on a weekly basis and publish the updated information on Thursdays by 8 p.m. EDT, a statement on the agency’s website said. Starting on May 11, 2023, the CDC pressed pause on reporting new vaccine data, a hiatus it said would end on June 15 of this year.
Some 70.1% of the world population has received at least one dose of coronavirus vaccine by Sunday, according to Our World in Data, an online scientific publication that tracks such information. So far, 13.42 billion doses of the vaccine have been administered on a global basis and 311,916 doses are now administered each day.
Meanwhile, only 30.2% 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.
Paul Riegler contributed reporting to this story.
(Photo: Accura Media Group)
