Coronavirus Morning News Brief – Dec. 25: ‘I Had to Fulfill My Responsibility’ Says Fauci, China’s Cities Report Hundreds of Thousands of New Cases

China's National Health Commission to Stop Publishing Daily Coronavirus Case Figures

By Jonathan Spira on 25 December 2022
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Grauman’s Chinese Theatre in Hollywood

Good morning. This is Jonathan Spira reporting. Here now the news of the pandemic from across the globe on the 990th day of the pandemic.

“I had to fulfil my responsibility,” Dr. Anthony Fauci, the nation’s leading infectious disease specialist, said shortly before attending a party in honor of his retirement at the end of the year.

Fauci, who has advised seven U.S. presidents on health, was, not surprisingly, attending a party held partially via Zoom wearing a dark suit, blue shirt, and blue-and-white polka dot tie.  ““That’s going to be done according to all public health guidelines,” he said, referring to the party.

“People with masks and people online and people dialing in through Zoom, so it’s not going to be the classical party,” he told the Guardian in an interview.

In other words, it’s going to be the antithesis of a superspreader event.

While he declined “to get into sharp criticisms” about then President Donald Trump, he noted that what the former president was saying was “not based on any science or data and was, quite frankly, totally incorrect about hydroxychloroquine and bleach and ivermectin,” as well as saying that the virus was going to “disappear like magic.”

In other news we cover today, local officials in China are reporting far more new cases than the Beijing government and the surge in many parts of the United States including Los Angeles County continues unchecked.

UNITED STATES

Los Angeles County health officials reported more than 3,006, new coronavirus cases Saturday as well as an additional 23 deaths, as a major holiday surge continues across the country.

GLOBAL

The Chinese government facing a backlash over its move to provide the traditional medicine known as Lianhua Qingwen as part of its efforts to contain the current surge of Covid infections. Some provinces in the country are distributing tens of thousands of boxes of it to patients with fevers but health authorities are divided over its efficacy.  The medication is based on a 2,000-year-old formula and drug regulators in some countries have warned against its use.

The end of the severe “zero-Covid” restrictions in China has brought about a change in which government agency will publish daily Covid figures.  The National Health Commission said it would stop publishing such numbers on Sunday.

“Relevant COVID information will be published by the Chinese Center for Disease Control and Prevention for reference and research,” the NHC said in a statement Saturday.  The agency did not give a reason for the change nor did it indicate the frequency with which the CDC would update such information.

Meanwhile, local health officials in China are releasing data showing hundreds of thousands of new daily cases while the official national tally was only 4,103 on Sunday.

Dongguan in the southern province of Guangdong reported 250,000 to 300,000 people new daily infections, while Qingdao city in the eastern province of Shandong is seeing 490,000 to 530,000 new daily cases.

The sheer number of new cases is overwhelming hospitals outside of Beijing and leaving healthcare workers little choice but to come to work when sick to prevent patients from going untreated.

TODAY’S STATISTICS

Now here are the daily statistics for Sunday, December 25.

As of Sunday morning, the world has recorded 661.7 million Covid-19 cases, an increase of 0.4 million cases, and 6.69 million deaths, according to Worldometer, a service that tracks such information. In addition, 634.2 million people worldwide have recovered from the virus, an increase of 0.3 million.

Worldwide, the number of active coronavirus cases as of Sunday at press time is 20,844,821, an increase of 127,000. Out of that figure, 99.8%, or 20,806,042, are considered mild, and 0.2%, or 38,779, are listed as critical. The percentage of cases considered critical has not changed over the past 24 hours.

The United States reported 4,923 new coronavirus infections on Sunday for the previous day, compared to 31,370  on Saturday, 157,552 on Friday, 186,957 on Thursday, and 47,846 on Wednesday, according to data from the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services. The 7-day incidence rate is now 70,286.  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.

The average daily number of new coronavirus cases in the United States over the past 14 days is 70,508, an increase of 7% averaged 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 428, a decrease of -8% over the same period, while the average number of hospitalizations for the period was 41,041, an increase of 8%. In addition, the number of patients in ICUs was 4,920, an increase of 13%.

In addition, since the start of the pandemic the United States has, as of Sunday, recorded over 102.2 million cases, a higher figure than any other country, and a death toll of just over 1.1 million. India has the world’s second highest number of officially recorded cases, just under 44.7 million, and a reported death toll of 530,693.

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 reported that 3,284 people died from the coronavirus or related causes in July, 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 39.1 million, and Germany is in the number four slot, with over 37.2 million total cases.

Brazil, which has recorded the third highest number of deaths as a result of the virus, 692,886, has recorded 36.2million cases, placing it in the number five slot.

The other five countries with total case figures over the 20 million mark are South Korea, with 28.7 million cases, Japan, with 28.3 million, placing it in the number seven slot, and Italy, with 25 million, as number eight, as well as the United Kingdom, with 24.1 million, and Russia, with just under 21.8 million.

VACCINATION SPOTLIGHT

The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention said that, as of Thursday, 268.1 million people in the United States – or 80.8% – have received at least one dose of the coronavirus vaccine. Of that population, 69%, or 228.9 million people, have received two doses of vaccine, and the total number of doses that have been dispensed in the United States is now 660.4 million. Breaking this down further, 91.7% of the population over the age of 18 – or 236.8 million people – has received at least a first inoculation and 78.7% of the same group – or 203.2 million people – is fully vaccinated.  In addition, 16.8% of the same population, or over 43.4 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 68.7% 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, 13.18 billion doses of the vaccine have been administered on a global basis and 2.93 million doses are now administered each day.

Meanwhile, only 25.1% 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)

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