Coronavirus Morning News Brief – June 20: Chinese Economy’s Alarming Slowdown, FDA Recommends Single-Strain Jab

New Jersey Fisheries Received Improper Aid, State Comptroller Finds

By Jonathan Spira on 20 June 2023
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Lake Hopatcong, New Jersey

Good morning. This is Jonathan Spira reporting. Here now the news of the pandemic from across the globe on the 1,196th day of the pandemic.

In news we cover today, England’s former chief medical officer was close to tears when giving testimony over the country’s response to the pandemic, the FDA told vaccine makers to target a single strain in the fall/winter jab, and New Jersey fisheries received far more pandemic aid than that to which they were entitled.

UNITED STATES

The Food and Drug Administration on Friday told Pfizer, Moderna, and Novavax, the three coronavirus vaccine makers in the country, to manufacture single-strain jabs targeting the omicron subvariant XBB.1.5, one of the most immune-evasive Covid variants to date.

XBB.1.5 accounted for 40% of all Covid cases in the country in early June, but that proportion is slowly declining, according to data from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.

Preliminary data submitted by the three vaccine makers last week indicates that their vaccines produce strong immune responses against all XBB variants.

Meanwhile, the New Jersey Department of Environmental Protection is pressing fishery businesses in the state to pay back almost half of all their federal pandemic aid because it was improperly allocated, according to a letter from the state comptroller’s office.

The audit found overpayments as high as $892,000.

Although businesses weren’t required to document their revenue, they did sign affidavits certifying that they had provided truthful answers. Should the applicants not give back the money, Kevin Walsh, the acting state comptroller, said that New Jersey taxpayers may have to cover the cost to the federal government.

GLOBAL

China’s pandemic rebound apparently has hit a wall, and experts see no immediate fix.  Policymakers and investors expected China’s economy to rev up again after Beijing abruptly dropped its draconian “zero-Covid” precautions, but recent data shows alarming signs of a slowdown.

The former chief medical officer of England, Dame Sally Davies, was close to tears at the Covid Inquiry as she apologized to families who lost loved ones during the pandemic.

“It wasn’t just the deaths, it was the way they died… it was harrowing and it remains horrible,” she said.

She added that the United Kingdom did not have sufficient resilience to cope with the pandemic, with fewer doctors, nurses or hospital beds than similar countries.

TODAY’S STATISTICS

Now here are the daily statistics for Tuesday, June 20.

As of Tuesday morning, the world has recorded just over 690.6 million Covid-19 cases, an increase of under 0.1 million from the previous day, and 6.89 million deaths, according to Worldometer, a service that tracks such information. In addition, 663.1 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 Tuesday at press time is 20,644,412, a decrease of 6,000. Out of that figure, 99.8%, or 20,606,945, are considered mild, and 0.2%, or 37,467, 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 10 was 7.04%, down from 8.07%, 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 1.47% and, for RSV, that figure was 0.41%.

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 Tuesday, recorded over 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 531,896.

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 Tuesday 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, 703,399, 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 32 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.

Tuesday on June 13, 2022, the CDC began to update vaccine data on a weekly basis and publish the updated information on Tuesday by 8 p.m. EDT, a statement on the agency’s website said.  Tuesday 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 Tuesday, 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 124,3y4 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 Tuesday 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)

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