Coronavirus Morning News Brief – July 20: Did Dr. Fauci Lie?, Scottish Doctors Say Government Playing Russian Roulette Over Mask Policy
Toronto Pearson International Airport
Good morning. This is Jonathan Spira reporting. Here now the news of the pandemic from across the globe on the 1,226th day of the pandemic.
OP-ED ON THURSDAY
Why Some People Are ‘Super Dodgers’ and Don’t Get Covid Symptoms
A gene mutation may explain why some people do not get sick when they have SARS-CoV-2, a new study shows.
Led by researchers at UC San Francisco, the report refers to people who contract the virus but never develop symptoms as “super dodgers” and they “may have a genetic ace up their sleeve,” the researchers said in a statement. It turns out they are more than two times as likely as those who develop symptoms to carry a specific gene variation that helps them obliterate the virus, they found.
A mutation in one of the genes coding for HLA, or the human leukocyte antigen – protein markers that signal the immune system – appears to help virus-killing T cells identify SARS-CoV-2 and “launch a lightning attack.”
What’s interesting is two-fold:
1.) The T cells of some people who carry this variant can identify the novel coronavirus, even if they have never encountered it before, thanks to its resemblance to the seasonal cold viruses they already know, and
2.) The discovery points to new targets for drugs and vaccines, a topic outside of this op-ed beyond a brief mention.
In other news we cover today, Scottish doctors are upset about a change in mask mandates at healthcare facilities and Senator Rand Paul contends that Dr. Anthony Fauci lied to Congress about NIH funding in Wuhan.
UNITED STATES
In Congress, Senator Rand Paul, a Republican from Kentucky, wrote to Attorney General Merrick Garland last week calling for an investigation into whether Dr Anthony Fauci, who recently retired at the age of 82 from the National Institutes of Health, committed perjury when he said that the NIH had not funded gain-of-function research at the Wuhan Institute of Virology, a facility which lies at the center of one of the two leading theories about the origins of SARS-CoV-2. Paul produced what he said were e-mails contradicting Fauci’s statements.
GLOBAL
Physicians in Scotland are warning government ministers that they are “playing Russian roulette” by having removed the mandate for staff and patients to don face masks in healthcare settings. They are demanding that guidance requiring facemasks be reintroduced.
In May of this year, the official Scottish government requirement on wearing face coverings in hospitals, dentists and GP surgeries was changed, after being in place since June 2020, on the heels of the World Health Organization’s declaration that Covid was no longer a global health emergency.
In Toronto, Etobicoke General Hospital reported a coronavirus outbreak in its cardiology unit. On Monday, the William Osler Health System, which includes Etobicoke General, said it will take “extra precautions,” adding that the hospital will remain open.
TODAY’S STATISTICS
Now here are the daily statistics for Thursday, July 20.
As of Thursday morning, the world has recorded 691.75 million Covid-19 cases, an increase of 0. 03 million from the previous day, and 6.9 million deaths, according to Worldometer, a service that tracks such information. In addition, 664.16 million people worldwide have recovered from the virus, an increase of 0.04 million from the prior 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 Thursday at press time is 20,688,708, an increase of 12,000. Out of that figure, 99.8%, or 20,651,531, are considered mild, and 0.2%, or 37,177, are listed as critical. The percentage of cases considered critical has not changed over the past eight months.
The United States no longer reports daily or weekly new Covid cases. It last 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 U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.
The test positivity rate for Covid for the week ending July 1 was 9.82, up from 9.28% 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 2.14%, up from 1.98% and, for RSV, that figure was 0.55%, up from 0.46%.
The death toll from Covid was 1% in the week ending July 8, 2023, a figure that is down 0.8% over the week.
Finally, the number of hospital admissions from Covid for seven days ending June 24 was 6,228, a figure that is down 8% over the preceding 30-day period.
As of March 25, 2023, the Morning News Brief began to update case data as well as death tolls on a weekly basis. In addition, as of 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. Where appropriate, the Morning News Brief has reintroduced data sets are they have become available.
Since the start of the pandemic, the United States has, as of Thursday, recorded 107.41 million cases, a higher figure than any other country, and a death toll of 1.17 million. India has the world’s second highest number of officially recorded cases, 45 million, and a reported death toll of 531,915.
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, 704,448, has recorded 37.7 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 32.6 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 June 15, the total number of updated bivalent doses given in the United States was just over 139.9 million.
Older – and no longer updated – data from the CDC shows that over 270.2 million people in the United States – or 81.4% – have received at least one dose of the coronavirus vaccine as of May 11, 2023. 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.
Some 70.3% of the world population has received at least one dose of coronavirus vaccine by Thursday, according to Our World in Data, an online scientific publication that tracks such information. So far, 13.48 billion doses of the vaccine have been administered on a global basis and 204,219 doses are now administered each day.
Meanwhile, only 32.2% 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 beginning 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)
