Coronavirus Daily News Brief – April 15: Rural SARS-CoV-2 Patients More Likely to Die After Hospitalization, How Nursing Homes Hide Profits
An early evening photograph of Moscow taken from the Four Seasons Hotel in Manezhnaya Square
Good afternoon. This is Jonathan Spira, director of research at the Center for Long Covid Research, reporting. Here now the news of the pandemic from across the globe on its 1,496th day.
In news we cover today, a report from the Mayo Clinic indicates that rural residents were more likely to die after hospitalization for Covid-19, another piece of research reveals why nursing homes plead poverty but never go out of business, and in a new study, HDL-C and ferritin emerged as leading predictors of Long Covid severity.
TODAY IN COVID HISTORY
On April 15, 2020, the number of coronavirus cases across the globe crossed the two million mark at 2.03 million, of which 492,892 had recovered, based on data compiled by the Coronavirus Morning News Brief at the time. The death toll now stands at 129,091.
At this point in time, with over 68,000 fatalities, France, Italy, Spain, and the United Kingdom had accounted for over half of the global death toll, while the United States, which had had more fatalities due to SARS-CoV-2 than any other, accounted for one-fifth of the global total with 26,196 dead.
In Russia, the mayor of Moscow reported that the situation there was growing worse. As of this date, the city had recorded 14,776 confirmed cases and мэр Sergey Sobyanim issued a warning saying that the numbers were likely to significantly increase in the coming days.
In Germany, Bundeskanzler Angela Merkel said that some shops in the country could reopen next week, but most restrictions would remain in place until at least May.
Finally, a French court ordered Amazon to limit its deliveries to essential goods, ruling that the company had failed to protect its workers from the novel coronavirus. Amazon attempted to appeal the order, albeit to no avail.
LONG COVID
A recently published study in the journal Clinics suggests that HDL-C and ferritin are linked to an increased severity in Long Covid and may be markers for same.
The study, entitled “Reduced HDL-Cholesterol in Long Covid-19: A Key Metabolic Risk Factor Tied to Disease Severity,” examined health data from 88 patients across varying degrees of initial disease severity ranging from mild to moderate to severe) compared to a control group comprising 29 healthy individuals. HDL-C and ferritin emerged as leading predictors of disease severity.
UNITED STATES
A new study found that rural SARS-CoV-2 patients were 22% likelier to die after a hospital stay than their urban counterparts.
The study, conducted by the Mayo Clinic, found that such disparities persisted even after the rollout of coronavirus vaccines in early 2021.
The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention released a new study that shows no link between coronavirus mRNA vaccines, such as those from Moderna and Pfizer-BioNTech, and cardiac arrest in young people.
The findings put to rest a popular vaccine conspiracy theory.
The study, entitled “Assessment of Risk for Sudden Cardiac Death Among Adolescents and Young Adults After Receipt of COVID-19 Vaccine – Oregon, June 2021–December 2022” and published in Morbidity and Mortality Weekly, focuses on people who got an mRNA coronavirus vaccine and died within 100 days of being inoculated. Out of 40 deaths that occurred among people who got the vaccine, three occurred within that time frame and none of the death certificates attributed the fatalities to the vaccine.
OTHER HEALTHCARE NEWS
A not-yet-published study by researchers at UCLA and Lehigh University found that nursing homes hide on average 62.9% of profits by engaging in related party transactions. They tend to pay inflated fees to related parties, primarily for real estate and management services.
In “Tunneling and Hidden Profits in Health Care,” the authors, economists Ashvin Gandhi and Andrew Olenski, make a credible explanation as to why nursing homes always appear to be on the brink of bankruptcy but continue to stay in operation. Nursing home operators are protesting the Biden administration’s proposed bare-minimum staffing standards, saying they can’t possibly afford to do this, yet the care homes owned by private-equity companies nonetheless are able to enrich their masters.
The study is based on 24 years of nursing homes’ Medicaid cost reports in Illinois, which requires facilities to submit detailed Medicaid cost report information, including mandatory reporting of information about related parties.
GLOBAL STATISTICS
Now here are the daily statistics for Monday, April 15.
As of Monday, at press time, the world has recorded 704.75 million Covid-19 cases, an increase of less than 0.01 million in the last 24 hours, and 7.01 million deaths, according to Worldometer, a service that tracks such information. In addition, 675.62 million people worldwide have recovered from the virus, an increase of less than 0.01 million in the same period.
The reader should note that infrequent reporting from some sources may appear as spikes in new case figures or death tolls as well as the occasional downward or upward adjustment as corrections to case figures warrant.
Worldwide, the number of active coronavirus cases as of Monday at press time is 22,123,398, a figure that is unchanged in the past 24 hours. Out of that figure, 99.8%, or 22,088,604, are considered mild, and 0.2%, or 34,794, are listed as critical. The percentage of cases considered critical has not changed over the past 19 months.
Since the start of the pandemic, the United States has, as of Monday, recorded 111.82 million cases, a higher figure than any other country, and a death toll of 1.22 million. India has the world’s second highest number of officially recorded cases, 45.04 million, and the world’s fourth highest death toll, 533,570.
The last data made available by Russia’s Rosstat state statistics service in July 2022 showed that the number of Covid or Covid-related deaths since the start of the pandemic in the country was 823,623, giving the country the world’s second highest pandemic-related death toll, behind the United States. Rosstat has not released any additional data on the death toll in Russia since then.
Meanwhile, France is the country with the third highest number of cases, with 40.14 million, and Germany is in the number four slot, with 38.83 million total cases.
Brazil, which has recorded the third highest number of deaths as a result of the virus, 711,380, has recorded 38.74 million 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 34.57 million cases, as number six; Japan, with 33.8 million cases placing it in the number seven slot; and Italy, with 26.72 million, as number eight, as well as the United Kingdom, with 24.91 million, and Russia, with 24.12 million, as nine and ten respectively.
CURRENT U.S. COVID STATISTICS AT A GLANCE
In the United States, in the week ending April 6, 2024, the test positivity rate was, based on data released on April 12 from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention was 3.4%, and the trend in test positivity is -0.4% in the most recent week. Meanwhile, the percentage of emergency department visits that were diagnosed as SARS-CoV-2 was 0.5%, and the trend in emergency department visits is -14.8%.
The number of people admitted to hospital in the United States due to SARS-CoV-2 in the same 7-day period was 7,318, a figure that is down 9.8% over the past 7-day period. Meanwhile, the percentage of deaths due to SARS-CoV-2 was 1.1%, a figure that is down 8.3% in the same period.
VACCINATION SPOTLIGHT
Some 70.6% of the world population has received at least one dose of coronavirus vaccine by Monday, according to Our World in Data, an online scientific publication that tracks such information. So far, 13.57 billion doses of the vaccine have been administered on a global basis and 2,312 doses are now administered each day.
Meanwhile, only 32.7% 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, 2023, Eritrea remains the only country in the world that has not administered vaccines in any significant number.
Finally, as of April 14, 2024, only Turkmenistan in Central Asia is only state that has not reported any cases of SARS-CoV-2 infections whatsoever, although it is strongly suspected that the virus is present there. Meanwhile, the last territory in the world to have its first ever SARS-CoV-2 infection was Tokelau, a dependency of New Zealand that reported its first five cases on December 21, 2022.
Anna Breuer contributed reporting to this story.
The Coronavirus Daily News Brief is a publication of the Center for Long Covid Research. www.longcov.org
If you have Long Covid and need to talk to someone, call the Long Covid Patient Peer Counseling Phone Line, or HOPELINE. The HOPELINE is our free, confidential support and information service.
☏ 844 LONGCOV (844 566-4268)
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