Coronavirus Daily News Brief – June 21: New Variant LB.1 on the Rise in U.S., Midwife Faces 5 Years in Prison After Selling Vaccination Cards Without Jabs

A nurse at a Covid testing center at LaGuardia Airport

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 1,563rd day.

In news we cover today, a new variant, LB.1, is in town and wreaking havoc, one of five midwives who fraudulently sold vaccine cards without giving patients the vaccine now faces five years in prison, and Dr. Anthony Fauci discusses former President Trump’s curiosity with “miracle cures” such as hydroxychloroquine.

TODAY IN THE FIRST YEAR OF COVID HISTORY

On June 20, 2020, the U.S. Transportation Security Administration, the agency that operates security checkpoints at the nation’s airports is not doing a particularly good job at protecting the screeners who work there as well as the flying public, a top-ranking official at the agency said. Jay Brainard, a federal security director at the Transportation Security Administration, was responsible for transportations security in Kansas and filed a whistleblower complaint alleging that the agency withheld N95 masks from staff and exhibited “gross mismanagement” in its response to the pandemic, thereby leaving employees and passengers exposed.

American Airlines said it would raise $3.5 billion in new financing to shore up liquidity amidst the pandemic-induced disruption to the travel sector. The Fort Worth-based carrier said it would raise the funds through the sale of shares and convertible senior notes, offer $1.5 billion in senior secured notes, and enter into a new $500 million term loan facility.

The airline also said that  it had, following a review of the incident, banned the passenger who several days earlier had refused to don a mask on one of its flights. The passenger, Brandon Straka, a hair stylist and reportedly failed actor from New York, was asked to get off a flight from New York City to Dallas after the incident.

Finally, the number of coronavirus cases across the globe stood at 8.9 million, an increase of over 175,000 people in the previous 24 hours, based on figures compiled by the Coronavirus Morning News Brief. The death toll stood at 471,477. The number of daily deaths was 4,429.

In the United States and its territories, the number of confirmed cases in the previous 24 hours stood at 2.36 million, an increase of 29,147, while the death toll was 122,283.

UNITED STATES

One of the midwives in New York State who fraudulently enrolled her practice as an authorized vaccine administration site and then provided vaccine cards to people who had not been inoculated after destroying an equivalent number of vaccine vials, Kathleen Breault of Cambridge in Washington County, pled guilty and now faces five years in prison. She was among five people charged for schemes that in total distributed over 2,600 fake coronavirus vaccine record cards, the U.S. Attorney’s Office for Eastern District of New York said last April.

The latest federal data indicates that a new variant, LB.1, is on track to become the latest dominant strain of the virus. This news comes as the CDC said that, for the first time in months, no U.S. jurisdictions had reported drops in Covid cases.

Key virus indicators, such as wastewater detection, indicate a high rise in cases across a number of western states. Data from emergency room visits in HHS Region 9, which spans Arizona to Hawaii, showed that 1.23% of patients were admitted for SARS-CoV-2, the highest figures since early February 2024.

Dr. Anthony Fauci spoke about his forthcoming book “On Call” about his time working with former President Donald Trump’s and Trump’s fixation with “miracle cures” in an interview with MSNBC’s Ari Melber  earlier in the week. Fauci said that Trump got the notion to push hydroxychloroquine as a treatment for the then novel coronavirus came from Fox News host Laura Ingraham, who touted it as it as a cure on her show.

In mid-May 2020, Trump publicly announced he had been taking the drug for several weeks, although the veracity of his claim is not known.  A peer-reviewed study published by the National Institutes of Health in June 2023 found no significant difference between a placebo and the actual drug in preventing a Covid infection.

The World Health Organization considers the avian flu a public health concern because of its potential to cause a pandemic, and the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention has one million bird flu tests ready, yet the United States has tested only about 45 people across the country. Most researchers and scientists believe that agencies including the CDC and FDA are not moving fast enough to remove barriers that block clinical labs from testing.

In an article published this month, Jennifer Nuzzo, director of the Pandemic Center at the Brown University School of Public Health, and a group of colleagues wrote that the problem with testing at the start of the coronavirus pandemic wasn’t testing capability but a failure to deploy that capability swiftly. The country at that point in time was reporting excess mortality eight times as high as other countries with advanced labs and other technological advantages as a result of this failure.

OTHER HEALTHCARE NEWS

At least 1,170 pilgrims are dead from the extreme high temperatures in Saudi Arabia. The figure includes a number of Egyptians and Americans.  Although the high temperature on Friday was 116° F (46.6° C), cooling down to 113° F (45° C) at night and the same high temperature is expected for both weekend days, temperatures soared to over 125° F (51.7° C) earlier the week.

The deaths came as nearly two million people converted on the country’s deserts for the hajj. The word “hajj” means “pilgrimage made to the Kaaba,” or the house of Allah, a long pious journey undertaken to cleanse pilgrims’ souls of all worldly sin.

People began to succumb to the heat late Friday, the first day of the event, when they made a trek of nearly 10 miles (16 km) to climb Mount Arafat and then stood outside for hours praying before returning to Mecca.

The fatality count is ongoing and many people are missing while others are being treated for extreme heat stroke.  The deaths came as nearly two million Muslim pilgrims converged on Saudi Arabia’s deserts for the annual haj

A 44-year-old woman died last Friday after passing out while hiking on the on the Hiline Trail in Sedona on June 14. The cause of death appears to be “heat exhaustion” along with not getting treated fast enough, the Yavapai County Sheriff’s Office said in a statement.  While the high temperature that day was 97° F (36° C), “the temperatures can be much hotter on trails that are along the rocks and have little shade,” the sheriff’s office said in a post on social media concerning the incident.

The U.S. Food and Drug Administration approved the first menthol-flavored e-cigarette products, signaling that the agency believes vapes can help adult smokers quit smoking tobacco. The move drew strong criticism from some public health advocates.

The FAA took pains to emphasize that the approval “does not mean these tobacco products are safe,” adding that that all tobacco product can be harmful and potentially addictive.

If you want to avoid mosquito bites, wear white and green clothing but avoid red and black. A new study from researchers at the University of Washington suggests certain colors you wear could attract mosquitoes to bite or cause them to find a different human food source.  The mosquitoes are also attracted to the smell of human skin, perspiration, breath, and the carbon dioxide emitted by the human body, according to Jeffrey Riffell, a UW professor of biology who studies mosquito sensory systems.

If you’re not familiar with barosinusitis, also known as barometric pressure sinusitis, you’re not alone: the condition is characterized by inflammation of one or more of the paranasal sinuses, with the inflammation being caused by a pressure gradient, almost always negative, between the sinus cavity and the surrounding ambient environment. Weather is a known irritant: Witness Granny Clampett, more properly Granny Daisy Mae Moses, portrayed by the brilliant Irene Ryan in almost 300 episodes of the hit television show “The Beverly Hillbillies.” She predicted the weather, saying, “My rheumatiz is actin’ up.” She also had a rheumatiz cure, and admitted that it was actually the whiskey from her still and that it wouldn’t cure rheumatism, but “it’ll make ya happy ya got it!”

PANDEMIC STATISTICS

CURRENT U.S. COVID STATISTICS AT A GLANCE

In the United States, in the week ending June 15, 2024, the test positivity rate was, based on data released on June 21 from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention was 6.6%, and the trend in test positivity is +1.2% in the most recent week. Meanwhile, the percentage of emergency department visits that were diagnosed as SARS-CoV-2 was 0.7%, and the trend in emergency department visits is +14.7%.

The number of people admitted to hospital in the United States due to SARS-CoV-2 was no longer being reported as of the end of May. Meanwhile, the percentage of deaths due to SARS-CoV-2 was 0.7%, a figure that is up 16.7% following four weeks of virtually no change.

VACCINATION SPOTLIGHT

Some 70.6% of the world population has received at least one dose of coronavirus vaccine at press time, according to Our World in Data, an online scientific publication that tracks such information.  So far, 13.58 billion doses of the vaccine have been administered on a global basis and the seven-day-average of the number of daily doses of vaccine administrated was 3,352.

Meanwhile, only 32.8% 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.

Where Has All the Data Gone?

We regret to inform that, as of April 15, 2024, the Global Daily Statistics data in the Coronavirus Daily News Brief are no longer being updated. Over the past 15 months, as more politicians and governments sought to place SARS-CoV-2 in the rear-view mirror, pandemic data reporting sputtered out and we are now at the point where it is simply not feasible to provide statistically valid case data on a global scale.

We are developing potential new and authoritative sources that we will present once they have been properly vetted, so stay tuned to this space. In the meantime, our Long Covid and pandemic coverage will remain much the same.

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Anna Breuer contributed reporting to this issue.

The Coronavirus Daily News Brief is a publication of the Center for Long Covid Research. www.longcov.org

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