Category: Breaking News

Global COVID-19 cases topped 300 million on Thursday, according to the Center for Systems Science and Engineering at Johns Hopkins University.

The United States reported 58,449,898 cases and 833,957 deaths, both the highest counts around the world, accounting for more than 19 percent of the global cases and more than 15 percent of the global deaths.

The global caseload reached the grim milestone of 100 million on Jan. 26, 2021 and rose to 200 million on Aug. 4. Maria van Kerkhove, technical lead for the World Health Organization’s Health Emergencies Program, said Thursday that current COVID-19 vaccines do work against all variants that are circulating and are highly effective against preventing severe diseases and death. “I think that’s really important for the public to know … when it is your turn, get vaccinated because it’s really critical,” she said.

BERLIN, Jan 6 (Reuters) – German towns have appealed to authorities for less “flying by the seat of your pants” and more “forward-thinking planning,” as the country looks likely to miss its vaccination target for January. Local leaders have described the vaccine rollout as chaotic, complaining of a lack of communication about when and how much vaccine they would receive, which made it difficult to plan. Germany has a low rate of vaccination compared with some other western European countries: 71.5% of the population is fully vaccinated and 40.9% have received a booster shot. Gerd Landsberg, chief executive of the German Association of Towns and Municipalities, said he wanted to see plans for a fourth dose of vaccine that would include additional vaccination centres and a prioritisation scheme when federal and state leaders meet on Friday. “Overall, one principle must apply: Less flying by the seat of your pants and more forward-thinking planning,” he told the RedaktionsNetzwerk Deutschland media group in a print interview. The government has said that it aims for 80% of the population to have had at least one shot by the end of January, a target it will miss if the rate of first-time vaccinations continues at the current pace. So far, the number stands at 74.4%. German leaders are set to discuss how to respond to the highly contagious Omicron variant, including shortening COVID-19 self-isolation periods over fears that critical services could grind to a halt as it takes hold. The Robert Koch Institute (RKI) for infectious disease reported 64,340 new coronavirus infections on Thursday, bringing the total number to more than 7.36 million.

The death toll grew by 443, to reach 113,368.

According to the preliminary findings of an Israeli study, a fourth dose of COVID-19 vaccine boosts antibodies five-fold a week after it’s administered. French Prime Minister Jean Castex said on Thursday that France was ready to begin deploying a fourth shot as soon as health authorities gave the green light.

The World Health Organization said a coronavirus variant found in France hasn’t become much of a threat since it was first identified in November. The variant “has been on our radar,” Abdi Mahamud, a WHO incident manager on Covid, said at a press briefing in Geneva on Tuesday. “That virus had a lot of chances to pick up.” The variant was identified in 12 people in the southern Alps around the same time that omicron was discovered in South Africa last year. The latter mutation has since traveled the globe and kindled record levels of contagion, unlike the French one that researchers at the IHU Mediterranee Infection — helmed by scientist Didier Raoult –nicknamed IHU. The first patient identified with the variant was vaccinated and had just returned from Cameroon, IHU researchers wrote in a paper published on the medRxiv server in late December where they first drew attention to the atypical mutations.

It’s “too early to speculate on virological, epidemiological or clinical features of this IHU variant based on these 12 cases,” they wrote in the article, which hasn’t been peer reviewed.

The WHO monitors multiple variants, and when it finds one may pose a significant risk, it declares it a “variant of concern.” This one is only under investigation.

Over the past two years, historians and analysts have compared the coronavirus to the 1918 flu pandemic. Many of the mitigation practices used to combat the spread of the coronavirus, especially before the development of the vaccines, have been the same as those used in 1918 and 1919 — masks and hygiene, social distancing, ventilation, limits on gatherings (particularly indoors), quarantines, mandates, closure policies and more. Yet, it may be that only now, in the winter of 2022, when Americans are exhausted with these mitigation methods, that a comparison to the 1918 pandemic is most apt. The highly contagious omicron variant has rendered vaccines much less effective at preventing infections, thus producing skyrocketing caseloads. And that creates a direct parallel with the fall of 1918, which provides lessons for making January as painless as possible. In February and March 1918, an infectious flu emerged. It spread from Kansas, through World War I troop and material transports, filling military post hospitals and traveling across the Atlantic and around the world within six months. Cramped quarters and wartime transport and industry generated optimal conditions for the flu to spread, and so, too, did the worldwide nature of commerce and connection. But there was a silver lining: Mortality rates were very low. In part because of press censorship of anything that might undermine the war effort, many dismissed the flu as a “three-day fever,” perhaps merely a heavy cold, or simply another case of the grippe (an old-fashioned word for the flu).

Continue reading “The 1918 flu more relevant in 2022 thanks to omicron”