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The global case tally for the coronavirus-borne illness COVID-19 climbed above 100.9 million on Thursday and the U.S. death toll headed toward 430,000, after another 4,000 lives were lost in a 24-hour period for a second straight day.
The death toll remains high, even as case numbers and hospitalizations are declining, although experts are concerned that new, more infectious variants of the virus may cause those numbers to reverse.
Dr. Anthony Fauci, head of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases and now chief medical officer to President Joe Biden, said the good news is that cases are plateauing, which is a lagging indicator that is usually followed by reduced hospitalizations, then fewer serious illness and death.
“But superimposed on the good news is the sobering news that we still have a lot of cases and still have a serious issue here, and the thing that’s troublesome now and that we really need to keep our eye on are the new variants,” Fauci told MSNBC’s Morning Joe show.
The riskiest of the new variants is the one that originated in South Africa as the response of things like monoclonal antibodies or even the vaccine itself is “markedly diminished” in the test tube,” he said.
“Now is that gonna be reflective of a diminished efficacy? That very well could be, and that’s what’s triggering what we are doing now, which is we want as many people to get vaccinated as possible as soon as we can,” he said.
The government’s pandemic response team is already planning and nd making modified versions of the vaccine that can be directed specifically against the South African isolate, he said. In the meantime, experts continue to urge Americans to socially distance, wash their hands frequently and wear a face mask in public.
The U.S. added at lest 155,470 new cases on Wednesday, according to a New York Times tracker, and at least 4,101 patients died. The U.S. has averaged 163,519 cases a day in the last week, down 34% from the average two weeks ago.
The number of COVID-19 patients in U.S. hospitals stood at 107,444, according to the COVID Tracking Project, down from 108,960 a day earlier. It was the 15th straight day of declining numbers an the lowest level since Dec. 10.
The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention’s vaccine tracker shows that as of 6.00 a.m. ET Wednesday, 24.6 million vaccines had been administered and 47.2 million doses had been distributed. Biden has ordered another 200 million doses of vaccine, divided between the Pfizer Inc./BioNTech SE PFE, +0.70% BNTX, +3.24% one and Moderna Inc. MRNA, +7.45% one.
In other news:
• A World Health Organization team of experts has finished quarantine in the Chinese city of Wuhan and can now start their work seeking to determine the origins of the coronavirus, CBS News reported. A team of 13 experts from the WHO and other global health agencies are hoping to focus on the first cases of the virus to emerge in Wuhan, which is widely held to be the source of the original outbreak. Critics are skeptical the team will uncover much given how much time has elapsed since the peak of infections in Wuhan.
• Government officials in the U.S. and Europe have called for stricter mask protocols as more infectious strains of the coronavirus circulate, yet there is still concern that demand for respirator masks in the U.S. far outweighs supply, MarketWatch’s Jaimy Lee reported. N95s are unique in that they can filter out nearly all — 95% — of large and small particles in the air. This makes them more efficient blockers of the SARS-CoV-2 aerosols that can travel through the air. The thinking in the U.S. around N95s is that they should be reserved for health care and other frontline workers who are at the highest risk of contracting the virus. The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention still says that N95s and medical-grade masks “should be conserved for health care personnel.”
• Vietnam has suffered it worst single-day coronavirus outbreak since the start of the pandemic after 84 new cases were detected in the north of the country, Reuters reported. The news is disappointing for the Vietnamese government which has been highly successful in containing the spread. Vietnam has had just 1,600 cases and 35 deaths from COVID-19, far less than others thanks to strict quarantines, the closing of orders and an aggressive testing and tracing program.
• Germany’s vaccine committee recommended only using the AstraZeneca/University of Oxford coronavirus vaccine on those between 18 and 64 years of age, according to wire service reports. AstraZeneca AZN, +0.89% AZN, -1.35% CEO Pascal Soirot had said that was a possibility, which he said was due to lack of data compared to other vaccine manufacturers. “We have strong data showing very strong antibody production against the virus in the elderly, similar to what we see in younger people. It’s possible that some countries, out of caution, will use our vaccine for the younger group. But honestly, it is fine. There’s not enough vaccines for everybody. So if they want to use another vaccine for older people and our vaccine for younger people, what´s the problem,” he told the Italian newspaper La Repubblica.
• Bill Gates is already worrying about the next pandemic, as MarketWatch’s Nicole Lyn Pesce reported. The Microsoft MSFT, +2.82% founder and philanthropist notes in his annual letter with wife Melinda Gates that while everyone wants the world to go back to “normal” after COVID-19 is brought under control, the world cannot afford to go back to being complacent about pandemics. “Pandemic preparedness must be taken as seriously as we take the threat of war,” Gates writes in his portion of the letter released on Wednesday. He suggests that stopping the next pandemic will require “spending tens of billions of dollars per year,” and argues the investment is necessary to prevent a global disease outbreak like COVID-19 from costing trillions of dollars — and millions of lives.
Latest tallies
The number of confirmed cases of COVID-19 worldwide climbed above 100.9 million on Thursday, according to data aggregated by Johns Hopkins University, and the death toll rose to 2.176 million. About 56 million people have recovered from COVID-19.
The U.S. leads the world by cases, at 25.6 million, and fatalities, at 429,230, or about a fifth of the global total.
Brazil has the second highest death toll at 220,161 and is third by cases at 8.9 million.
India is second worldwide in cases with 10.7 million, and third in deaths at 153,847.
Mexico has the fourth highest death toll at 153,639 and 13th highest case tally at 1.8 million.
The U.K. has 3.7 million cases and 102,085 deaths, the highest in Europe and fifth highest in the world.
China, where the virus was first discovered late last year, has had 99,698 confirmed cases and 4,813 deaths, according to its official numbers.
What’s the economy saying?
The number of people who applied for jobless benefits in late January fell to the lowest level in three weeks, but layoffs were still high early in the new year as the economy wrestled with a winter surge in the coronavirus pandemic, MarketWatch’s Jeffry Bartash reported.
Initial jobless claims filed traditionally through the states fell by 67,000 to a seasonally adjusted 847,000 in the seven days ended Jan. 23, the government said Thursday.
Economists surveyed by Dow Jones and The Wall Street Journal had forecast initial jobless claims to total 875,000.
Read also: ‘We have not won this yet,’ Fed’s Powell says, signaling policy to remain ultra-easy
The sharp decline likely stemmed in part from the Martin Luther King. Jr. holiday. Some people who lose their jobs wait until the week after a holiday to file claims.
Another 426,856 applications were filed through a temporary federal-relief program.
“Filings fell more than expected last week. Even so, layoffs are ongoing at an elevated pace,” said Rubeela Farooqi, chief U.S. economist. “Conditions will remain weak and recovery will be slow until infections can be curbed and the economy can reopen more completely.”
Separately, the U.S. economy grew at a lackluster 4% annual pace in the final three months of 2020 as a record wave of coronavirus cases stunted the recovery, pushing out the timetable for a broader rebound until later this year.
The pandemic dealt a crushing blow to the economy last year. Gross domestic product, the official scorecard for the U.S. economy, shrank by 3.5% to mark the biggest contraction since 1946.
GDP was expected to ebb in the final three months of 2020 after a record 33%-plus annualized gain in the third quarter tied to the reopening of the economy in the summer after business lockdowns to combat the pandemic in the spring. Yet the biggest increase so far in coronavirus cases in the early winter made the slowdown more pronounced.
Finally, after spiking higher in the prior month, the U.S. international trade deficit in goods reversed course in December.
The gap in goods narrowed to $82.5 billion in the final month of 2020 from $85.5 in November, the Commerce Department said Thursday. The deficit was $80.4 billion in October.
Advanced figures for wholesale trade rose 0.1% while retail inventories jumped 1% in December.
The Dow Jones Industrial Average DJIA, +1.81% and the S&P 500 SPX, +1.70% were both up about 1.5%.
