Author Archives: Reuters News Agency

Belgium sets day of mourning as flood deaths hit 20

By Bart Biesemans

TROOZ, Belgium (Reuters) -Belgium declared a national day of mourning next week as the death toll from burst rivers and flash floods in the south and east of the country rose to 20 on Friday, with another 20 people missing.

“What should have been beautiful summer days suddenly turned into dark and extremely sad days for our fellow citizens,” Prime Minister Alexander De Croo told a news conference. “These are exceptional circumstances that our country has not seen before.”

A week of rain finally came to an end after reaching levels in some places normally expected once in 200 years. But several communities across parts of Belgium were nervously watching as the river Meuse, which flows through the city of Liege in eastern Belgium, continued to rise and threatened to overflow.

Others were trying come to terms with disaster.

“We did work, we renovated everything, we’re losing everything we’ve got. Now we have to start from zero and work at it little by little to put it back in order.” said Sylvia Calvo Lorente, 33, surveying damage in her home in the small town of Trooz near Liege.

In the eastern town of Verviers, the swollen river was still rushing through neighboring streets, where people gingerly tried to salvage ruined shops, homes and cars.

“We made it through COVID, we were hoping we’d get back on our feet and now look!” a shopkeeper said through tears in a pause from his work.

Several towns and villages were submerged, including Pepinster near Liege, where around 10 houses collapsed. Belgium’s king and queen visited the town on Friday, wading through flooded streets.

The government set next Tuesday as a day of mourning and decided to tone down festivities for Belgian National Day the day after.

Interior minister Annelies Verlinden said 20 people had lost their lives, with a further 20 missing.

The crisis center, which is coordinating rescue efforts, urged people in the affected areas to avoid all travel.

Belgium has called on the European Union’s civil protection mechanism, resulting in contributions from France, Austria and Italy, principally boats, helicopters and rescue personnel.

It also received help from Luxembourg and the Netherlands, despite these countries also suffering from flooding. More than 250 foreigners, including helicopter pilots and divers, have come to aid the search.

Over 20,000 people in the southern region Wallonia were without electricity. Others lacked clean water. Large parts of the rail network in southern Belgium were unusable, with certain sections of track swept away.

(Additional reporting and writing by Philip Blenkinsop; editing by Philippa Fletcher)

Delta COVID variant now dominant strain worldwide; U.S. deaths surge -officials

By Carl O’Donnell and Jeff Mason

(Reuters) -The Delta variant of COVID-19 is now the dominant strain worldwide, accompanied by a surge of deaths around the United States almost entirely among unvaccinated people, U.S. officials said Friday.

U.S. cases of COVID-19 are up 70% over the previous week and deaths are up 26%, with outbreaks occurring in parts of the country with low vaccination rates, U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention Director Rochelle Walensky said during a press briefing.

The seven-day-average number of daily cases is now more than 26,000, more than twice its June low of around 11,000 cases, according to CDC data.

“This is becoming a pandemic of the unvaccinated,” she said, adding that 97% of people entering hospitals in the United States with COVID-19 are unvaccinated.

Walensky said an increasing number of counties around the United States now exhibit a high risk of COVID-19 transmission, reversing significant declines in transmission risk in recent months.

Around 1 in five new cases have occurred in Florida, said White House COVID-19 response coordinator Jeff Zients.

The Delta variant, which is significantly more contagious than the original variant of COVID-19, has been detected around 100 countries globally and is now the dominant variant worldwide, top U.S. infectious disease expert Anthony Fauci said.

“We are dealing with a formidable variant” of COVID-19, Fauci said during the call.

Walensky urged unvaccinated Americans to get COVID-19 shots, and said Pfizer Inc’s and Moderna Inc’s vaccines have proven to be especially effective against the Delta variant.

She said people should get the second dose of vaccine even if they have passed the recommended window of time for receiving it.

Around 5 million people have been vaccinated in the United States in the past 10 days, Zients said, including many in states that so far have had lower vaccination rates.

He added that the United States has enough vaccines on hand to give booster vaccines but is still working to determine if boosters are needed.

(Reporting by Carl O’Donnell, Jeff Mason and Lisa Lambert; Editing by Dan Grebler)

Mask mandate returns to Los Angeles as coronavirus cases rise

By Sharon Bernstein

(Reuters) -Los Angeles County will reimpose its mask mandate this weekend in the latest sign that public health officials are struggling with an alarming rise in coronavirus cases tied to the highly contagious Delta variant.

The county, home to 10 million people and the nation’s second-largest city, Los Angeles, is one of several jurisdictions to recommend or mandate wearing masks or other pandemic restrictions in recent days as cases rise to worrisome levels in many parts of the United States.

“We’re requiring masking for everyone while indoors at public settings & businesses, regardless of vaccination status so that we can stop the increased level of transmission we’re seeing,” the Los Angeles County Department of Public Health said on Twitter Thursday.

The mandate will go into effect Saturday night at a minute before midnight, the agency said.

The announcement follows six straight days of more than 1,000 new COVID-19 cases reported in Los Angeles County, with nearly 400 people hospitalized with COVID-19 as of Wednesday, up 275 from the week before. Nine new COVID-19 deaths were reported on Wednesday.

More than 1,500 new infections were reported on Thursday, and the county has become a place of “substantial” transmission, based on criteria set by the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC), the Los Angeles County health officer, Dr. Muntu Davis, said in remarks provided to reporters.

Other California counties and other states are also grappling with a spike in coronavirus cases, led by a mutation of the coronavirus known as the Delta variant and predominantly affecting people who are unvaccinated.

Also on Thursday, Sacramento and Fresno Counties in California recommended that masks be worn indoors even by people who are vaccinated. Austin, Texas, on Thursday urged people who are not vaccinated or are otherwise high-risk to avoid travel, indoor gatherings, dining out and shopping, and to wear masks.

Earlier this week, Yolo County in California also recommended indoor masking, and in Springfield, Missouri, children and teachers have been required to wear masks during summer school.

“Everyone, including those who are vaccinated, should be aware of high-risk situations including being indoors, in crowds, and around unvaccinated and unmasked individuals and consider wearing a face covering in these settings,” said Fresno County Public Health physician Dr. John Zweifler.

Data from the CDC show high levels of coronavirus transmission in numerous states, including Missouri, Mississippi, Florida, Nevada and Utah.

Across the country, health officials urged residents who have not yet done so to become vaccinated. Vaccines are approved and available for all people as young as 12 years old. In Los Angeles County, just 0.09% of new cases were among people who had been vaccinated, officials said.

“Our best protection against COVID-19 continues to be the vaccine,” said Sacramento County Public Health Officer Olivia Kasirye. “We urge all eligible residents to get vaccinated in order to protect themselves, and their family and friends.”

(Reporting by Sharon Bernstein in Sacramento, California; Additional reporting by Steve Gorman in Los Angeles; Editing by Aurora Ellis and Leslie Adler)

Three more regions reinforce Ethiopia army, Amhara against Tigray forces

By Dawit Endeshaw

ADDIS ABABA (Reuters) – Three more Ethiopian regions are sending soldiers to reinforce the national army in its fight against forces from the northern region of Tigray, regional officials said, widening a conflict that has so far largely affected the north.

Officials from Oromiya, Sidama, and the Southern Nations Nationalities and Peoples’ Region said their forces had joined the army, known as the Ethiopian National Defense Force (ENDF), which withdrew from most of Tigray late in June.

A fourth region, Amhara, has already been locked in conflict with Tigray since the war erupted in November. Both Amhara and Tigray claim the fertile fields of western and southern Tigray.

In the past week, Tigrayan forces have retaken much of the south, but the west is heavily militarized.

Western Tigray has long been home to large populations of both Tigrayans and Amhara, and fresh fighting in the area could drive another wave of refugees from a conflict that has already forced 2 million from their homes.

“We have already deployed our special forces and they will join ENDF. Our people will also support with materials. It is the ENDF that is in charge where the special forces will be deployed,” said Oromiya Region spokesperson Getachew Balcha.

“If needed we will deploy more,” he told Reuters.

The Southern Nations Nationalities and Peoples’ Region also confirmed it sent soldiers.

“Close to 300 to 400 special forces were sent this week. I think they will be deployed on the western front,” said an official from the region’s communications office on condition of anonymity.

A Sidama official who did not want to be named also confirmed the region’s forces had gone to reinforce the national army.

Pictures posted on the state-run regional Amhara Media Corporation showed soldiers from Sidama posing with residents of the town of Debre Markos in Amhara.

END OF CEASEFIRE

This month, Prime Minister Abiy Ahmed told parliament Ethiopia could mobilize about 100,000 soldiers from regional special forces in less than a week.

His remarks signaled an end to the government’s unilateral ceasefire, announced as troops pulled out of Tigray’s capital Mekelle. Tigrayan leaders derided the ceasefire as a way to cover up battlefield losses and the capture of thousands of prisoners of war.

Tigray’s ruling party, the Tigray People’s Liberation Front (TPLF), has said it will continue to fight until it restores Tigray’s pre-war boundaries and the government stops blockading the region. Currently most routes into Tigray are blocked and only one convoy of food aid has been allowed in.

Tens of thousands of Eritrean refugees are also caught in the middle of the fighting in two camps taken over by Tigrayan forces this week. A refugee told Reuters that two men had already been killed and three refugees injured in the fighting.

(Writing by George Obulutsa; Editing by Alex Richardson)

Germans describe helplessness in face of flood devastation

By Martin Schlicht and Fanny Brodersen

SCHULD, Germany (Reuters) – It took just minutes for residents of a prosperous corner of one of the world’s richest countries to be reduced to helplessness, fending for themselves as flood waters roared into the town of Schuld, wrecking homes and everything else they relied on.

In parts of western Germany, more than 150 liters of rainwater per square meter fell over 24 hours, causing ordinarily placid rivers in idyllic wine-producing valleys to swell and burst their banks.

The freak floods tore down houses, overwhelmed plumbing and sewage, severed electricity links, cut off mobile phone signals and left residents accustomed to the luxury of an advanced, fully-functioning state agonizing over their friends and neighbors.

“It was terrible not to able to help people,” said Frank Thel. “They were waving at us from windows. Houses were collapsing to the left and right of them and in the house between they were waving. We were lucky, we survived.”

The region, south of Bonn, an ancient university city that was for 40 years the capital of West Germany, is famed for its wine and the beauty of its sloping vineyards. Now residents are fending for themselves following the deluge, Thel said.

Though emergency services and the army have deployed to the region, they have yet to make much of a dent on the devastation. “The clean-up as far as I can see is neighbors and farmers using their tractors.”

Germany’s 2002 floods, in which 21 died and which were billed by media as “once-in-a-century,” have now easily been outdone.

Over 100 are known to have died in Germany, and over 1,000 are still missing, partly because the mobile phone networks have collapsed in much of the region.

Regional broadcaster WDR faced criticism on Wednesday night for struggling to inform the world about the brewing disaster. The mockery stopped when they explained why: their own studio in the region had been flooded.

The shock was easy to read in the faces of residents who could not believe how swiftly things had deteriorated.

As the waters rose on Wednesday, Michael Lang, a wine merchant in the region took to Facebook to warn friends of the imminent floods.

“I’m going to evacuate now. Take care of yourselves,” he said, with the roaring Ahl river in the background, still composed despite the worry etched on his face.

On Friday, standing above his wrecked village, that composure was gone. “The whole infrastructure has gone,” he said, choking back tears. “Our house is still standing, but nothing else.”

(Writing by Thomas Escritt; editing by Philippa Fletcher)

COVID-19 crisis could return quickly as infections surge, UK adviser warns

By Alistair Smout and Kanishka Singh

LONDON (Reuters) -England’s coronavirus crisis could return again surprisingly quickly and the country is not yet out of the woods, the British government’s chief medical adviser said, as infections surged ahead of the lifting of legal restrictions.

British Prime Minister Boris Johnson is removing most pandemic restrictions in England from July 19, saying a rapid rollout of COVID-19 vaccines has largely broken the link between infections and serious illness or death.

Some scientists are worried, though. Daily reported cases are at their highest since January, while the reproduction “R” number remains above one, indicating a continued exponential growth of cases.

“We are not by any means out of the woods yet on this,” Chief Medical Officer Chris Whitty said late on Thursday during a webinar hosted by the Science Museum.

He added that the doubling time for hospitalizations was around three weeks, and that low numbers of people in hospital currently could escalate in next couple of months.

“It doesn’t take many doublings until we’re in actually quite scary numbers again … I don’t think we should underestimate the fact that we could get into trouble again surprisingly fast,” Whitty said.

The Office for National Statistics estimated as many as 1 in 95 people in England were infected with COVID-19 in the week to July 10, the highest prevalence since February.

“New cases of Delta will lead to long COVID, hospital admissions and deaths,” said James Naismith, Director of the Rosalind Franklin Institute

“The ratios between these have been massively changed by the safe and effective vaccines we are administering but the link is not eliminated.”

WRECKING THE ECONOMY

Britain’s COVID-19 death toll is among the highest in the world but two-thirds of its adult population have been fully vaccinated.

On Monday, the last remaining businesses still closed in England, including nightclubs, can finally reopen, but business leaders have warned that the self-isolation requirement for people exposed to positive cases could hinder the economy.

Over 520,000 contact tracing alerts were sent through the National Health Service app in the week to July 7.

“The hospitality sector, 20% of staff are isolating, the health service up to 25% of staff are absent, and buses and trains delayed,” Karan Bilimoria, president of the Confederation of British Industry (CBI), told LBC radio.

“This cannot go on … This is wrecking the economy.”

A spokesperson for Johnson said that “self-isolation remains one of the best tools that we have to tackle the virus”.

(Reporting by Alistair Smout in London; Additional reporting by Kanishka Singh in Bengaluru and Kate Holton and Elizabeth Piper in London; Editing by Karishma Singh, Guy Faulconbridge, Catherine Evans and Raissa Kasolowsky)

South Africa’s big retail chains race to restock looted stores

By Nqobile Dludla

JOHANNESBURG (Reuters) – South Africa’s big retailers are working round the clock to replenish shelves with food in hundreds of stores looted this week in some of the country’s worst unrest for years, they said on Friday.

Retailers also said they are racing to keep stores unaffected by the violence stocked as some shoppers were stripping shelves with panic buying, though blocked roads and disruptions to supply chains were hampering their efforts.

Retailers were just starting to recover from months of coronavirus restrictions when the violence triggered by the jailing of former president Jacob Zuma erupted and the looting could now set them back several months.

Massmart, which is majority owned by U.S. retail giant Walmart Inc, said protesters had looted 41 of its stores and two of its distribution centers, with four sites suffering significant damage from arson.

TFG, the owner of Foschini clothing and @home chains, said 190 stores had been looted and damaged to varying degrees. All its stores in KwaZulu-Natal province are shut.

“The timeline to reopen will be quick in some locations whilst in others it will be dependent on the nature and extent of the damage and on the availability of the relevant resources and supply chains,” TFG said.

Pepkor, which is majority owned by Steinhoff International, said 489 stores, representing about 9% of its retail outlets, had been damaged and looted as well as one of the JD Group’s distribution centers in KwaZulu-Natal.

Pepkor’s supply chain and distribution operations in the affected areas have been severely disrupted, it said.

All three retailers, as well as grocery chains Pick n Pay, Shoprite and SPAR Group, whose 184 stores were looted and vandalized, said the priority was to replenish shelves as concerns about food shortages mount.

SPAR trucks were dispatched on Friday with security escorts and the chain said it would try to restock all its KwaZulu-Natal stores open for business over the weekend.

Woolworths said it was working closely with suppliers to make sure its stores were stocked.

“This is largely dependent on the reopening of key transport routes, the ability of local suppliers to continue production, the ability of our staff to access our stores and the safety of our logistics and distribution operations,” it said.

(Additional reporting by Emma Rumney; Editing by Jason Neely and David Clarke)

Oregon wildfire displaces 2,000 residents as blazes flare across U.S. West

By Deborah Bloom

KLAMATH FALLS, Oregon (Reuters) -Hand crews backed by water-dropping helicopters struggled on Thursday to suppress a huge wildfire that displaced roughly 2,000 residents in southern Oregon, the largest among dozens of blazes raging across the drought-stricken western United States.

The Bootleg fire has charred more than 227,000 acres (91,860 hectares) of desiccated timber and brush in and around the Fremont-Winema National Forest since erupting on July 6 about 250 miles (400 km) south of Portland.

That total, exceeding the land mass of New York City, was 12,000 acres higher than Wednesday’s tally. Strike teams have carved containment lines around 7% of the fire’s perimeter, up from 5% a day earlier, but Incident Commander Joe Hessel said the blaze would continue to expand.

“The extremely dry vegetation and weather are not in our favor,” Hessel said on Twitter.

More than 1,700 firefighters and a dozen helicopters were assigned to the blaze, with demand for personnel and equipment across the Pacific Northwest beginning to strain available resources, said Jim Gersbach, a spokesman for the Oregon Department of Forestry.

“It’s uncommon for us to reach this level of demand on firefighting resources this early” in the season, he said.

Firefighter Garrett Souza, 42, a resident of the nearby town of Chiloquin, said Wednesday he and his team spent 39 hours straight on the “initial attack” of the fire last week.

“It’s the cumulative fatigue that really, I think, wears a person out over time,” he told Reuters, as he took a break from hacking at hotspots in the burn area.

No serious injuries have been linked to the Bootleg fire, officials said, but it has destroyed at least 21 homes and 54 other structures, and forced an estimated 2,000 people from several hundred dwellings placed under evacuation. Nearly 2,000 homes were threatened.

LARGEST OF MANY WILDFIRES

The Bootleg ranks as the largest by far of 70 major active wildfires listed on Thursday as having affected nearly 1 million acres in 11 states, the National Interagency Fire Center in Boise, Idaho, reported. It was also the sixth-largest on record in Oregon since 1900, according to state forestry figures.

Other states hard hit by the latest spate of wildfires include California, Idaho, Montana and Alaska.

As of Wednesday, the center in Boise put its “national wildland fire preparedness level” at 5, the highest of its five-tier scale, meaning most U.S. firefighting resources are currently deployed somewhere across the country.

The situation represents an unusually busy start to the annual fire season, coming amid extremely dry conditions and record-breaking heat that has baked much of the West in recent weeks.

Scientists have said the growing frequency and intensity of wildfires are largely attributable to prolonged drought that is symptomatic of climate change.

One newly ignited blaze drawing attention on Thursday was the Dixie fire, which erupted on Wednesday in Butte County, California, near the mountain town of Paradise, still rebuilding from a 2018 firestorm that killed 85 people and destroyed nearly 19,000 structures in the state’s deadliest wildfire disaster.

The Dixie fire has charred about 2,250 acres (910 hectares) in its first 24 hours as some 500 personnel battled the blaze, which was spreading across a steep, rocky tree-filled terrain about 85 miles (140 km) north of Sacramento.

Erik Wegner of the U.S. Forest Service said dense stands of dead and dying trees created highly combustible conditions for the blaze. “It took off really fast,” he told Reuters.

Authorities have issued evacuation orders and warnings for several small communities in the area.

In Washington state, firefighters have contained about 20% of a lightning-caused fire near Nespelem, which has burned nearly 23,000 acres (9,270 hectares) northeast of Seattle since Monday, mostly on tribal lands of the Colville Reservation.

There were no injuries, but the blaze killed some livestock, destroyed three houses and forced evacuations of several others, officials said.

(Reporting by Deborah Bloom in Klamath Falls, Oregon; Additional reporting by David Ryder in Nespelem, Washington, and Mathieu Lewis Rolland in Butte County, California; Writing and additional reporting by Peter Szekely and Steve Gorman; Editing by David Gregorio, Daniel Wallis and Chris Reese)

Floodwaters still rising in western Europe with death toll over 120

By Martin Schlicht and David Sahl

SCHULD/ERFTSTADT, Germany (Reuters) – German officials feared more deaths on Friday after “catastrophic” floods swept through western regions, demolishing streets and houses, killing more than 100 people and leaving hundreds more missing and homeless.

Communications were cut in many areas and entire communities lay in ruins after swollen rivers tore through towns and villages in the western states of North Rhine-Westphalia and Rhineland-Palatinate as well as parts of Belgium and the Netherlands.

After days of heavy rain, 103 people have died in Germany alone, the largest number killed in a natural disaster in the country in almost 60 years. They included 12 residents of a home for disabled people surprised by the floods during the night.

In Belgium, which has declared a day of mourning on Tuesday, officials said there were at least 20 dead and another 20 missing.

The flooding was a “catastrophe of historic dimensions,” said Armin Laschet, state premier of North Rhine-Westphalia and the ruling CDU party’s candidate to replace Chancellor Angela Merkel when she steps down after an election in September.

The devastation of the floods, attributed by meteorologists to a climate-change driven shift in the jet stream that has brought inland water that once stayed at sea, could shake up an election that has until now seen little discussion of climate.

“It is a sad certainty that such extreme events will determine our day-to-day life more and more frequently in the future,” Laschet said, adding that more measures were needed to fight global warming.

Proposals by the Greens, running a distant second in polls to Merkel’s conservatives, to introduce motorway speed limits to cut carbon emissions had previously drawn outrage.

Days after the European Commission unveiled plans to make Europe the “first climate-neutral continent, Commission chief Ursula von der Leyen said the scale and intensity of the flooding was a clear indication of climate change and demonstrated the urgent need to act.

CONCERN OVER DAMS

Achim Hueck, a fish farmer in the town of Schuld, said he had only just managed to escape. “It was rising really fast, it started from the path back here,” he said, pointing to the wreckage of his business.

“There was a path, there were ponds, lots of them up there. Fishing hut, toilet facilities, everything is gone,” he said.

As officials assessed the damage, the devastation appeared to have exceeded that caused by disastrous flooding in eastern Germany almost 20 years ago.

Some 114,000 households in Germany were without power on Friday and mobile phone networks had collapsed in some flooded regions, making it hard for authorities to keep track of the number of missing.

Roads in many affected areas were impassable after being washed away by the floods. Rescue crews tried to reach residents by boat or helicopter and had to communicate via walkie-talkie.

“The network has completely collapsed. The infrastructure has collapsed. Hospitals can’t take anyone in. Nursing homes had to be evacuated,” a spokeswoman for the regional government of Cologne said.

Authorities worried that further dams could overflow, spilling uncontrolled floods into communities below, and were trying to ease pressure by releasing more water.

Some 4,500 people were evacuated downstream from the Steinbachtal dam in western Germany, which had been at risk of a breach overnight, and a stretch of motorway was closed.

REINFORCING DIKES

Thousands of residents in the north of Limburg province in neighboring Netherlands were ordered to leave their homes early Friday as floodwaters peaked.

Emergency services were on high alert, and authorities were also reinforcing dikes along vulnerable stretches where floodwaters continue to rise.

Waters were receding in the southern city of Maastricht, where there was no flooding and in the town of Valkenburg, where damage was widespread, but no one was hurt.

France sent 40 military personnel and a helicopter to Liege in Belgium to help with the flood situation, Prime Minister Jean Castex said on Twitter.

“The waters are rising more and more. It’s scary,” Thierry Bourgeois, 52, said in the Belgian town of Liege. “I’ve never seen anything like it.”

In the town of Maaseik, on the Dutch border, the Meuse had risen beyond a retaining wall and was spilling past sandbags placed on top.

Several towns and villages were already submerged, including Pepinster near Liege, where around 10 houses partially or fully collapsed.

The death toll in Germany is the highest of any natural catastrophe since a deadly North Sea flood in 1962 that killed around 340 people.

Floods at the Elbe river in 2002, which at the time were billed by media “once-in-a-century floods”, killed 21 people in eastern Germany and more than 100 across the wider central European region.

German Interior Minister Horst Seehofer told magazine Spiegel the federal government aimed to provide financial support for the affected regions as quickly as possible, adding a package of measures should go to the cabinet for approval on Wednesday.

(Additional reporting by Riham Alkousaa, Kirsti Knolle, Douglas Busvine, Anneli Palmen, Matthias Inverardi, Tom Sims, Thomas Escritt, Anthony Deutsch, Phil Blenkinsop; Writing by Maria Sheahan; editing by Philippa Fletcher and Alex Richardson)

Biogen Alzheimer’s drug hits roadblocks with some hospitals, insurers

By Deena Beasley

(Reuters) -The rollout of Biogen Inc’s Alzheimer’s drug is hitting new roadblocks as some large hospitals decide not to use it and many health insurers await coverage terms from Medicare, the U.S. health plan for people aged 65 and older, before setting their own policies.

Cleveland Clinic, one of the country’s best-known health systems, and New York’s Mount Sinai Health System on Thursday confirmed they had decided not to carry the new drug, called Aduhelm.

“The tide turned on Friday when the inspector general investigation was announced, and the potential allegation of irregularity in the FDA/Biogen relationship,” Dr. Sam Gandy, director of the Mount Sinai Center for Cognitive Health, told Reuters.

The FDA called last week for an independent federal probe into its representatives’ interactions with Biogen.

Biogen shares fell nearly 8% on Thursday, or $25.21, to $324.85. Guggenheim analyst Yatin Suneja attributed the stock slump to the decision by the two hospital systems not to use the drug.

In mid-June, the Washington, D.C., Neurology Center said it would not recommend the treatment, which is given as a monthly infusion, for any of its patients due to concerns about efficacy, safety and cost.

The U.S. Food and Drug Administration approved the drug, also known as aducanumab, in early June despite mixed clinical trial results. The agency said it was convinced that evidence of Aduhelm’s ability to clear amyloid brain plaques would benefit Alzheimer’s patients.

Biogen, which priced Aduhelm at $56,000 a year, said in a statement on Thursday that clinical data supported the drug’s approval and patients who are denied access should contact the company for help.

INSURERS ON HOLD

Insurers representing millions of American enrolled in private Medicare plans said the drug has yet to meet their bar for coverage based on the data.

UnitedHealth Group, the largest private insurer offering Medicare Advantage coverage to seniors, on Thursday said it was still reviewing the drug and awaiting input from Medicare.

“This has some way to go before we get to real clarity. So I wouldn’t guide you to expect a very rapid decision-making on this piece,” CEO Andrew Witty said.

Humana, the second largest provider of Medicare Advantage plans, also said it has not finalized coverage for Aduhelm as it awaits guidance from the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services (CMS).

Several Blue Cross Blue Shield health insurance plans, including those in Michigan, North Carolina and Pennsylvania, have said there is insufficient evidence of Aduhelm’s benefit for patients and they will not provide coverage for the drug.

Biogen said in a statement that the several Blues plans’ “characterization of Aduhelm as experimental and investigational is inaccurate and misleading.”

CMS on Monday began a national review process it said would take nine months to complete. Until then, the agency said coverage determinations for aducanumab are being made at the local level by 12 regional contractors.

SVB Leerink this week said a survey of 57 U.S. neurologists who treat high volumes of Alzheimer’s patients found that 44% of them would use Aduhelm in patients with early Alzheimer’s disease who have evidence of amyloid plaques.

The Wall Street firm estimates sales of the drug at $65 million this year, $1.1 billion next year and $5 billion by 2025.

The Institute for Clinical and Economic Review, an influential pricing group, was holding a meeting on Thursday of doctors, patients and other stakeholders to discuss how Aduhelm’s cost stacks up against potential benefits to patients.

(Reporting by Deena Beasley; Additional reporting by Manas Mishra in Bangalaru and Julie Steenhuysen in Chicago; Editing by Howard Goller)