Tag Archives: Coronavirus

Harris, fellow Democrats target Trump Supreme Court nominee on Obamacare

By Lawrence Hurley and Patricia Zengerle

WASHINGTON (Reuters) – Democratic senators including vice presidential nominee Kamala Harris on Monday painted President Donald Trump’s Supreme Court nominee Amy Coney Barrett as a threat to the Obamacare healthcare law during a deadly pandemic and denounced the Republican drive to approve her before the Nov. 3 U.S. election.

As the Senate Judiciary Committee began its four-day confirmation hearing for Barrett, Democrats voiced their strong opposition to the nomination even though they have little hope of derailing her nomination in the Republican-led Senate.

Barrett, a conservative appellate court judge nominated to replace the late liberal Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg, sat at a table facing the senators wearing a black face mask amid the pandemic as senators made opening statements. Barrett removed the mask when she was sworn in and delivered her own opening statement.

“I believe Americans of all backgrounds deserve an independent Supreme Court that interprets our Constitution and laws as they are written,” Barrett said, reading from prepared remarks that had been made public on Sunday, with her husband and seven children sitting behind her.

Barrett’s confirmation would give the court a 6-3 conservative majority that could lead to rulings rolling back abortion rights, expanding religious and gun rights, and upholding voting restrictions, among other issues.

But it was the fate of the 2010 Affordable Care Act (ACA), Democratic former President Barack Obama’s signature domestic policy achievement that has enabled millions of Americans to obtain medical coverage, that was the focus of Harris and her fellow Democrats. Barrett has criticized a 2012 Supreme Court ruling authored by conservative Chief Justice John Roberts that upheld Obamacare.

Harris, the running mate of Trump’s Democratic election opponent Joe Biden, called the confirmation process so near the election “illegitimate.”

“I do believe this hearing is a clear attempt to jam through a Supreme Court nominee who will take away healthcare from millions of people during a deadly pandemic that has already killed more than 214,000 Americans,” Harris said, speaking via a video link.

“A clear majority of Americans want whomever wins the election to fill this seat and my Republican colleagues know that. Yet they are deliberately defying the will of the people in their attempt to roll back the rights and protections provided under the Affordable Care Act,” Harris said.

Barrett could be on the Supreme Court in time to participate in a case due to be argued on Nov. 10 in which Trump and Republican-led states are seeking to invalidate Obamacare.

Barrett will face marathon questioning from senators on Tuesday and Wednesday. The hearing is a key step before a full Senate vote by the end of October on her confirmation to a lifetime job on the court. Republicans have a 53-47 Senate majority so Barrett’s confirmation seems almost certain.

A pivotal Obamacare provision that would be thrown out if the court strikes the law down bars insurance companies from denying coverage to people with pre-existing medical conditions. In the hearing room, Democrats displayed posters of patients who could lose their medical coverage if Obamacare is invalidated, with senators recounting their individual stories.

Repeated Republican efforts to repeal Obamacare in Congress have fallen short, and Republicans have taken the effort to the courts.

Republican Senator Ted Cruz said the Democratic focus on healthcare and other policy issues showed they were not contesting Barrett’s qualifications to serve as a justice.

Republican Senator Lindsey Graham, who chairs the committee, opened the hearing by saying it would be “a long contentious week” but implored senators to make the proceedings respectful.

“Let’s remember, the world is watching,” Graham added.

“This is probably not about persuading each other, unless something really dramatic happens. All Republicans will vote yes and all Democrats will vote no,” Graham said.

‘MAD RUSH’

Democratic Senator Patrick Leahy condemned the Republican “mad rush” to fill the vacancy.

“They see the ability to take the courts from being independent to making them instead an arm of the far right and the Republican Party, with the potential to accomplish in courts what they have failed to accomplish by votes in the halls of Congress. And at the top of the hit list is the Affordable Care Act,” Leahy said.

Graham defended the Republican approach even while acknowledging that four years earlier they had refused to act on Obama’s nominee to fill a Supreme Court vacancy because it was an election year, and that no Supreme Court nominee had a confirmation process so close to an election.

The Senate’s Republican leaders rejected Democratic pleas to delay the hearing over COVID-19 concerns.

Due to the pandemic, Harris and some other senators participated remotely. Republican Senator Mike Lee attended in person nine days after revealing he head tested positive for the coronavirus, arriving wearing a light-blue surgical mask. He took off the mask while giving his opening statement.

Barrett is a devout Catholic who has expressed opposition to abortion. Christian conservative activists long have hoped for the court to overturn the landmark 1973 Roe v. Wade ruling that legalized abortion nationwide.

Democratic Senator Cory Booker said that “Senate Republicans have found a nominee in Judge Barrett who they know will do what they couldn’t do – subvert the will of the American people and overturn Roe v. Wade.”

Republicans sought to portray the Democrats as attacking Barrett on religious grounds, though the Democrats steered clear of doing so. Speaking to reporters in Delaware, Biden said Barrett’s Catholic faith should not be considered during the confirmation process. Biden was the first Catholic U.S. vice president.

“This nominee said she wants to get rid of the Affordable Care Act. The president wants to get rid of the Affordable Care Act,” Biden said. “Let’s keep our eye on the ball.”

(Reporting by Lawrence Hurley, Andrew Chung and Patricia Zengerle; Editing by Will Dunham)

U.S. CDC reports 214,108 deaths from coronavirus

(Reuters) – The U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) on Monday reported 7,740,934 cases of the new coronavirus, an increase of 46,069 from its previous count, and said that the number of deaths had risen by 494 to 214,108.

The CDC reported its tally of cases of the respiratory illness known as COVID-19, caused by a new coronavirus, as of 4 pm ET on Oct. 11 versus its previous report a day earlier.

The CDC figures do not necessarily reflect cases reported by individual states.

(Reporting by Dania Nadeem in Bengaluru; Editing by Devika Syamnath)

As globe gallops into vaccine trials, insurers remain unfazed

By Noor Zainab Hussain, Carolyn Cohn and Ludwig Burger

LONDON/FRANKFURT (Reuters) – The world is racing towards a vaccine in record time, stirring public concerns about safety to the extent that nine leading developers have felt compelled to issue a pledge to uphold scientific standards and testing rigor.

Yet, while more than 40 experimental COVID-19 vaccines are being tested on humans, the insurance companies with decades of experience in assessing the risks of clinical trials don’t see anything to be unduly concerned about.

Executives at insurer Allianz and brokers Gallagher and Marsh, among the leading players in clinical trials insurance, told Reuters that premiums had only marginally increased so far in the current pandemic.

They argued there was little structural difference to trials carried out in the past, despite drugmakers around the world competing to shatter the fastest time in history for developing a vaccine, which stands at around four years.

“Rates have been relatively stable. Even this year we have so far seen only moderate price increases on average, with higher price jumps for particularly exposed COVID-19 trials,” said Mark Piazzi, senior underwriter liability at Allianz Global Corporate & Specialty.

This was echoed by David Briggs, managing director, life sciences practice at Gallagher, who said every trial was rated on its methods and the kinds of patients involved.

Gallagher said premiums in Britain, for example, started at about 5,000 pounds ($6,500) per trial.

Total claims limits in policies were typically set at roughly $6-12 million, depending on the country’s rules, according to several insurance companies interviewed by Reuters.

In Britain, for instance, claim limits were usually set at no lower than 5 million pounds, while in Germany the figure was around 10 million euros ($11.8 million).

‘LOSS EXPERIENCE NOT DRAMATIC’

However part of the reason why premiums have not risen as sharply as some people might have expected is that claims from trial are generally uncommon, according to executives. This is because patients have often signed so-called informed consent agreements, they said.

Jim Walters, managing director of Life Sciences & Chemical Group at broker Aon, said such agreements outlined the risks that patients were taking by participating in the trial.

“So, you know, everything from you could have a sore spot on your arm. To you could potentially die. And you know, they would literally go that far in some of these protocols,” he added.

“Those generally tend to hold up in courts and in legal systems around the world. That means that the loss experience coming out of clinical trials is not very dramatic.”

Claims are often limited to circumstances linked to the improper conduct of trials or any wrongdoing, rather than side-effects of the treatment, executives said.

Such have been the worries about the vaccine race among some members of the public, who fear safety standards could slip, that nine developers issued a joint pledge last month to “uphold the integrity of the scientific process”.

ASTRAZENECA TRIAL SUSPENSION

AstraZeneca and Oxford University’s suspension of global Phase III trials of their experimental COVID-19 vaccine early last month due to a participant’s illness brought the risk of side effects in clinical trials to the public fore.

But the insurers said such delays were not unexpected, and could even reflect the extra caution of vaccine developers given the lack of data about COVID-19.

“Side effects always happen with clinical trials, but these are typically mild and expected. It is not very common to delay or suspend trials, it does happen though,” said Piazzi at AGCS, whose main peers in underwriting trials include Chubb, HDI and Fairfax’s Newline.

“Pharma companies and insurers alike are even more careful than usual with COVID-19 trials because there is so much at stake, particularly for the patients’ safety.”

All trials of the vaccine candidate have resumed, with the exception of the U.S. study.

There have been examples in recent memory of drug trials going catastrophically wrong, though.

In 2016, for instance, one participant died and five were hospitalized in a Phase I trial run by French company Biotrial in the city of Rennes, testing an experimental mood brightener made by Portuguese drugmaker Bial.

In 2006, six patients required intensive care after receiving a potential treatment against leukemia and auto-immune disease in London. One was described as looking like “the elephant man” after his head swelled. Another lost fingertips and toes. Germany’s TeGenero, the initial developer of the medicine, folded.

But insurance executives stress such disasters are rare, given the thousands of clinical drug trials being carried out every year.

Walters of Aon, speaking about the 2016 trial, said it was “obviously a horrible situation”.

“But that’s one of very few incidents of really bad loss experience that the industry has faced. So, clinical trial insurance is not hugely expensive. Let’s put it that way.”

(Reporting by Noor Zainab Hussain, Carolyn Cohn and Ludwig Burger; Editing by Pravin Char)

Caterpillar bets on self-driving machines impervious to pandemics

By Rajesh Kumar Singh

CHICAGO (Reuters) – Question: How can a company like Caterpillar try to counter a slump in sales of bulldozers and trucks during a pandemic that has made every human a potential disease vector?

Answer: Cut out human operators, perhaps?

Caterpillar’s autonomous driving technology, which can be bolted on to existing machines, is helping the U.S. heavy equipment maker mitigate the heavy impact of the coronavirus crisis on sales of its traditional workhorses.

With both small and large customers looking to protect their operations from future disruptions, demand has surged for machines that don’t require human operators on board.

Sales of Caterpillar’s autonomous technology for mining operations have been growing at a double-digit percentage clip this year compared with 2019, according to previously unreported internal company data shared with Reuters.

By contrast, sales of its yellow bulldozers, mining trucks and other equipment have been falling for the past nine months, a trend that’s also hit its main rivals including Japan’s Komatsu Ltd and American player Deere & Co.

Fred Rio, worldwide product manager at Caterpillar’s construction digital & technology division, told Reuters that a remote-control technology, which allows users to operate machines from several miles away, would be available for construction sites in January.

The company is also working with space agencies to use satellite technology to allow an operator sitting in the United States to remotely communicate with machines on job sites in, say, Africa or elsewhere in the world, he said.

Caterpillar’s automation strategy was not born during the COVID-19 era, though. The company stepped up investments in such technologies as it emerged in 2017 from the longest downturn in its history, as part of a plan to increase recurring revenue from lucrative sales of services.

But it’s early days, and such tech remains a niche part of Caterpillar’s operations. Though it does not break out the revenue from technology sales, the rising demand is unlikely to make a major impact anytime soon on the group’s revenue, which stood at about $54 billion last year.

It is also a costly endeavor with the company pumping billions into R&D as a whole. Yet it is not clear if demand for autonomous and remote tech will hold up in a post-pandemic world while, in the longer term, there is the risk that a technology-driven improvement in productivity could drive down sales of new equipment.

‘IT HAS GOT CRAZIER’

Nonetheless, autonomous technology is helping Caterpillar win equipment deals from customers that were previously not buying a lot of its machines.

Last year, Rio Tinto signed up the company to supply self-driving trucks, autonomous blast drills, loaders and other machines for the construction of the Koodaideri iron ore mine in Australia, which is expected to be operational next year.

Rio Tinto declined to comment on the equipment deal.

The mining industry has already adopted some technologies for self-driving trucks and remote operation of load-haul-dump machines. However the suspension in activities worldwide following government-mandated lockdowns at the peak of COVID-19, as well as recent outbreaks of infections at coal mines in Poland, have accelerated the deployment of those technologies.

Anthony Cook, general manager for autonomous haulage systems at Caterpillar’s rival Komatsu, said a lot of customers had brought forward their spending plans following the pandemic in a bid to take drivers out of mining trucks.

He said the COVID-19 crisis had not hit the fortunes of his autonomous business: “If anything, it has got crazier.”

CATERPILLAR’S IN SPACE

Caterpillar and Komatsu hold the lion’s share of the global autonomous haulage system market worldwide.

But Illinois-based Caterpillar has a competitive advantage, according to some analysts, as its technology can be retrofitted onto competitors’ equipment, making it a better fit for mixed fleets. Komatsu’s technology currently only works with its own machines.

Komatsu’s Cook said that while retrofitting offered a short-term solution, his company was developing technology to allow different brands of equipment to operate together “safely and efficiently”, which he added would offer long-term benefits.

But Jim Hawkins, general manager at Caterpillar’s resource industries division, said the ability to retrofit had helped drive up sales, because mining companies can buy the hardware and software to make machines operate autonomously without paying the much larger cost of overhauling their whole fleet.

That is a selling point at a time when miners are grappling with the virus-induced business uncertainty.

Caterpillar sells autonomous operation technology separately from its machines. While retrofitting existing fleets has been the biggest driver for growth until now, Hawkins says an increasing number of customers are now ordering autonomous-ready mining trucks.

The company charges mining customers a hardware fee, a software fee and recurring licensing fee. In all, the technology could cost from $50 million to hundreds of millions of dollars, depending upon the size of the fleet and the duration of the contract, Hawkins said.

All these applications are part of the company’s endeavor to increases services revenue, which tends to be more resilient and profitable than equipment sales. It aims to increase services sales to $28 billion by 2026 from $18 billion in 2019.

Rob Wertheimer, machinery analyst at Melius Research, said the need for mining companies to replace an aging mining fleet and their growing demand for autonomous upgrades should help Caterpillar, with its tech giving it a “differential” advantage over rivals.

“Strategically, they are in a better place,” he added.

(Reporting by Rajesh Kumar Singh; Editing by Joe White and Pravin Char)

Trump resumes campaign with Florida rally 10 days after COVID-19 disclosure

By John Whitesides

WASHINGTON (Reuters) – President Donald Trump will try to put his bout with COVID-19 behind him when he returns to the campaign trail on Monday, beginning a three-week sprint to the Nov. 3 U.S. election with a rally in the battleground state of Florida.

The event at an airport in Sanford, Florida, will be Trump’s first campaign rally since he disclosed on Oct. 2 that he tested positive for COVID-19. Trump, who spent three nights in the hospital for treatment, said on Sunday he had fully recovered and was no longer infectious, but did not say directly whether he had tested negative for the coronavirus.

For months, Trump had worked furiously to shift public attention away from the virus and his handling of the pandemic, which has infected nearly 7.7 million people in the United States, killed more than 214,000 and put millions out of work.

His own illness has put the spotlight squarely on his coronavirus response during the closing stretch of the race.

Trump’s rally in Florida, and planned rallies in Pennsylvania on Tuesday, Iowa on Wednesday and North Carolina on Thursday, will be watched closely to see whether the president has reshaped his campaign approach since contracting the virus.

Critics fault him for failing to encourage supporters at campaign events, and even White House staff, to wear protective masks and abide by social-distancing guidelines. At least 11 close Trump aides have tested positive for the coronavirus.

Standing alone on a White House balcony on Saturday, a maskless Trump urged hundreds of largely Black and Latino supporters to help get out the vote. Most in the crowd wore masks but ignored social-distancing guidelines.

Biden, who has said it is irresponsible for any candidate to hold events where attendees are not wearing masks or engaging in social distancing, lashed out at the president’s approach.

“President Trump comes to Sanford today bringing nothing but reckless behavior, divisive rhetoric, and fear mongering,” Biden, the Democratic former vice president said in a statement.

FLORIDA UP FOR GRABS

Trump told Fox News in an interview on Sunday that he felt good and pointed to his physician’s memo from Saturday saying he had taken a test showing he was no longer infectious.

“I passed the highest test, the highest standards, and I’m in great shape,” Trump told “Sunday Morning Futures.”

Trump also said, without producing evidence, that he was now immune, an assertion that drew a flag from Twitter for violating the social media platform’s rules about misleading information related to COVID-19.

The scientific research has been inconclusive on how long people who have recovered from COVID-19 have antibodies and are protected from a second infection.

Most recent polls in Florida, where a Trump loss would dramatically narrow his path to re-election, show Biden with a small lead. Trump won Florida over Democratic presidential nominee Hillary Clinton in 2016 by just 1.2 percentage points, which helped propel him to the White House.

On his visit to Ohio, Biden will deliver a speech in Toledo meant to undermine what polls show is Trump’s last greatest strength, the view among some voters that the former real estate entrepreneur is better on handling the economy.

Biden also will attend a get-out-the-vote event in Cincinnati, his campaign said.

Trump has pulled back his advertising in Ohio in recent days, while Biden has increased his, another sign of the opportunity he and his fellow Democrats see to make more states competitive than they initially imagined.

(Reporting by John Whitesides; Additional reporting by Trevor Hunnicutt and Jarrett Renshaw; Writing by John Whitesides and Paul Simao; Editing by Soyoung Kim, Peter Cooney and Howard Goller)

U.S. CDC reports 210,232 deaths from coronavirus

(Reuters) – The U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) on Wednesday reported 7,475,262 cases of the new coronavirus, an increase of 38,984 from its previous count, and said that the number of deaths had risen by 672 to 210,232.

The CDC reported its tally of cases of the respiratory illness known as COVID-19, caused by a new coronavirus, as of 4 pm ET on Oct. 6 versus its previous report a day earlier.

The CDC figures do not necessarily reflect cases reported by individual states.

(Reporting by Dania Nadeem in Bengaluru; Editing by Devika Syamnath)

Trump is symptom-free and stable, White House doctor says

WASHINGTON (Reuters) – U.S. President Donald Trump has had no COVID-19 symptoms for the past 24 hours, with a physical examination and his vital signs showing his condition remains stable, White House physician Sean Conley said on Wednesday.

Conley, in a statement released with Trump’s permission, said the president has been fever-free for more than four days and had not needed or received any supplemental oxygen since his initial hospitalization.

Trump was hospitalized on Friday after tests showed he had contracted COVID-19. He returned to the White House on Monday.

(Reporting by Lisa Lambert and Susan Heavey; Editing by Tim Ahmann)

Coronavirus may push 150 million people into extreme poverty: World Bank

WASHINGTON (Reuters) – The World Bank said on Wednesday that the coronavirus pandemic could push as many as 150 million people into extreme poverty by the end of 2021, wiping out more than three years of progress in poverty reduction.

Releasing its flagship biennial report on poverty and shared prosperity, the multilateral development lender said that an additional 88 million to 115 million people will fall into extreme poverty – defined as living on less than $1.90 a day -in 2020. The report said this could grow to 111 million to 150 million by the end of 2021.

That would mean that 9.1-9.4% of the world’s population would be living under extreme poverty this year, about the same as 2017’s 9.2% and representing the first rise in the extreme poverty percentage in about 20 years.

The 2019 extreme poverty rate was estimated at about 8.4% and had been expected to drop to 7.5% by 2021 before the coronavirus pandemic. The report said that without swift, substantial policy actions, a longstanding goal of cutting the rate to 3% by 2030 looked out of reach.

“The pandemic and global recession may cause over 1.4% of the world’s population to fall into extreme poverty,” World Bank President David Malpass said in a statement, calling it a “serious setback to development progress and poverty reduction.”

The report found that many of the new extreme poor are in countries that have high poverty rates already, but around 82% of these are in middle-income countries, where the poverty line is defined as income of $3.20 a day for low-middle-income countries and $5.50 a day for upper-middle-income countries.

While extreme poverty has been concentrated in rural areas in the past, the World Bank report found that increasing numbers of urban dwellers have been thrown into extreme poverty as jobs dry up from coronavirus lockdowns and reduced demand.

Sub Saharan Africa has the highest concentration of those living on less than $1.90 a day, and could see an increase of over 50 million people by 2021 compared to pre-coronavirus estimates. About 42% of the region’s population could be living under extreme poverty by 2021 versus a pre-COVID estimate of 37.8%, the study showed.

The coronavirus also has stagnated “shared prosperity,” defined as growing income for the poorest 40% of a country’s population. The World Bank said that from 2012 to 2017, income rose for this group by an average of 2.3% in 74 of 91 economies for which data was available.

The COVID-19 crisis could now reduce income for the poorest 40%, increasing income inequality and reducing social mobility, the bank said.

To get back on a track of poverty reduction, countries will need collective action to control the virus, provide support for households and build more resilient economies once the pandemic subsides, the World Bank said.

“Countries will need to prepare for a different economy post-COVID, by allowing capital, labor, skills and innovation to move into new businesses and sectors,” Malpass said.

(Reporting by David Lawder; Editing by Andrea Ricci)

Creators of gene ‘scissors’ clinch Nobel as women sweep chemistry

By Niklas Pollard and Douglas Busvine

STOCKHOLM/BERLIN (Reuters) – Two scientists won the 2020 Nobel Prize in Chemistry on Wednesday for creating genetic ‘scissors’ that can rewrite the code of life, contributing to new cancer therapies and holding out the prospect of curing hereditary diseases.

Emmanuelle Charpentier, who is French, and American Jennifer Doudna share the 10 million Swedish crown ($1.1 million) prize for developing the CRISPR/Cas9 tool to edit the DNA of animals, plants and microorganisms with precision.

“The ability to cut the DNA where you want has revolutionized the life sciences,” Pernilla Wittung Stafshede of the Swedish Academy of Sciences told an award ceremony.

Charpentier, 51, and Doudna, 56, become the sixth and seventh women to win a Nobel for chemistry, joining Marie Curie, who won in 1911, and more recently, Frances Arnold, in 2018.

It is the first time since 1964, when Britain’s Dorothy Crowfoot Hodgkin alone won the award, that no men are among the chemistry prize winners.

Charpentier, of the Max Planck Unit for the Science of Pathogens, told journalists in Berlin she was “extremely emotional and extremely moved” by the award, which came as a complete surprise even though she had been tipped as contender.

The first Nobel won by two women showed how “science becomes more modern and develops more female leaders”, she said after setting down a glass of wine to pose for the cameras alongside a bust of Planck, the 1918 Physics Nobel laureate.

Doudna is already employing CRISPR in the battle against the coronavirus as co-founder of biotech startup Mammoth, which has tied up with GlaxoSmithKline to develop a test to detect infections.

“What started as a curiosity‐driven, fundamental discovery project has now become the breakthrough strategy used by countless researchers working to help improve the human condition,” Doudna said in a statement.

CONTROVERSIAL FIELD

The path from discovery to prize has taken less than a decade – a relatively short period by Nobel standards.

And, although CRISPR had been tipped to win the Chemistry prize, there has also been concern that the technology conferred God-like powers on scientists and could be misused, for example, to create ‘designer babies’.

“The enormous power of this technology means that we need to use it with great care,” said Claes Gustafsson, chair of the Nobel Committee for Chemistry.

“But it is equally clear that this is a technology, a method that will provide humankind with great opportunities.”

Asked whether she had a relationship with God, Charpentier earlier told the award ceremony that she was raised a Catholic. Now, she said: “All my focus is on science – I believe in what I am doing as a scientist.”

CRISPR is a crowded field, with competing claims on discovery triggering a patent dispute that continues between the prize winners and a team led by Feng Zhang of the Broad Institute of MIT and Harvard.

Gustafsson declined to say whether the prize committee had considered other contenders.

ANCIENT BACTERIA

Charpentier’s breakthrough came in the study of Streptococcus pyogenes, an ancient bacterium that can cause tonsillitis and potentially fatal sepsis in people, when she found that a previously unknown molecule in its immune system could ‘cleave’ DNA.

She published her findings in 2011 and quickly joined forces with biochemist Doudna, of the University of California, Berkeley, to recreate the bacteria’s genetic scissors in a test tube and simplifying the tool to make it easier to use.

The duo published their findings in June 2012, seven months before the Broad Institute group, which however successfully filed a series of U.S. patent applications and says its gene editing technology is better.

Despite the controversy, Broad Institute Director Eric Lander sent his “huge congratulations” to Charpentier and Doudna. “It’s exciting to see the endless frontiers of science continue to expand, with big impacts for patients,” he tweeted.

DNA is a string with up to 6 billion coded instructions that tell a cell what to do. The beauty of CRISPR/Cas9 is that it can not only snip DNA at the right spot, but also repair the join so that errors do not creep in.

Today CRISPR/Cas9 is a common tool in biochemistry and molecular biology labs – used to make crops more resistant to drought or develop novel treatments of hereditary diseases such as sickle-cell anemia.

“We can now easily edit genomes as desired, something that before was hard, even impossible,” said Wittung Stafshede.

(Writing by Douglas Busvine; additional reporting Simon Johnson, Anna Ringstrom, Supantha Mukherjee, Colm Fulton, Johannes Hellstrom and Daniel Trotta; Editing by Alison Williams and Giles Elgood)

Pence, Harris to clash in VP debate amid White House virus outbreak

By Joseph Ax

(Reuters) – Vice President Mike Pence and Democratic challenger Kamala Harris will square off on Wednesday in their only debate, as President Donald Trump’s coronavirus diagnosis and the ongoing pandemic continue to roil the U.S. presidential contest.

The televised clash comes at a precarious moment for the Trump-Pence re-election campaign, less than a week after the president announced he had contracted COVID-19 amid a White House outbreak that has infected numerous high-profile Republicans.

Late on Tuesday, the two sides were still arguing over Harris’ request for plexiglass barriers on stage to lessen the chance of infection. CNN reported that a member of the commission that oversees the debate said Pence would be permitted to appear without a barrier, while Harris would have one on her side of the stage if desired.

Both Pence and Harris, a U.S. senator, tested negative for the coronavirus on Tuesday. Current government guidelines call for anyone exposed to someone with COVID-19 to quarantine for 14 days regardless of test results.

Pence’s spokesman did not respond to requests for comment.

In a statement, Harris spokeswoman Sabrina Singh said, “If the Trump administration’s war on masks has now become a war on safety shields, that tells you everything you need to know about why their COVID response is a failure.”

With two septuagenarians at the top of the ballot, the debate could take on greater importance than in other years, when the vice presidential match-up was largely seen as an afterthought to the presidential debates. Both Pence and Harris will seek to demonstrate that they can step into the Oval Office if necessary to lead the country.

Trump, 74, returned to the White House on Monday after three days in a military hospital. It is unclear when he will again be able to campaign. Trump has said he plans to participate in the Oct. 15 presidential debate.

The pandemic is likely to dominate the proceedings. Biden, 77, and Harris, 55, have made Trump’s handling of the disease the central theme of their campaign, blaming Trump for deliberately downplaying the health risks and failing to endorse mask-wearing.

The 61-year-old Pence, who headed up the administration’s coronavirus task force, will defend Trump’s response to the virus, which has killed 210,000 Americans and decimated the U.S. economy even as other wealthy nations have managed to get the disease under control.

Viewers will have a constant reminder of the pandemic’s effect on daily life: Pence and Harris will be more than 12 feet apart on stage at the University of Utah, in addition to the plexiglass barrier

In preparation for the debate, Harris got help from former Democratic presidential primary rival Pete Buttigieg, a former mayor of South Bend, Indiana, who is familiar with Pence’s past record when he was governor of the state.

The debate is unlikely to match the sheer chaos of the first presidential debate last week, when Trump repeatedly interrupted Biden and the two traded insults. Pence, who once hosted a radio show as a congressman, and Harris, a former prosecutor known for sharp questioning during Senate hearings, are both seen as polished communicators.

A Biden campaign official said Harris has prepared for Pence to attack her as too liberal, echoing Trump’s assertion that the moderate Biden will advance a “radical left-wing” agenda if elected.

(Reporting by Joseph Ax; Editing by Colleen Jenkins and Leslie Adler)