Tag Archives: Coronavirus

What you need to know about the coronavirus right now

(Reuters) – Here’s what you need to know about the coronavirus right now:

White House slams “corrupt” WHO

The White House pushed back on concerns expressed by the World Health Organization after a U.S. health official said a coronavirus vaccine might be approved without completing full trials.

The Washington Post newspaper reported that the administration of President Donald Trump would not join a global effort to develop, manufacture and distribute a coronavirus vaccine because of the involvement of the WHO.

About 172 countries are engaging with the WHO’s COVID-19 vaccine plan to ensure equitable access to vaccines, the organization has said.

“The United States will continue to engage our international partners to ensure we defeat this virus, but we will not be constrained by multilateral organizations influenced by the corrupt World Health Organization and China,” White House spokesman Judd Deere said in a statement.

India reopens

India’s coronavirus infections rose to almost 3.8 million on Wednesday, as states continued to relax rules on movement despite the surge in cases.

The country reported 78,357 new cases in the past 24 hours, according to federal health data, taking total infections to 3,769,523. Some 66,333 people have died.

India’s total cases lag only the United States and Brazil, which it will overtake in days based on current trends.

Authorities in the capital New Delhi are due to meet to discuss the reopening of the city’s metro, despite fresh cases there sitting at a two-month high.

In Sydney, the show must go on

Australia’s most-populous state reported the biggest daily jump in coronavirus infections in two weeks on Wednesday but said there were no plans to cancel the New Year fireworks show over Sydney Harbor, as new cases nationally also ticked up.

New South Wales state reported 17 new cases, the biggest one-day jump since Aug. 12, while nationally the count rose to 109 cases from 85 a day earlier.

Victoria state remained the hardest-hit region with 90 cases, although this was well down from its daily peak of more than 700 in early August at the height of a second wave of infections.

NSW Premier Gladys Berejiklian said the state was pushing ahead with plans to host large events such as the New Years Eve fireworks over Sydney Harbor. “I think for a lot of people the fireworks represent hope.”

Elderly drive South Korea case surge

More than 40% of new coronavirus cases in South Korea are being found in people over the age of 60, contributing in part to a surge in the number of COVID-19 patients who are severely or critically ill, health authorities said on Wednesday.

The surge in cases over the past three weeks has depleted medical facilities, with less than 3% of hospital beds – or just nine – available for critical cases in greater Seoul, versus 22% about 10 days ago, the health ministry said.

South Korea is battling a second wave of infection, centered in the capital Seoul and surrounding areas which are home to 25 million people.

Pandemic ignites demand for home appliances

From sanitizing closets to customizable fridges, the coronavirus pandemic has fanned demand for home appliances – so much so that Samsung Electronics is adding warehouses and bringing popular products to more markets.

In particular, consumers have been willing to splurge on products that make their homes cleaner.

In Brazil and other emerging economies, households which once relied on maids are now investing in dishwashers and robot vacuum cleaners, while Samsung says its overseas sales of air purifiers jumped more than five times in January-July compared to the same period last year.

Samsung’s AirDresser, a closet that steam cleans clothes and kills bacteria, has seen a spike in sales. Big fridges have also climbed in popularity as people cooking more often at home seek more freezer space.

(Compiled by Linda Noakes; Editing by Alison Williams)

Steroids cut death rates among critically ill COVID-19 patients, major study finds

By Kate Kelland

LONDON (Reuters) – Treating critically ill COVID-19 patients with corticosteroid drugs reduces the risk of death by 20%, an analysis of seven international trials found on Wednesday, prompting the World Health Organisation to update its advice on treatment.

The analysis – which pooled data from separate trials of low dose hydrocortisone, dexamethasone and methylprednisolone – found that steroids improve survival rates of COVID-19 patients sick enough to be in intensive care in hospital.

“This is equivalent to around 68% of (the sickest COVID-19) patients surviving after treatment with corticosteroids, compared to around 60% surviving in the absence of corticosteroids,” the researchers said in a statement.

The WHO’s clinical care lead, Janet Diaz, said the agency had updated its advice to include a “strong recommendation” for use of steroids in patients with severe and critical COVID-19.

“The evidence shows that if you give corticosteroids …(there are) 87 fewer deaths per 1,000 patients,” she told a WHO social media live event. “Those are lives … saved.”

“Steroids are a cheap and readily available medication, and our analysis has confirmed that they are effective in reducing deaths amongst the people most severely affected by COVID-19,” Jonathan Sterne, a professor of medical statistics and epidemiology at Britain’s Bristol University who worked on the analysis, told the briefing.

He said the trials – conducted by researchers in Britain, Brazil, Canada, China, France, Spain, and the United States – gave a consistent message throughout, showing the drugs were beneficial in the sickest patients regardless of age or sex or how long patients had been ill.

The findings, published in the Journal of the American Medical Association, reinforce results that were hailed as a major breakthrough and announced in June, when dexamethasone became the first drug shown to be able to reduce death rates among severely sick COVID-19 patients.

Dexamethasone has been in widespread use in intensive care wards treating COVID-19 patients in some countries since then.

Martin Landray, a professor of medicine and epidemiology at the University of Oxford who worked on the dexamethasone trial that was a key part of the pooled analysis published on Wednesday, said the results mean doctors in hospitals across the world can safely switch to using the drugs to save lives.

CLEAR BENEFITS

“These results are clear, and instantly usable in clinical practice,” he told reporters. “Among critically ill patients with COVID-19, low-dose corticosteroids … significantly reduce the risk of death.”

Researchers said the benefit was shown regardless of whether patients were on ventilation at the time they started treatment. They said the WHO would update its guidelines immediately to reflect the fresh results.

Until the June findings on dexamethasone, no effective treatment had been shown to reduce death rates in patients with COVID-19, the respiratory disease caused by the new coronavirus.

More than 25 million people have been infected with COVID-19 and 856,876​ have died, according to a Reuters tally.

Gilead Sciences Inc’s remdesivir was authorized by United States regulators in May for use in patients with severe COVID-19 after trial data showed the antiviral drug helped shorten hospital recovery time.

Anthony Gordon, an Imperial College London professor who also worked on the analysis, said its results were good news for patients who become critically ill with COVID-19, but would not be enough to end outbreaks or ease infection control measures.

“Impressive as these results are, this is not a cure. We now have something that will help, but it is not a cure, so it’s vital that we keep up all the prevention strategies.”

(Reporting by Kate Kelland; Editing by Mark Heinrich and Catherine Evans)

Thousands of small-business loans may have been fraudulent, U.S. House panel finds

By Susan Cornwell and David Morgan

WASHINGTON (Reuters) – Tens of thousands of loans worth billions of dollars may have been subject to fraud, waste and abuse in the $659 billion taxpayer-funded Paycheck Protection Program (PPP) aimed at helping small U.S. businesses survive the coronavirus pandemic, according to a report released by Democratic lawmakers on Tuesday.

Over $1 billion went to companies that received multiple loans, in violation of the program’s rules, the House of Representatives Select Subcommittee on the Coronavirus Crisis said.

At an afternoon hearing, the panel’s chairman, Democratic Representative James Clyburn, chided Treasury Secretary Steven Mnuchin for saying previously that delivering aid quickly made it inevitable for Treasury to run into issues of waste.

“That is a false dichotomy. Taxpayers should not have to choose between quickly getting aid to those who need it and wasting federal funds. And there are simple steps that could have been taken to improve oversight and reduce fraud,” Clyburn said.

Democrats in Congress and the Trump administration have been at loggerheads since July over further steps to bolster the economy after Congress approved trillions of dollars in March to respond to the coronavirus pandemic.

“We are sensitive to the fact that there is more work to be done and certain areas of the economy require additional relief,” Mnuchin told the committee.

The PPP provided more than 5.2 million forgivable loans through the U.S. Small Business Administration (SBA) by the time it ended on Aug. 8.

The SBA did not immediately respond to requests for comment.

The Trump administration says the PPP has saved some 51 million jobs at a time when much of the U.S. economy has been shuttered due to the coronavirus.

Economists say the actual impact is far lower, likely between 1 million and 14 million jobs.

Republicans on the committee issued their own report saying the small business loan program had avoided fraud to the extent that is typical with other large government relief programs, such as those following Hurricanes Sandy and Katrina.

The Democratic-led panel found more than 600 loans went to companies that should have been ineligible because they had been barred from doing business with the government. Another 350 loans went to contractors with previous performance problems.

Nearly $3 billion went to businesses that were flagged as potentially problematic by a government-contracting database.

Staff found evidence that as few as 12 percent of Black and Hispanic business owners received the full funding they requested.

The SBA’s internal watchdog has also found “strong indicators” of potential PPP fraud.

(Reporting by Susan Cornwell and David Morgan; Editing by Andy Sullivan, Chizu Nomiyama, Steve Orlofsky and Richard Chang)

U.S. to send millions of rapid COVID-19 tests to states to support school reopening, other tasks

By Carl O’Donnell and Vishwadha Chander

(Reuters) – The U.S. government will send an “overwhelming majority” of the rapid COVID-19 tests it purchased from Abbott Laboratories last week to governors of states and territories to support school re-openings and other critical tasks, an administration official said at a press briefing.

Other top priorities for the newly purchased tests include day care centers, first responders, and “critical infrastructure,” said Admiral Brett Giroir, assistant secretary for health at the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services.

The U.S. government purchased 150 million rapid antigen tests for COVID-19 from Abbott in a roughly $750 million deal.

The portable tests can deliver results within 15 minutes and will sell for $5. They require no additional equipment, and can use a less invasive nasal swab than traditional lab tests.

Antigen tests are cheaper and faster than molecular diagnostic tests, but somewhat more likely to fail to identify positive cases of the virus than lab-based diagnostic tests.

U.S. President Donald Trump has repeatedly pushed for schools to reopen, but most of the country’s largest school districts have said they would start the school year with online classes, as states across the country have battled a spike in cases over the summer.

Girior also said the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) still supports testing asymptomatic individuals for COVID-19 who are prioritized by local health officials or in high risk populations. Last week, the CDC sparked outcry among many public health officials when it said testing some asymptomatic people may not be necessary.

The U.S. government has conducted 85 million COVID-19 tests so far with a positivity rate of just over 5%, Girior said. The mean turnaround time is 2.27 days.

(Reporting by Carl O’Donnell; Editing by Chris Reese and David Gregorio)

Pentagon concerned by China’s nuclear ambitions, expects warheads to double

By Idrees Ali and Phil Stewart

WASHINGTON (Reuters) – China is expected to at least double the number of its nuclear warheads over the next decade from the low 200’s now and is nearing the ability to launch nuclear strikes by land, air and sea, a capacity known as a triad, the Pentagon said on Tuesday.

The revelations came as tensions rise between China and the United States and as Washington seeks to have Beijing join a flagship nuclear arms treaty between the United States and Russia.

In its annual report to Congress on China’s military, the Pentagon said that China has nuclear warheads in the low 200’s, the first time the U.S. military has disclosed this number. The Federation of American Scientists has estimated that China has about 320 nuclear warheads.

The Pentagon said the growth projection was based on factors including Beijing having enough material to double its nuclear weapons stockpile without new fissile material production.

The Pentagon’s estimate is in line with an analysis by the Defense Intelligence Agency.

“We’re certainly concerned about the numbers … but also just the trajectory of China’s nuclear developments writ large,” Chad Sbragia, deputy assistant secretary of defense for China, told reporters.

Earlier this year, China’s Communist Party-backed newspaper Global Times said Beijing needs to expand the number of its nuclear warheads to 1,000 in a relatively short time.

Sbragia said China was also nearing completion of its nuclear triad capacity, suggesting China is further along than previously publicly known. China has only two of the three legs of triad operational but is developing a nuclear capable air-launched ballistic missile.

The report said that in October 2019, China publicly revealed the H-6N bomber as its first nuclear capable air-to-air refueling bomber.

Washington has repeatedly called for China to join in trilateral negotiations to extend New START, a U.S.-Russian nuclear arms treaty that is due to expire in February.

China has said it has no interest in joining the negotiation, given that the U.S. nuclear arsenal is about 20 times the size of China’s.

In July, a senior Chinese diplomat said Beijing would “be happy to” participate in trilateral arms control negotiations, but only if the United States were willing to reduce its nuclear arsenal to China’s level.

China’s growing nuclear arsenal should not be used as an excuse for the United States and Russia not to extend New START, Kingston Reif, director for disarmament and threat reduction policy at the Arms Control Association advocacy group, said.

It “further reinforces the importance of extending New START and the folly of conditioning extension on China and China’s participation in arms control,” Reif added.

China’s nuclear arsenal is a fraction of the United States’, which has 3,800 nuclear warheads stockpiled, and Russia’s, which has roughly 4,300, according to the Federation of American Scientists.

“PREVENT TAIWAN INDEPENDENCE”

Tensions have been simmering between China and the United States for months. Washington has taken issue with China’s handling of the novel coronavirus outbreak and moves to curb freedoms in Hong Kong. The increasingly aggressive posture comes as President Donald Trump bids for re-election in November.

Another source of tension has been Taiwan. China has stepped up its military activity around the democratic island Beijing claims as sovereign Chinese territory, sending fighter jets and warships on exercises close to Taiwan.

The Pentagon report, based on 2019 information, said China’s military continued to “enhance its readiness” to prevent Taiwan’s independence and carry out an invasion if needed.

(Reporting by Idrees Ali and Phil Stewart; Editing by Cynthia Osterman)

New York City schools to delay class start under safety deal with unions

NEW YORK (Reuters) – New York City public schools, the largest U.S. school system, will delay the start of classes by 11 days to Sept. 21 under an agreement with education unions that had pushed for additional coronavirus safety measures, Mayor Bill de Blasio said on Tuesday.

Unions, led by the United Federation of Teachers, had expressed concern that the city was rushing into its Sept. 10 scheduled start of the school year without taking adequate steps to protect teachers, students and staff from infections.

But in announcing the agreement, de Blasio was joined by union leaders who said their health and safety concerns had been met.

“What we’ve agreed to is to make sure that the health measures are in place, to make sure there is time for the appropriate preparation for our educators,” de Blasio said at a briefing.

UFT President Michael Mulgrew last month threatened to strike, which would be illegal under state law, unless schools implemented a rigorous COVID-19 testing plan and other safety measures.

Joining de Blasio, however, Mulgrew hailed the agreement.

“Our medical experts have stamped this plan, and we now can say that the New York City public school system has the most aggressive policies and greatest safeguards of any school system in America,” said Mulgrew whose union represents 133,000 teachers and other education workers.

(Reporting by Peter Szekely in New York; Editing by Chizu Nomiyama and Richard Chang)

Trump White House restarts tours, with pandemic restrictions

WASHINGTON (Reuters) – President Donald Trump’s administration will restart tours of the White House on Sept. 12 with new restrictions aimed at limiting the spread of the coronavirus, according to an announcement released on Tuesday.

Tours at the usually bustling White House complex, where Trump lives and works, were suspended after COVID-19 began spreading throughout the country. At the same time, some White House officials have tested positive for the disease, which has killed more than 180,000 people in the United States, and media organizations have limited the number of journalists showing up each day.

On Thursday, though, Trump opened the White House to more of the public, hosting the last night of his Republican party’s national convention on its South Lawn. He gave his renomination acceptance speech in front of more than 1,000 people sitting close together, most of them without face coverings.

The resumed public tours will only take place on Friday and Saturday mornings, with roughly a fifth of the usual number of guests allowed in.

Guests must wear face coverings and follow dots on the floor to remain socially distant when they check in. Federal employees along the self-guided tour route will wear face coverings and gloves, and hand sanitizer will be available, according to the announcement.

The White House has generally welcomed the public, but access has been reduced over the years to protect its residents. Famously, President Andrew Jackson, who has served as an inspiration for Trump, hosted 20,000 people for his Inauguration Day party in 1829, serving whiskey in bathtubs on the lawn. Since the attacks of Sept. 11, 2001, visitors have had to reserve tours months in advance through a member of Congress and undergo background checks.

Public tours of the Library of Congress and the U.S. Capitol remain suspended, according to their websites.

(Reporting by Lisa Lambert; editing by Jonathan Oatis)

Delivering super-cooled COVID-19 vaccine a daunting challenge for some countries

By Matthias Inverardi and Ludwig Burger

FRANKFURT (Reuters) – Getting a coronavirus vaccine from manufacturing sites to some parts of the world with rural populations and unreliable electricity supply will be an immense challenge, given the need to store some vials at temperatures as low as minus 80 degrees Celsius (-112 Fahrenheit), Deutsche Post warned on Tuesday.

The German logistics firm said that distribution of an eventual vaccine across large parts of Africa, South America and Asia would require extraordinary measures to keep deliveries of so-called mRNA vaccines refrigerated at Antarctic-level temperatures.

Companies developing vaccines requiring exceptional cold storage, such as Moderna and CureVac, are working hard to make their injections last longer in transit.

The novel class of mRNA vaccines is among the furthest advanced in a field of 33 immunization shots currently being tested on humans globally, but they may need to be cooled at minus 80 degrees Celsius.

But upgrading cold storage infrastructure in regions outside the 25 most advanced countries, home to one third of the global population, will pose an immense challenge, said Deutsche Post in its study, conducted with consultancy firm McKinsey.

Vaccine developers Translate Bio and Moderna said in June they are working to produce evidence in time for the roll-out that their respective products can be shipped and stored at less extreme temperatures.

A spokesman for CureVac said its vaccine candidate is based on an experimental rabies vaccine which has already been shown to keep its molecular structure when stored in a regular fridge for months. Tests are underway to show the COVID-19 product has the same durability and the company is confident the data will be “competitive”, he added.

Deutsche Post said that even if the vaccine cold chain requires temperatures of only minus 8 degrees Celsius the share of the world’s population with reliable access to it increases only to about 70%, with substantial parts of Africa at risk of missing out.

“We anticipate 10 billion vaccine doses will have to be distributed across the world, and that includes regions that don’t have motorway access every five miles,” Katja Busch, Chief Commercial Officer of Deutsche Post’s DHL global forwarding unit, told Reuters.

(Additional reporting by Lisa Baertlein, editing by Louise Heavens)

White House says Senate Republicans may take up COVID-19 bill next week

WASHINGTON (Reuters) – Senate Republicans are likely to take up their COVID-19 relief bill next week offering $500 billion in additional federal aid, White House chief of staff Mark Meadows said on Tuesday, adding that the administration was still weighing help for U.S. airlines.

In an interview on CNBC, Meadows said he expected Senate Republicans’ legislation would be “more targeted” than House Democrats’ offer and could either be used as a building block or be passed on its own while negotiations continue.

Congressional negotiations on further federal intervention amid the novel coronavirus pandemic remain at a standstill after the Democratic-led U.S. House of Representatives passed its $3.4 trillion measure back in May.

Republican President Donald Trump and his administration have said they could support a $1 trillion bill. Democrats offered to split the difference with a roughly $2 trillion compromise, but there has been little movement.

Meadows told CNBC the administration “was nowhere close” to Democrats’ $2 trillion offer but added: “We’ll get there in the end.”

It was unclear whether Senate Republican Leader Mitch McConnell planned to take up the bill next week. Republican Senator John Barrasso said a conference call with Treasury Secretary Steven Mnuchin and the White House was scheduled for later on Tuesday to discuss the matter.

Asked about efforts to aid airlines, which have furloughed or laid off thousands of workers and curtailed flights as the outbreak had upended travel, Meadows said any aid “remains an open question” and that the administration is “looking closely at a number of executive actions.”

Meadows said he and Mnuchin met with Trump late on Monday and that the president tasked them “to get as creative as we can within the confines of the law to put forth as much money as we can so we can keep this economy going.”

(Reporting by Susan Heavey and David Morgan; Editing by Chizu Nomiyama and Jonathan Oatis)

COVID-19 often goes undiagnosed in hospital workers; virus may impair heart functions

By Nancy Lapid

(Reuters) – The following is a roundup of some of the latest scientific studies on the novel coronavirus and efforts to find treatments and vaccines for COVID-19, the illness caused by the virus.

COVID-19 often undiagnosed in front line hospital workers

A high proportion of COVID-19 infections among U.S. healthcare personnel appear to go undetected, according to a report on Monday in the Morbidity and Mortality Weekly Report of the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. Between April and June, among more than 3,000 front line workers in 12 states, roughly 1 in 20 had antibody evidence of a previous COVID-19 infection, but 69% of those infections had never been diagnosed. Among those with antibodies to the novel coronavirus, about one-third did not recall having symptoms in the preceding months, nearly half did not suspect that they had been infected, and some two-thirds had never had a positive COVID-19 test. Infections among front line healthcare personnel may be going undetected, the study authors say, because some infections may be only minimally symptomatic or asymptomatic and also because personnel with symptoms may not always have access to testing. COVID-19 antibodies were less common among workers who reported using a face covering for all patient encounters and more common among those who reported a shortage of personal protective equipment. The researchers call for more frequent testing of healthcare personnel and universal use of face coverings in hospitals.

Virus may impair heart’s beating, contracting

Following recent reports that the new coronavirus can invade heart muscle cells comes the discovery that infected cells show impairments in function. In test tube experiments, researchers infected “myocytes,” or heart muscle cells, with the new coronavirus and found that before the infected cells die, they progressively lose their “electrophysiological and contractile properties.” This means they have trouble transmitting the electrical impulses that regulate heartbeats and shortening or lengthening their fibers so the heart can expand and contract to pump blood. In a paper posted online Sunday on bioRxiv ahead of peer review, the researchers note that their test tube experiments likely do not exactly replicate what happens with cells in the body, and more research is needed to confirm their findings. Still, they say, their results suggest that cardiac symptoms in COVID-19 patients are likely a direct effect of the virus and warn that “long-term cardiac complications might be possible … in patients who recover from this illness.”

Eye symptoms common in children with COVID-19

Children with COVID-19 often have non-serious eye symptoms like itching, discharge, or pink eye, a study from China suggests. Among 216 children hospitalized with COVID-19 in Wuhan, the epicenter of the outbreak there, 23% had these kinds of eye issues, doctors found. Eye problems were more common in children with other symptoms such as cough or fever. In all cases, the eye problems were mild and eventually went away either without treatment or with “minimal” eye drops, researchers reported in JAMA Ophthalmology. It is reassuring that most of the children had other symptoms first, said Dr. Douglas Fredrick, chief of pediatric ophthalmology at the Mount Sinai Health system in New York City, who was not involved in the study. If conjunctivitis, or pink eye, were always among the first symptoms, “we’d be more worried that children could spread this by pink eye from one child to another,” he told Reuters. Still, he said, the study doesn’t completely rule out that type of transmission.

Cell phone activity may predict COVID-19 spread

Cell phone use patterns suggest that when people stay home, coronavirus infection rates go down, researchers say. For a study published on Monday in JAMA Internal Medicine, they analyzed publicly available de-identified cell phone activity and location data collected between January and May from 2,740 counties across the United States. After mid-February, when the coronavirus outbreak began, cell phone activity declined significantly in workplaces, stores and restaurants, and mass transit stations and increased in homes – with the greatest initial changes seen in areas with higher rates of COVID-19. Two weeks after cell phone activity shifted away from workplaces and retail locations, the counties with the most pronounced changes had the lowest rates of new COVID-19 cases. “Perhaps reassuringly,” the researchers said, cell phone activity at grocery stores and in areas classified as parks was not strongly associated with rates of growth in COVID-19 cases. They speculate that publicly available cell phone location data might help health offices better predict COVID-19 growth rates and inform decision about where to implement shutdowns and re-openings.

(Reporting by Nancy Lapid and Linda Carroll; Editing by Bill Berkrot)