Tag Archives: COVID-19

UK PM Johnson wants ‘cautious but irreversible’ path out of COVID-19 lockdown

By Guy Faulconbridge and Kate Holton

LONDON (Reuters) – British Prime Minister Boris Johnson said on Monday he would plot a cautious but irreversible path out of the COVID-19 lockdown this week after the vaccination of 15 million vulnerable people.

With nearly a quarter of the United Kingdom’s population now inoculated with a first dose of a COVID vaccine in a little over two months, Johnson is under pressure from some lawmakers and businesses to reopen the shuttered economy.

“We’ve got to be very prudent and what we want to see is progress that is cautious, but irreversible,” Johnson told reporters. “If we possibly can, we’ll be setting out dates.”

“If because of the rate of infection, we have to push off something a little bit to the right – delay it for a little bit – we won’t hesitate to do that.”

Johnson, due to set the path out of lockdown on Feb. 22, said the rates of infection were still high and too many people were still dying.

Asked if he would ensure schools reopened on March 8, Johnson said he would do everything he could to ensure that.

If many people get infected, there would be a high risk of mutation in the virus and higher risk of it spreading to older and more vulnerable groups, he said.

The biggest and swiftest global vaccine rollout in history is seen as the best chance of exiting the COVID-19 pandemic which has killed 2.4 million people, tipped the global economy into its worst peacetime slump since the Great Depression, and upended normal life for billions.

The United Kingdom has the world’s fifth-worst official death toll – currently 117,166 – after the United States, Brazil, Mexico and India.

VACCINE PASSPORTS?

Britain has vaccinated 15.062 million people with a first dose and 537,715 with a second dose, the fastest rollout per capita of any large country. Hancock said he expected vaccine supplies to increase as manufacturing accelerated.

An influential group of lawmakers in Johnson’s Conservative Party is urging an end to the lockdown as soon as the most vulnerable nine groups are vaccinated. They want no more rules beyond May 1.

“We’re all filled with sorrow for the people we’ve lost, the harms that we’ve suffered but we don’t honor those we’ve loved and lost by wrecking the rest of our lives,” lawmaker Steve Baker said. “We’ve got to find a way to rebuild our society and our economy and our prospects, our livelihoods.”

Britain is speaking to other countries about giving its citizens certificates showing they have been vaccinated so that they can travel abroad in the future to countries that require them, Johnson said.

“That’s going to be very much in the mix, down the road I think that is going to happen,” Johnson said, referring to such certificates. “What I don’t think we will have in this country is, as it were, vaccination passports to allow you to go to the pub, or something like that.”

(Reporting by Guy Faulconbridge and Kate Holton; Editing by Peter Graff, Nick Macfie and Bernadette Baum)

Hundreds in Serbia mourn medics, demand better COVID protection

BELGRADE (Reuters) – Hundreds of people held a minute’s silence in front of Serbia’s government building on Monday to pay their respects to doctors and nurses killed by COVID-19 and to demand more is done to protect health workers.

People placed white roses at the entrance to the building and lit candles.

Of the 4,245 people who have died in Serbia from COVID-19, around 2.5% or 105 were doctors, according to official figures.

The Union of Doctors and Pharmacists, which organized the protest, says the death toll among doctors is higher than in other countries in the region.

“For a small country such as Serbia, this is a huge number of people we have lost because of bad organization,” said Ferenci Tot, a respiratory diseases specialist, who was among the protest organizers.

In neighboring Croatia only one doctor has died from COVID-19, in Albania 24 doctors have died and in Bosnia 23 doctors, according to local media reports.

Doctor Dejan Zujovic, a pulmonologist who has worked in COVID-19 red zones in Belgrade, said long working hours and poor protection equipment were the main reasons for such a high death rate among doctors.

“People do not go on holidays, they are exhausted and their immunity suffers,” he said.

Government officials have said they will investigate the deaths of medical workers but little has been done so far.

The head of the government’s Crisis Committee, Predrag Kon, drew public criticism when he said doctors and nurses became infected while having coffee rather than while working with patients.

To prevent further deaths, hours spent in COVID-19 red zones should be limited to six a day, with a one-month time limit on rotas, said Doctor Gorica Djokic, a secretary general of the Union of Doctors and Pharmacists.

(Reporting by Ivana Sekularac; Editing by Janet Lawrence)

Exclusive: UK auditing Indian vaccine site amid scramble for shots-sources

By Neha Arora, Krishna N. Das and Euan Rocha

NEW DELHI (Reuters) – Britain’s drug regulator is auditing manufacturing processes at Serum Institute of India (SII) which could pave the way for AstraZeneca’s COVID-19 vaccine to be shipped from there to the UK and other countries, according to two sources close to the matter.

SII, the world’s largest vaccine manufacturer, is currently mass producing the AstraZeneca vaccine, developed in conjunction with Oxford University, for dozens of poor and middle-income countries but not the UK, which has been getting its supply of the shot primarily from domestic facilities.

If the UK’s Medicines and Healthcare products Regulatory Agency (MHRA) gives SII’s manufacturing process for the Oxford/AstraZeneca shot a greenlight it would allow the drug to be exported to the UK and to other countries which recognize MHRA’s clearances, one of the sources said.

Reuters could not determine what was the rationale for the audit. SII did not respond to a request for comment on it. The MHRA confirmed that an inspection was happening but declined further comment.

“Due to commercial confidentiality we do not comment on inspections that are still ongoing,” the regulator’s chief executive Dr. June Raine said in a statement to Reuters.

The two sources, who asked not to be named as the matter is private, said the audit should be relatively routine for SII, as its site already supplies other vaccines to the UK.

The inspection comes as countries around the world scramble to secure vaccine supplies amid supply disruptions and delivery cuts from leading drugmakers such as Pfizer Inc, Moderna and AstraZeneca.

It was not immediately clear whether an MHRA approval would allow the UK or AstraZeneca to route SII volumes of COVISHIELD – the brand name under which SII markets the AstraZeneca shot – to the EU, which has been pressuring the UK for supply from AstraZeneca’s facilities in the UK, amid shortages in Europe.

AstraZeneca executives told EU officials last week that to accelerate supplies to the bloc, it could provide it with some doses manufactured outside Europe, two EU sources told Reuters. One said the SII could be a supplier.

AstraZeneca, which has previously tapped SII to help fulfill some of its vaccine orders from Brazil, South Africa and Saudi Arabia, did not respond to a request for comment on whether it needs SII to help meet commitments in the UK, or in any other nations that would recognize an MHRA certification.

It was not immediately available to comment on the reported offer to supply the EU with shots from the SII.

INSPECTIONS

The EU’s drug regulator, the European Medicines Agency (EMA), audits sites from which it plans to source medicines but during the global pandemic, with multiple COVID-19 vaccines being developed, it is also partly leaning on inspections carried out by some other international regulators.

“Inspection outcomes for Covid-19 vaccines conducted by the MHRA will be considered by EMA,” said the regulator. Any such approved sites would also need an EMA sign off before they can export to the EU, the regulator told Reuters.

MHRA declined to comment on specifics, but Raine said it was collaborating “with international partners in response to the global pandemic and on matters of mutual interest.”

The UK has expressed an interest in purchasing vaccines from SII, according to the second source, along with a government official in New Delhi. The two sources said the volumes or timelines for any such purchases were unclear.

A UK government spokeswoman said: “Any discussions that have taken place between the UK Government and India on vaccines are not related to securing extra vaccine supply to the UK.”

The UK has so far ordered 100 million doses of AstraZeneca’s vaccine.

“Most countries have approached us and India’s government,” SII told Reuters, but it did not comment on any UK outreach. “We are trying our best to meet demand, and supply the vaccine to as many countries as possible, keeping India as the priority.”

SII’s chief executive, Adar Poonawalla, told Reuters in late January, his family-owned firm was keen to support AstraZeneca’s supply needs but its primary focus was on India and other poorer nations in Asia and Africa. He said at the time SII had no plans to divert supplies to Europe.

(Neha Arora and Krishna N.Das reported from New Delhi and Euan Rocha reported from Mumbai; Additional reporting by Paul Sandle, Kate Kelland and Alistair Smout in London, Francesco Guarascio in Brussels and Ludwig Burger in Frankfurt; Editing by Carmel Crimmins)

U.S. CDC recommends schools reopen with universal masking and other rigid health protocols

By Gabriella Borter and Jarrett Renshaw

(Reuters) – The U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention on Friday issued new guidance for U.S. schools to reopen, recommending universal mask-wearing and physical distancing as key mitigation strategies to getting children back in the classroom.

The guidelines, which also emphasize the need for facility-cleaning, personal hygiene and contact tracing, are intended to give school districts a road map to bring the nation’s 55 million public school students back to classrooms without sparking COVID-19 outbreaks.

“We believe with the strategies we have put forward that there will be limited to no transmission in schools if followed,” CDC Director Rochelle Walensky told reporters, noting that the CDC was not mandating that schools reopen.

The agency also said school reopenings should not be conditional on teachers’ access to COVID-19 vaccines, but strongly recommended U.S. states prioritize teachers and school staff for vaccination.

School reopenings have been the focus of labor disputes between teachers unions and their districts in major U.S. cities. In Chicago this week, after months of negotiations that included threats of a lock-out and strike, the teachers union and district reached agreement on a safety plan.

President Joe Biden promised to reopen most schools within 100 days of taking office on Jan. 20. On Sunday, he said the problems arising from the continued closure of schools, including children’s mental health struggles and the exodus of parents from the workforce, have amounted to a national emergency.

Just 44% of U.S. school districts were offering fully in-person learning as of December and 31% were operating all remotely, according to the Center for Reinventing Public Education, which surveyed 477 of the nation’s nearly 13,000 school districts. Other districts have employed a hybrid learning model where students attend some school days in-person and some virtually.

The CDC’s phased mitigation strategy is intended to be flexible depending on the level of COVID-19 transmission in a school’s community.

In areas where the COVID-19 positive test rate is below 5% and there are fewer than nine new cases per 100,000 in the last seven days, schools can fully reopen and safely relax social distancing measures as long as masks are worn, Walensky said. In areas of high transmission, the agency is urging 6 feet of separation in classrooms and weekly testing of students, teachers and staff.

Recent studies have shown that in-person learning has not been associated with increased community transmission, especially in elementary schools, the CDC guidance noted.

(Reporting by Gabriella Borter in Boca Raton, Florida, Jarrett Renshaw in Philadelphia and Trevor Hunnicutt in Washington; Editing by Colleen Jenkins, David Gregorio and Matthew Lewis)

WHO says all hypotheses still open in probe into virus origins

By Reuters Staff

GENEVA (Reuters) – – All hypotheses are still open in the World Health Organization’s search for the origins of COVID-19, WHO Director-General Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus told a briefing on Friday.

A WHO-led mission in China said this week that it was not looking further into the question of whether the virus escaped from a lab, which it considered highly unlikely. The United States has said it will review the mission’s findings.

“Some questions have been raised as to whether some hypotheses have been discarded. Having spoken with some members of the team, I wish to confirm that all hypotheses remain open and require further analysis and study,” Tedros said.

“Some of that work may lie outside the remit and scope of this mission. We have always said that this mission would not find all the answers, but it has added important information that takes us closer to understanding the origins of the COVID-19 virus,” he said.

The mission has said its main hypotheses are that the virus originated in a bat, although there are several possible scenarios for how it passed to humans, possibly first by infecting another species of animal.

The former administration of U.S. President Donald Trump said it believed the virus may have escaped from a lab in the Chinese city of Wuhan. China has strongly denied this, and says the Wuhan Institute of Virology was not studying related viruses.

Overflowing Czech hospitals seek patient transfers as ‘UK variant’ rages

By Robert Muller

NACHOD, Czech Republic (Reuters) – Jan Mach had coped with his eastern Czech district hospital’s COVID-19 wards filling up – until 22 new arrivals on Monday alone were too much and he had to seek outside help.

On Wednesday, ambulances took 15 patients to hospitals as much as 230 km (140 miles) away, as closer ones were also packed.

“We have been close to our ceiling in the past 14 days, we have touched it several times,” director Mach said, adding the 339-bed hospital had 120 COVID-19 patients. “On Monday alone we took in 22 patients and that was beyond our means.”

Nachod and Trutnov, neighboring districts on the Polish border 150 km east of Prague, are among several regions that have seen incessant spread of the disease, despite a national lockdown.

A new, more infectious variant of the virus first detected in Britain is the likely reason – data from January showed between 45% and 60% of new patients were infected with the UK variant.

On Friday, the region of 550,000 reported just four free beds in COVID-19 wards and eight in high dependency and intensive care units (ICUs) treating coronavirus patients.

“We are taking in patients in a more serious condition and younger patients, I mean born 1970 and later, we had not seen that in the autumn,” Mach said.

Patients who would normally be treated in high-dependency units or ICU have had to be given therapies such as high-flow oxygen on normal wards due to the shortage of beds.

Mach spoke minutes after overseeing another ICU patient being transferred to another hospital. Staff dressed in full-body protective gear pushed the trolley past piles of equipment boxes, one of them with the hand-written label “body bags.”

The Czech Republic has ranked among the European countries worst-hit by the pandemic. Only Portugal has reported more new cases per capita in the past two weeks, according to the European Centre for Disease Prevention and Control (ECDC).

As of Friday morning, the country of 10.7 million had reported 17,902 COVID-19 related deaths.

Still, the parliament voted on Thursday not to extend a national state of emergency, which will lift some of current lockdown measures including the closure of shops, a loosely policed ban on gatherings and a night-time curfew.

Petr Stepanek, chief surgeon in the resuscitation unit at Nachod hospital, said the situation was “very tense”.

“It is about the ‘British’ variant,” Stepanek said. “If a majority of the population has already had it, thank God. If not, then the situation can become very dramatic.”

(Reporting by Robert Muller; Writing by Jan Lopatka; Editing by Alex Richardson)

COVID maths: All the virus in the world would fit in a coke can

LONDON (Reuters) – All the COVID-causing virus circulating in the world right now could easily fit inside a single cola can, according to a calculation by a British mathematician whose sum exposes just how much devastation is caused by minuscule viral particles.

Using global rates of new infections with the pandemic disease, coupled with estimations of viral load, Bath University maths expert Kit Yates worked out there are around two quintillion – or two billion billion – SARS-CoV-2 virus particles in the world at any one time.

Detailing the steps in his calculations, Yates said he used the diameter of SARS-CoV-2 – at an average of about 100 nanometers, or 100 billionths of a meter – and then figured out the volume of the spherical virus.

Even accounting for the coronavirus’ projecting spike proteins and the fact that the spherical particles will leave gaps when stacked together, the total is still less than in a single 330 milliliter (ml) cola can, he said.

“It’s astonishing to think that all the trouble, the disruption, the hardship and the loss of life that has resulted over the last year could constitute just a few mouthfuls,” Yates said in a statement.

More than 2.34 million people have died in the COVID-19 pandemic so far, and there have been almost 107 million confirmed cases worldwide.

(Reporting by Kate Kelland, editing by Alexandra Hudson)

White House says no specific decisions on domestic air travel under review

By David Shepardson

WASHINGTON (Reuters) – The White House on Thursday rejected media reports it is considering any new domestic air travel restrictions.

“To be clear, there have been no decisions made around additional public health measures for domestic travel safety. The administration is continuing to discuss recommendations across the travel space, but no specific decisions are under consideration,” a White House spokesman told Reuters.

Reports that the administration was considering imposing restrictions on travel to Florida brought denunciations from many Republican lawmakers.

The chief executives of major U.S. airlines are scheduled to meet virtually on Friday with the White House’s COVID-19 response coordinator to discuss travel-related issues, Reuters reported Wednesday.

The meeting with coronavirus response coordinator Jeff Zients and other administration officials involved in COVID-19 issues comes as airlines, aviation unions and other industry groups have strongly objected to the possibility of requiring COVID-19 testing before boarding domestic flights.

Southwest Airlines Co Chief Executive Gary Kelly and the leaders of the airline’s unions urged President Joe Biden in a letter not to mandate COVID-19 testing, saying it would put “jobs at risk.”

“Such a mandate would be counterproductive, costly, and have serious unintended consequences,” said the letter, which was dated Tuesday and released on Wednesday.

The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) last month said the Biden administration was “actively looking” at expanding mandatory COVID-19 testing to U.S. domestic flights. The CDC on Jan. 26 began requiring negative COVID-19 tests or evidence of recovery from the disease from nearly all U.S.-bound international passengers age 2 and older.

One idea that has been under review within the Biden administration is for the CDC to issue recommendations advising against travel to areas of the United States with high COVID-19 caseloads, but no decisions have been made and recommendations would not be binding, officials said.

CDC officials have repeatedly urged Americans not to travel unless necessary.

(Reporting by David Shepardson; Editing by Lisa Shumaker)

U.S. labor market struggling, but light at the end of tunnel

By Lucia Mutikani

WASHINGTON (Reuters) – The number of Americans filing new applications for unemployment benefits fell slightly last week as the labor market continued to tread water, but a drop in new COVID-19 cases has raised cautious optimism that momentum could pick up by the spring.

The weekly unemployment claims report from the Labor Department on Thursday, the most timely data on the economy’s health, also highlighted labor market scarring, with over 20 million people collecting unemployment checks in late January.

“Claims remain stuck at painfully high levels,” said Robert Frick, corporate economist at Navy Federal Credit Union in Vienna, Virginia. “But we are seeing hopeful signs that claims will begin meaningful declines in the next month or two.”

Initial claims for state unemployment benefits slipped 19,000 to a seasonally adjusted 793,000 for the week ended Feb. 6. Data for the prior week was revised to show 33,000 more claims received than previously reported. Economists polled by Reuters had forecast 757,000 applications for the latest week.

Unadjusted claims decreased 36,534 to 813,145 last week. There were notable jumps in filings in California and Ohio. Including a government-funded program for the self-employed, gig workers and others who do not qualify for the regular state programs, 1.148 million people filed claims last week.

Claims are stuck in the upper end of their 711,000-842,000 band between October and November. They remain above their 665,000 peak during the 2007-2009 Great Recession, though they are below the record 6.867 million reported last March when the pandemic hit the United States.

The labor market recovery has stalled in recent months as the country battled a resurgence in coronavirus infections, which ravaged restaurants and other consumer-facing businesses. The government reported last Friday that the economy created only 49,000 jobs in January after losing 227,000 in December.

Labor market woes strengthen the case for President Joe Biden’s proposed $1.9 trillion recovery package, which is under consideration in the U.S. Congress. The government provided nearly $900 billion in additional pandemic relief in late December. Republican lawmakers are opposing the planned massive fiscal stimulus due to concerns about the swelling national debt.

Stocks on Wall Street were trading higher. The dollar was steady against a basket of currencies. U.S. Treasury prices were mostly lower.

LONG BOUTS OF UNEMPLOYMENT

But there are glimmers of hope on the horizon. Reported new coronavirus cases in the United States dropped 25% last week, the biggest fall since the pandemic hit the nation. Infections have now fallen for four consecutive weeks, according to a Reuters analysis of state and county reports.

Should the trend continue and the distribution of vaccines broaden out, that, together with additional stimulus, could allow more businesses to reopen. There are signs that businesses are testing the waters. Temporary help jobs, a segment normally considered a harbinger of future hiring, jumped in January.

“Temporary and contract jobs are running slightly ahead of where they were the same time a year ago,” said Richard Wahlquist, chief executive officer at the American Staffing Association.

For now, the slack in the labor market remains immense. The claims report showed that people receiving benefits after an initial week of aid fell 145,000 to 4.545 million in the week ended Jan. 30. But the decline in the so-called continuing claims was mostly due to people exhausting their eligibility for benefits, limited to 26 weeks in most states.

At least 4.778 million people were on extended benefits during the week ended Jan. 23, up 1.2 million from the prior period. These benefits, which are funded by the government, will expire in mid-March if Congress does not pass the Biden administration’s relief package.

Another 1.653 million were on a state program for those who have exhausted their initial six months of aid. That meant 6.4 million people have been unemployed for more than six months.

“This is by the far the highest we have seen at any point during this crisis,” said AnnElizabeth Konkel, an economist at Indeed Hiring Lab. “Long-term joblessness is happening right now and is a very real challenge for the recovery.”

About 20.435 million people were receiving benefits under all programs during that period, an increase of 2.6 million from mid-January. The surge partly reflected the extension of government-funded benefits in late December, and underscored the widespread nature of unemployment.

“The unemployed are having a difficult time reentering the labor force, and this highlights the need for additional federal aid,” said Scott Anderson, chief economist at Bank of the West in San Francisco.

The economy has recovered 12.3 million of the 22.2 million jobs lost during the pandemic. The Congressional Budget Office has estimated employment would not return to its pre-pandemic level before 2024.

(Reporting by Lucia Mutikani; Editing by Paul Simao)

Not perfect, but saves lives, AstraZeneca says as Africa backs COVID-19 shot

By Pushkala Aripaka and Ludwig Burger

(Reuters) – AstraZeneca’s COVID-19 vaccine is not perfect, but will have a big impact on the pandemic, its chief executive predicted on Thursday, as the drugmaker pledged to double output by April and the African Union gave its backing for the shot.

The two-dose inoculation, developed with Oxford University, has been hailed as a “vaccine for the world” because it is cheaper and easier to distribute than some rivals.

But its rapid approval in Europe and elsewhere has been clouded by doubts over its most effective dosage and interval between doses.

Data at the weekend also showed it was less effective against a fast-spreading variant of the virus in South Africa, prompting the country to pause rollout of the shot, and the company has also been embroiled in a row with the European Union over supply delays.

“Is it perfect? No, it’s not perfect, but it’s great. Who else is making 100 million doses in February?” CEO Pascal Soriot said on a conference call about the vaccine.

“We’re going to save thousands of lives and that’s why we come to work everyday.”

The company said it aimed to produce more than 200 million doses per month by April, double this month’s level as the world tries to tame a pandemic that has killed 2.35 million.

Head of operations Pam Cheng said on the call that the group was working to further expand global capacity and productivity.

AstraZeneca has set a target to produce 3 billion doses this year, with India’s Serum Institute making much of that aimed at poorer nations.

On Wednesday, the company enlisted Germany’s IDT Biologika as a contract manufacturer, but the bulk of IDT’s contribution will only come onstream late next year.

AstraZeneca said it expected much-anticipated data from the U.S. trial of the vaccine before the end of March, and that it was confident the shot offered relatively good protection against severe disease and death for the South African variant. Its disappointing results were against milder cases.

However, after rising to become Britain’s most valuable company last summer, the company has now slipped to sixth, in a move some analysts attribute to doubts over the vaccine.

“In a year or two we will look back and everybody will realize we made a big impact,” Soriot said.

POSTER CHILD

AstraZeneca’s shares were up 0.95% in afternoon trade, paring some earlier gains, after the company forecast a pick up in earnings growth this year on strong demand for its cancer and other new therapies.

It has pledged not to make any money from its COVID-19 vaccine during the pandemic.

It has been a tumultuous week for the drugmaker after South Africa put on hold giving the shot to its citizens, choosing one developed by its U.S. rival Johnson & Johnson instead.

That came after the trial data raised concerns about the AstraZeneca vaccine’s effectiveness on mild symptoms from the more infectious 501Y.V2 variant of the virus dominant in South Africa, which has spread to 41 nations around the world.

Despite that blow, the World Health Organization endorsed the British vaccine on Wednesday and the African Union said it would target its use in countries that have not reported cases of the variant.

Kenya and Morocco are also planning to administer it.

AstraZeneca said it expected 2021 revenues to rise by a low teens percentage and core earnings of $4.75 to $5.00 per share, as it beat expectations for fourth-quarter sales.

The earnings guidance equates to 18-24% growth, after 15% in 2020, but was a little lower than the $5.10 per share analysts were expecting, as the company flagged more spending this year.

The COVID-19 vaccine is not included in the guidance and the company said its sales would be reported separately from the first quarter of 2021.

While public interest is focused on the vaccine, AstraZeneca’s core business of diabetes, heart, kidney, and cancer medicines has been steadily growing, helping the company to turn around years of decline.

“The company is arguably the poster child for big pharma turnarounds,” said Third Bridge senior analyst Sebastian Skeet.

(Reporting by Pushkala Aripaka and Ludwige Burger. Editing by Josephine Mason and Mark Potter)