Tag Archives: Pandemic

Some lingering COVID-19 issues seen in children; patients’ antibodies attack multiple virus targets

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.

Long lasting COVID-19 effects seen in children

“Long COVID” – a term that refers to effects of the virus that linger for weeks or months – may be a problem for children, too, a small study suggests. Doctors at a large Italian hospital tracked 129 children and teens with COVID-19 who were otherwise generally healthy. At an average of about five months after their diagnosis, only about 42% had completely recovered. Roughly one in three youngsters still had one or two symptoms and more than one in five had three or more, according to a report posted on Tuesday on medRxiv ahead of peer review. The most common persistent problems were insomnia (reported by 18.6%), respiratory symptoms including pain and chest tightness (14.7%), nasal congestion (12.4%), fatigue (10.8%), muscle pain (10.1%), joint pain (6.9%), and concentration difficulties (10.1%). Although these issues were more common in children who had been obviously sick, they also developed in infected youths with few or no symptoms initially. There is increasing evidence that restrictive measures aimed at curbing the pandemic are significantly impacting children’s mental health, the researchers acknowledge. Still, their findings suggest, the potential long-term effects COVID-19 can have on children should be considered when developing measures to reduce the impact of the pandemic on their overall health.

Patients’ antibodies target virus from many angles

Most antibody treatments and vaccines targeting the coronavirus focus on stimulating an immune response against the spike protein it uses to break into cells. Targeting other sites on the virus as well may be a better approach, researchers say. Their study of COVID-19 survivors whose immune systems had generated strong responses to the virus showed that more than half of those antibodies targeted components of the virus other than the spike protein. The most common non-spike targets of the antibodies were the closed capsule in which the virus stores its genetic instructions and specific segments of those instructions, such as stretches of its RNA code. This suggests that non-spike related antibodies may play a significant role in clearing the virus, the research team said in a paper posted on Thursday on bioRxiv ahead of peer review. In terms of natural immunity, it also suggests that when faced with new spike protein variants, the immune system will have other sites on the virus that it can still remember and attack. A spokesperson for the researchers said their company, Immunome Inc, is developing a cocktail of antibodies that target multiple sites on the virus.

COVID-19 may affect kidney filtering

COVID-19 impairs the kidneys’ ability to filter waste and toxic substances in some patients, a new report suggests. Kidney filters do not usually allow much protein into the urine. Researchers who studied 103 COVID-19 patients found that about 24% of them had high levels of the protein albumin in their urine, and 21% had high levels of the protein cystatin c in their urine. About 25% of the patients had a noninfectious piece of the coronavirus in their urine, but none of the samples contained infectious virus. That suggests the virus particles researchers did see were “a direct result of a filtration abnormality rather than a viral infection of the kidney,” according to a report posted on Sunday on medRxiv ahead of peer review. None of the patients had signs of kidney dysfunction, other than the filtration issues. “At this stage, we do not know whether or not these abnormalities are a sign of long-term consequences,” said coauthor Choukri Ben Mamoun of the Yale School of Medicine. “It is for this reason that we report these findings and emphasize the need for long-term examination of the consequences of this infection.”

(Reporting by Nancy Lapid; Editing by Bill Berkrot)

UK detects South African coronavirus variant in people with no travel links

By Reuters Staff

LONDON (Reuters) – Eleven people in different regions have tested positive for the South African coronavirus variant without having any links to people who have travelled recently, prompting mass testing in the areas to contain the outbreak.

The government said on Monday the cases were now self-isolating and robust contact tracing had taken place to trace their contacts and ask them to self-isolate.

Residents in eight postcodes – three in London; two in the south east and one in the West Midlands, east of England, and the North West – would now be tested for the new coronavirus whether they are showing any symptoms or not under what is known as “surge testing” it said.

“Every person over 16 living in these locations is strongly encouraged to take a COVID test this week, whether they are showing symptoms or not,” the government said in a statement.

The government said in January it had detected cases of both the South African and Brazilian variants, but all were linked to travel.

In total, Public Health England said it had identified 105 cases of the South African variant since Dec 22.

All viruses mutate frequently, and scientists have identified several variants of the novel coronavirus found to be more transmissible than the original strain.

The emergence of more infectious variants has raised questions over whether vaccines will prove as effective in containing them.

Scientists have said the South African variant appears to be more transmissible, but there is no evidence it causes more severe disease. But several laboratory studies have found that it reduces vaccine and antibody therapy efficacy.

Clinical trial data on two COVID-19 vaccines – from Novavax and Johnson & Johnson – released on Saturday showed they had less ability to protect against the illness caused by the South African variant.

But the Surrey Local Resilience Forum said there was no evidence the regulated vaccine would not protect against it. The Oxford-AstraZeneca and Pfizer-BioNTech vaccines are being rolled out across Britain.

As pandemic worsens, Portugal reports nearly half of all its COVID-19 deaths in January

By Catarina Demony and Victoria Waldersee

LISBON (Reuters) – Portugal reported close to half of all its COVID-19 deaths in January, highlighting the severe worsening of the pandemic in a country whose plight has caused several European nations to offer help.

Hospitals across the nation of just over 10 million appear on the verge of collapse, with ambulances queuing sometimes for hours for lack of beds and some health units struggling to find enough refrigerated space to preserve the bodies of the deceased.

Austria is willing to take in intensive-care patients and is waiting for Portuguese authorities to propose how many patients they want to transfer, the Austrian embassy in Lisbon said.

Germany will send medical staff and equipment.

Hard-hit neighbor Spain has offered help too, but Portugal is yet to accept, a Spanish foreign ministry source told Reuters, while Foreign Minister Arancha Gonzalez Laya told LaSexta TV both countries were in “direct contact every day, at all levels”.

In January, 5,576 people died from COVID-19, representing 44.7% of all 12,482 fatalities since the start of the pandemic in Portugal, health authority DGS said.

Portuguese officials have blamed the huge increase in the infection and death rates on the more contagious variant of the disease first detected in Britain, while acknowledging that a relaxation of restrictions on social movement over the Christmas holidays played a role.

The association representing funeral homes warned that public hospitals were running out of refrigerated space to preserve the bodies of COVID-19 victims, and some, including Portugal’s largest hospital Santa Maria, have installed extra cold containers to ease pressure on their morgues.

Over 711,000 infections have been reported since March 2020, with 43% of those infections in January, according to DGS, whose tally increased by 275 deaths and 5,805 cases on Monday.

Portugal has the world’s highest seven-day rolling average of new daily cases per million inhabitants, according to data tracker ourworldindata.org.

With 865 coronavirus patients in intensive care and 6,869 in hospital wards, hospitals are running out of beds and there is a shortage of doctors and nurses.

Portugal has 850 ICU beds allocated to COVID-19 cases in its mainland public health system and another 420 for those with other ailments, according to the latest data.

For most, vaccination against the virus is the light at the end of the tunnel. But only roughly 70,000 people have been fully vaccinated with the two required doses so far. Those over 80 start getting their shots on Monday.

(Reporting by Sergio Goncalves, Catarina Demony and Victoria Waldersee; Additional reporting by Belen Carreno and Emma Pinedo Gonzalez in Madrid and Seythal, Thomas Seythal in Berlin; Editing by Ingrid Melander, Mark Heinrich and Bernadette Baum)

WHO team in China’s Wuhan visits provincial CDC

WUHAN, China (Reuters) – A World Health Organization-led team investigating the origins of the COVID-19 pandemic on Monday visited the Center for Disease Control and Prevention in China’s central region of Hubei, where the outbreak emerged in late 2019.

The group of independent experts spent about 4-1/2 hours on its longest site visit since completing two weeks of quarantine on Thursday, and did not speak to waiting journalists.

The WHO, which has sought to manage expectations for the mission, has said its members would be limited to visits organized by their Chinese hosts and have no contact with community members, because of health curbs.

The group has so far also visited hospitals where early cases were detected, markets, and an exhibition on the battle with the outbreak in the provincial capital of Wuhan.

No full itinerary for the group’s field work has been announced, and journalists covering the tightly controlled visit have been kept at a distance from team members.

Yanzhong Huang, senior fellow with the Council of Foreign Relations in Washington, said two weeks in the field was not much time for the experts.

“I don’t think they have the time to get any conclusive results. It is more like communication and information exchange,” Huang told Reuters by phone from Washington.

“It depends how diligent they are in digging new information but also about how cooperative and accommodating the Chinese side will be.”

Beijing has sought to cast doubt on the notion that the coronavirus originated in China, pointing to imported frozen food as a conduit.

That hypothesis figured again on Sunday in the Global Times tabloid run by the ruling Communist Party’s People’s Daily.

On Sunday, the experts visited the Huanan seafood market linked to initial infections, and the Baishazhou wholesale food market, where a loudspeaker repeatedly announced that the sale of imported cold chain products was banned at the market.

(Reporting by Martin Quin Pollard and Thomas Peter in Wuhan; Additional reporting by David Stanway in Shanghai; Writing by Tony Munroe; Editing by Gerry Doyle and Clarence Fernandez)

At the urging of nursing homes, a law is amended and COVID court claims are slowed

By Tom Hals

(Reuters) – Garnice Robertson wants accountability for her mother’s death from COVID-19 caught while she was living at a Kansas nursing home that allegedly failed to prevent an outbreak of the disease. An unexpected legal hurdle stands in her way.

The nursing home argues it has complete legal immunity for lawsuits like Robertson’s stemming from COVID-19. It cites recent changes to a 2005 law by the former Trump administration that had been sought by the senior care industry.

The law known as the PREP Act was originally designed to encourage production of emergency vaccines during an epidemic by granting legal immunity to drug developers.

Riverbend Post-Acute Rehabilitation of Kansas City, Kansas, where Robertson’s mother allegedly became infected, is one of at least 36 nursing homes and senior living facilities that have cited the law as a defense.

Facilities across 14 states, where more than 650 residents died, have argued they should be immune from wrongful death cases – an early sign of how the PREP Act could be used by a range of businesses to fend off lawsuits resulting from the pandemic.

No judge has yet adopted the nursing homes’ view of the law, but those arguments, and disputes over which court should hear the case – federal or state – have led to months of delays, preventing Robertson’s lawyers from getting records and interviewing witnesses critical to her case, the lawyers said.

Robertson, whose lawsuit was moved to federal court in Topeka, Kansas by Riverbend, said she was upset by the nursing home’s use of the law.

“If I’m feeling the way I feel, how do you think all these other people feel?” she said. “It’s just not right.”

Riverbend, which is affiliated with the publicly traded Ensign Group Inc, and its lawyers did not respond to a request for comment.

IMMUNITY EXTENDED TO FIGHT COVID

The Public Readiness and Emergency Preparedness (PREP) Act was originally meant to jumpstart U.S. defenses against a possible avian flu epidemic or bioterrorist attack.

It authorizes the Secretary of the Department of Health and Human Services (HHS), during a public health emergency, to shield from liability makers of “countermeasures” such as diagnostic tests, protective gear and vaccines like those developed by Pfizer Inc, Germany’s BioNTech and Moderna Inc.

The PREP Act does not apply in instances of serious injury or death caused by “willful misconduct”.

When the PREP Act shield applies, the injured person instead can seek compensation from a government fund, although most claims are denied.

Former HHS Secretary Alex Azar invoked the PREP Act in March in response to the coronavirus pandemic, and since then the agency has issued amendments and guidance as recently as Jan. 12 to broaden the reach of the law.

The agency guidance included criticism of rulings that went against defendants, including Riverbend.

“They have made the arguments for the defendants better than the existing defense lawyers,” said Jonathan Steele, Robertson’s lawyer, of the HHS guidance. “It’s unprecedented.”

Some changes were sought by the type of facility operators now defending against lawsuits.

In August, in response to a query from a lawyer at a lobbying firm, then-HHS general counsel Robert Charrow wrote that senior living facilities were covered by the PREP Act if they were using approved products to fight the pandemic.

HHS also said in recent months the PREP Act applied in situations where, while trying to comply with health regulations, an organization failed to take an action such as testing – which is an allegation in most of the nursing home lawsuits.

LeadingAge, a group that represents non-profit nursing homes and other service providers, sought the clarification in March, when masks and other protective gear were in short supply.

LeadingAge, one of several elder care groups that called for greater protection, declined to comment. The group does not represent Ensign.

HHS has said it wants to provide legal certainty to organizations that they will be immune from good-faith mistakes when trying to comply with health guidelines and ensure a unified national response against the spread of COVID-19.

HHS did not respond to a request for comment regarding the agency’s plans under a Biden administration.

Acting HHS Secretary Norris Cochran said in a letter to state governors on Friday that they could expect continued use of PREP Act declarations to support the fight against the pandemic.

More than 100,000 residents of U.S. nursing homes and senior living facilities have died from COVID-19. Some attorneys said that without some form of immunity, litigation over a novel airborne illness that could be spread by asymptomatic carriers could swamp the industry.

BUYING TIME?

So far, seven federal judges have issued preliminary rulings, and all of them sided with the plaintiffs and ordered the cases returned to state court, Reuters found.

Six of the rulings were issued before HHS amended the PREP Act in December to declare that for consistent interpretation of the law the cases should be heard in federal court, which was reshaped by former President Donald Trump and is seen as more favorable to companies.

Only a few of the rulings touched on the question of PREP Act immunity, which nursing homes can still use as a defense in state court.

Just raising the PREP Act defense can complicate procedures in a way that could impact future cases, said Mike Duff, a professor at the University of Wyoming College of Law.

“Time is money and complexity is time and the more complexity in a case means the less likely the wrongful death claimants will find lawyers to represent them,” he said.

Nursing homes have used that HHS guidance to try to move cases from state court, adding delays.

For example, the family of Vincent Martin sued Hollywood Premier Healthcare Center of Los Angeles in state court a month after Martin died of COVID-19 in April.

The nursing home, where at least 11 residents died, cited the PREP Act to have the lawsuit moved to federal court.

The federal judge, however, sided with the family and sent it back to state court.

In January, armed with fresh guidance from HHS, Hollywood had the case moved back to federal court a second time, where it is pending.

U.S. District Court Judge Dale Fischer said Hollywood’s request to stay proceedings while it appealed the order sending the case back to state court raised “a serious possibility of such removals being used in a cynical, strategic way to stall cases and to extract concessions … from opposing plaintiffs.”

Hollywood and other facilities are not unreasonably delaying discovery, but are applying the law and HHS guidance which makes clear the cases belong in federal court, said Kim Cruz, a lawyer for Hollywood, in an email.

‘UNFAIR’ TACTICS

Robertson, whose case has been similarly removed to federal court, called Riverbend’s legal tactics unfair and she is waiting to gets answers about her mother’s care.

Her mother, Georgia Clardy, had been a resident since 2017 at Riverbend.

She was taken to a hospital in March for a broken femur and, during her absence, Robertson said coronavirus entered and spread within the Riverbend facility.

The lawsuit alleges Riverbend’s negligence included a lack of adequate staff, allowing infected employees to enter the facility and a failure to adopt social distancing.

Robertson said she would have brought her mother home from the hospital rather than returning her to Riverbend if the facility had told her there was an outbreak.

“Once I found out she was diagnosed with COVID nobody wanted to talk about it,” said Robertson. “That was very disturbing for me.”

The judge in Robertson’s case has set the next hearing for February.

(Reporting by Tom Hals in Wilmington, Delaware; Editing by Mike Collett-White and Noeleen Walder)

Czech field hospital shut due to staff shortages even as pandemic rages

PRAGUE (Reuters) – An unused military field hospital in Prague will be packed up due to staff shortages even as high numbers of COVID-19 patients stretch Czech health-care facilities to the limits, officials said on Friday.

The coronavirus pandemic pushed hospitals in the Czech Republic to the brink of capacity in November and again earlier this month. The central European nation of 10.7 million people is suffering one of the world’s highest infection rates, with more than 16,000 COVID-related deaths recorded.

The army erected the field hospital on the outskirts of the capital Prague in October on the site of an exhibition ground and put the facility on standby, equipped to care for as many as 500 COVID-19 patients.

But because of a death of available staff, “we are unable to roll out the hospital in a way that makes sense,” Deputy Health Minister Vladimir Cerny told a news conference. “If we (do) have staff, it seems to be more purposeful to reinforce standard hospitals than to activate the field hospital.”

There were 5,856 COVID-19 patients in Czech hospitals as of Thursday, including 970 in intensive care – about 20% below peaks in mid-January.

But six of the country’s 14 regions reported zero or single-digit numbers of available intensive care beds. Officials have used ambulances and helicopters to move patients to less crowded hospitals while suspending non-urgent care for weeks.

With around 8,000 new infections reported every day of late, the government fears any new spike in cases from an expected spread of a more infectious British variant of the virus could overload hospital capacity.

Hospitals have also reported declining but still high numbers of infected staff – 4,047 nationwide as of Friday – and have shut down wards and repurposed others specially for COVID patients, running some with the help of soldiers and volunteers.

(Reporting by Jan Lopatka; Editing by Michael Kahn and Mark Heinrich)

U.S. consumer spending falls again; inflation gradually rising

By Lucia Mutikani

WASHINGTON (Reuters) – U.S. consumer spending fell for a second straight month in December amid renewed business restrictions to slow the spread of COVID-19 and a temporary expiration of government-funded benefits for millions of unemployed Americans.

The report from the Commerce Department on Friday also showed inflation steadily picking up last month. Stirring price pressures were also corroborated by other data showing a solid increase in labor costs in the fourth quarter. Though inflation is expected to breach the Federal Reserve’s 2% target this year, the U.S. central bank is seen maintaining its ultra-easy policy stance for a while as the economy battles the COVID-19 pandemic.

Consumer spending, which accounts for more than two-thirds of U.S. economic activity, slipped 0.2% last month as outlays at restaurants declined. Spending at hospitals also fell, likely as consumers stayed away in fear of contracting the coronavirus.

Households also cut back spending on recreation. Consumer spending tumbled 0.7% in November. Economists polled by Reuters had forecast consumer spending falling 0.4% in December.

When adjusted for inflation, consumer spending decreased 0.6% in December after dropping 0.7% in November. That likely sets a lower base for consumer spending in the first quarter.

The data was included in Thursday’s advance gross domestic product report for the fourth quarter, which showed the economy growing at a 4% annualized rate after a record 33.4% pace in the third quarter. Consumer spending rose at a 2.5% rate last quarter following a spectacular 41.0% growth pace in the July-September period.

Economic growth is expected to decelerate to below a 2% rate in the first quarter as it works through the disruptions from a virus surge in winter. The government provided nearly $900 billion in additional relief in late December. This together with an anticipated pick-up in the distribution of vaccines is likely to spur growth by summer.

President Joe Biden has also unveiled a recovery plan worth $1.9 trillion, though the package is likely to be pared down amid worries about the nation’s swelling debt.

U.S. stocks opened lower after Johnson & Johnson said its single-dose vaccine was 72% effective in preventing COVID-19 in the United States, but a lower rate of 66% was observed globally. The dollar was steady against a basket of currencies. U.S. Treasury prices were lower.

INCOME REBOUNDS

The late December stimulus package included direct cash payments to some households and renewed a $300 unemployment supplement until March 14. Government-funded programs for the self-employed, gig workers and others who do not qualify for the state unemployment programs as well as those who have exhausted their benefits were also extended.

Last month, personal income rebounded 0.6%, boosted the unemployment benefits payouts as well as a rise in wages. Income tumbled 1.3% in November. Americans increased savings last month. The saving rate rose to 13.7% from 12.9% in November.

Despite weak consumer spending inflation edged higher. The personal consumption expenditures (PCE) price index excluding the volatile food and energy component increased 0.3% after being unchanged in November. In the 12 months through December, the so-called core PCE price index increased 1.5% after advancing 1.4% in November.

The core PCE index is the preferred inflation measure for the Fed’s 2% target, a flexible average.

The gradually firming inflation environment was reinforced by separate report from the Labor Department on Friday showing its Employment Cost Index, the broadest measure of labor costs, rose 0.7% last quarter after advancing 0.5% in the third quarter. That lifted the year-on-year rate of increase to 2.5% from 2.4% in the third quarter.

The ECI is widely viewed by policymakers and economists as one of the better measures of labor market slack and a predictor of core inflation as it adjusts for composition and job quality changes. Economists had forecast the ECI climbing 0.5% in the fourth quarter.

Wages and salaries increased 0.9% after gaining 0.4% in the third quarter. They were up 2.6% year-on-year. The private sector accounted for the surge in wages and salaries. Benefits rose 0.6%, matching the third quarter’s increase.

Inflation is seen accelerating as weak readings last March and April drop from the calculation. It is also expected to be boosted by a strengthening in economic growth, driven by fiscal stimulus and the inoculation of more Americans against COVID-19.

Bottlenecks in the supply chain are expected to contribute to higher inflation. Recent manufacturing surveys have shown a surge in price measures for both raw materials and finished products.

(Reporting by Lucia Mutikani; Editing by Hugh Lawson and Andrea Ricci)

WHO team in Wuhan visits hospital that treated early COVID cases

By Gabriel Crossley

WUHAN, China (Reuters) – A World Health Organization-led team of experts investigating the origins of COVID-19 on Friday visited a hospital in the Chinese city of Wuhan that was one of the first to treat patients in the early days of the outbreak.

The hospital visit was the team’s first in the field after two weeks in quarantine, and a WHO spokeswoman said the group’s contacts in Wuhan will be limited to visits organized by their Chinese hosts due to health restrictions.

“The team will go out but they will be bussed to wherever, so they won’t have any contact with the community. They will only have contact with various individuals that are being organized as part of the study,” WHO spokeswoman Margaret Harris told a briefing in Geneva on Friday.

After meeting with Chinese scientists earlier in the day, the team went to the Hubei Provincial Hospital of Integrated Chinese and Western Medicine.

Zhang Jixian, director of the hospital’s department of respiratory and critical care, has been cited by state media as the first to report the novel coronavirus, after treating an elderly couple in late 2019 whose CT scans showed differences from typical pneumonia.

“Extremely important 1st site visit. We are in the hospital that treated some of the first known cases of COVID-19, meeting with the actual clinicians & staff who did this work, having open discussion about the details of their work,” Peter Daszak, a member of the WHO-led team, wrote on Twitter.

The team plans to visit labs, markets and hospitals during its remaining two weeks in Wuhan, where the coronavirus was first identified in late 2019.

While an exact itinerary has not been announced, the WHO has said the team plans to visit the seafood market at the center of the early outbreak as well as the Wuhan Institute of Virology. One hypothesis, rejected by China, is that the outbreak was caused by a leak at the government lab.

The WHO-led probe in Wuhan has been plagued by delays, concern over access and bickering between China and the United States, which accused China of hiding the extent of the initial outbreak and criticized the terms of the visit, under which Chinese experts conducted the first phase of research.

The WHO has sought to manage expectations. “There are no guarantees of answers,” its emergency chief, Mike Ryan, said this month.

The investigating team had been set to arrive in Wuhan earlier in January, and China’s delay of their visit drew rare public criticism from the head of the WHO, which former U.S. President Donald Trump accused of being “China-centric”.

A Chinese foreign ministry spokesman, Zhao Lijian, said on Friday that WHO and Chinese experts were working together to trace the origin of the virus, but stressed that the mission was not a probe.

“It is part of a global research, not an investigation,” Zhao told a regular news conference in Beijing.

China has pushed the idea that the virus existed abroad before it was discovered in Wuhan, with state media citing the presence of the virus on imported frozen food packaging and scientific papers saying it had been circulating in Europe in 2019.

China’s foreign ministry has also hinted that the sudden closure of a U.S. army laboratory at Fort Detrick in Maryland in July 2019 was linked to the pandemic.

“At the early stage in China, it was a burden particularly for Wuhan people when everyone was calling it a Wuhan virus, which was humiliating,” said Yang You, a 30-year-old Wuhan resident. “If it could be traced to the source clearly, in my opinion, it could clear either China’s or Wuhan’s name.”

(Reporting by Gabriel Crossley and Martin Quin Pollard; Additional reporting by Yew Lun Tian in Beijing and Stepahnie Nebehay in Geneva; Writing by Tony Munroe; Editing by Michael Perry, Nick Macfie & Simon Cameron-Moore)

COVID-19 wreaks havoc on U.S. economy; 2020 performance worst in 74 years

By Lucia Mutikani

WASHINGTON (Reuters) – The U.S. economy contracted at its deepest pace since World War Two in 2020 as the COVID-19 pandemic depressed consumer spending and business investment, pushing millions of Americans out of work and into poverty.

Though a recovery is underway, momentum slowed significantly as the year wound down amid a resurgence in coronavirus infections and exhaustion of nearly $3 trillion in relief money from the government. The moderation is likely to persist at least through the first three months of 2021.

The economy’s prospects hinge on the distribution of vaccines to fight the virus. President Joe Biden has unveiled a recovery plan worth $1.9 trillion, but some lawmakers have balked at the price tag soon after the government provided nearly $900 billion in additional stimulus in late December.

“The economy will never move further away from the edge of the cliff of recession unless there is a resurgence in final demand, meaning consumers have to come out in force to make the recovery a permanent one,” said Chris Rupkey, chief economist at MUFG in New York.

Gross domestic product decreased 3.5% in 2020, the biggest drop since 1946, the Commerce Department said on Thursday. That followed 2.2% growth in 2019 and was the first annual decline in GDP since the 2007-09 Great Recession.

Nearly every sector, with the exception of government and the housing market, contracted last year. Consumer spending, which accounts for more than two-thirds of the economy, plunged 3.9%, the worst performance since 1932. The economy tumbled into recession last February.

Delays by the government to offer another rescue package and renewed business disruptions caused by the virus restricted GDP growth to a 4.0% annualized rate in the fourth quarter. The big step-back from a historic 33.4% growth pace in the third quarter left GDP 2.5% below its level at the end of 2019.

The economy is expected to return to its pre-pandemic level in the second quarter of this year.

The Federal Reserve on Wednesday left its benchmark overnight interest rate near zero and pledged to continue pumping money into the economy through bond purchases, noting that “the pace of the recovery in economic activity and employment has moderated in recent months.”

With the virus still raging, economists are expecting growth to slow to around a 1.0% rate in the first quarter, before regaining speed by summer as the additional stimulus kicks in and more Americans get vaccinated.

“We foresee record-breaking consumer spending growth in 2021 with households benefiting from a watered-down $1.2 trillion version of Biden’s rescue plan, vaccine diffusion gradually reaching two thirds of Americans by July and employment accelerating this spring,” said Gregory Daco, chief U.S. economist at Oxford Economics in New York.

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

K-SHAPED RECOVERY

The services sector, especially restaurants, bars and hotels, has borne the brunt of the coronavirus recession, disproportionately impacting lower-wage earners, who tend to be women and minorities. That has led to a so-called K-shaped recovery, where better-paid workers are doing well while lower-paid workers are losing out.

The stars of the recovery have been the housing market and manufacturing as those who are still employed seek larger homes away from city centers, and buy electronics for home offices and schooling. Manufacturing’s share of GDP has increased to 11.9% from 11.6% at the end of 2019.

A survey by professors at the University of Chicago and the University of Notre Dame showed poverty increased by 2.4 percentage points to 11.8% in the second half of 2020, boosting the ranks of the poor by 8.1 million people.

Rising poverty was underscored by persistent labor market weakness. In a separate report on Thursday, the Labor Department said initial claims for state unemployment benefits totaled a seasonally adjusted 847,000 for the week ended Jan. 23. While that was down 67,000 from the prior week, claims remain well above their 665,000 peak during the 2007-09 Great Recession.

Including a government-funded program for the self-employed, gig workers and others who do not qualify for the regular state unemployment programs 1.3 million people filed claims last week.

The economy shed jobs in December for the first time in eight months. Only 12.4 million of the 22.2 million jobs lost in March and April have been recovered. About 18.3 million Americans were receiving unemployment checks in early 2021.

“The labor market is struggling this winter, but better times are ahead,” said Ryan Sweet, a senior economist at Moody’s Analytics in West Chester, Pennsylvania.

Lack of jobs and the temporary expiration of a government weekly jobless subsidy curtailed growth in consumer spending to a 2.5% rate in the fourth quarter after a record 41% pace in the July-September quarter.

But business investment grew at a 13.8% rate, with spending on equipment rising at a 24.9% pace. Spending on nonresidential structures rebounded after four straight quarterly declines.

Businesses also accumulated inventories last quarter, contributing to GDP growth. But the inventory build pulled in more imports, leading to a larger trade deficit, which subtracted from output. The housing market recorded another quarter of double-digit growth, thanks to historically low mortgage rates. Government spending was weak.

(Reporting by Lucia Mutikani; Editing by Chizu Nomiyama and Andrea Ricci)

Amsterdam zoo Artis gives up lions amid coronavirus cash crunch

AMSTERDAM (Reuters) – Amsterdam’s zoo Artis, one of the oldest animal parks in Europe, said on Thursday it will stop keeping lions because it can’t afford them due to the financial fallout from the coronavirus pandemic.

“This was a difficult decision because the lions are part of Artis’s identity,” director Rembrandt Sutorius said in a statement.

Park attendance was down by 50% in 2020 and it is currently closed to the public entirely, with fixed costs of 60,000 euros per day and an accumulated budget shortfall of 20 million euros, Sutorius said in a statement.

Artis’s two lionesses and one lion will now travel as a group in mid-February to a zoo in France where they will have more space than they had enjoyed in Amsterdam.

The park said there was no chance the same lions would return after the pandemic ends, but it did not absolutely rule out the return of lions to the zoo in the future.

The concrete lion enclosure at Artis, considered cutting-edge when it was built in 1927 because it relied on a moat and wall, rather than bars, to keep the animals contained, had been scheduled for a 4 million euro rebuild before the virus crisis began last year.

Artis has kept lions since 1839, a year after it first opened to the public.

(Reporting by Toby Sterling; Editing by Alexandra Hudson)