Tag Archives: Pandemic

Factbox: Latest on the worldwide spread of the coronavirus

(Reuters) – The EU is on course to hit a target of fully vaccinating at least 70% of its adult population by the end of summer, given that same percentage of over-18s has now already received a first dose, the European Commission said.

DEATHS AND INFECTIONS

EUROPE

* Ireland became the latest European Union member state to commit to offering COVID-19 vaccines to children aged 12-15 as it opened its strongly subscribed program to 16 and 17-year old’s.

* Greece said children aged 12-15 could be vaccinated with Pfizer/BioNTech and Moderna shots.

ASIA-PACIFIC

* Tokyo’s 2,848 COVID-19 infections are the highest tally that the Olympic host city has reported since the pandemic began, officials said, as media reported that authorities had asked hospitals to prepare more beds for patients, with the Delta variant driving the surge.

* India will meet its target of supplying more than half a billion COVID-19 vaccine doses to its states by the end of this month, the health ministry said, but added not all doses may be administered by then.

* Moderna has pushed back its late-July vaccine shipment schedule for South Korea to August due to supply problems that will also affect other countries awaiting its shots, South Korean health officials said.

* Australia’s Victoria state will lift a strict lockdown, while neighboring New South Wales faces an extension of restrictions after daily new cases spiked to a 16-month peak.

AMERICAS

* The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) is set to announce revised mask guidance for fully vaccinated Americans in the wake of rising COVID-19 cases.

* Argentina’s government has signed a deal with U.S. pharmaceutical company Pfizer to acquire 20 million doses of vaccines to be delivered this year, Health Minister Carla Vizzotti told reporters.

MIDDLE EAST AND AFRICA

* Saudi Arabia will impose a three-year travel ban on citizens travelling to countries on the kingdom’s ‘red list’ under efforts to curb the spread of coronavirus and its new variants, state news agency SPA said.

* Nigeria expects to take delivery of 29 million doses of Johnson & Johnson vaccine in August, allowing it to ramp up its vaccination program just as a third wave of infections takes hold, the health minister said.

* Israel is considering giving a third shot of the Pfizer/BioNTech vaccine to its elderly population even before FDA approval to help fend off the Delta variant.

MEDICAL DEVELOPMENTS

* Antibodies triggered by Sinovac Biotech’s vaccine decline below a key threshold from around six months after a second dose for most recipients, although a third shot could have a strong booster effect, according to a lab study.

* Russia has given the green light for clinical trials combining a shot from AstraZeneca and Britain’s Oxford University with Russia’s Sputnik V vaccine to go ahead.

* Moderna is in talks with U.S. regulators to expand the size of an ongoing trial testing its vaccines in children aged between five and 11.

ECONOMIC IMPACT

* World stocks fell after investors sold Chinese internet giants for a third straight day, while real U.S. bond yields hit record lows on worries about the economic outlook ahead of a Federal Reserve meeting.

* The International Monetary Fund maintained its 6% global growth forecast for 2021, upgrading its outlook for the United States and other wealthy economies but cutting estimates for a number of developing countries struggling with surging COVID-19 infections.

(Compiled by Veronica Snoj and Ramakrishnan M.; Editing by Grant McCool, Maju Samuel, Sriraj Kalluvila and Gareth Jones)

Saudi Arabia threatens 3-year travel ban for citizens who visit “red list” states

LONDON (Reuters) – Saudi Arabia will impose a three-year travel ban on citizens travelling to countries on the kingdom’s ‘red list’ under efforts to curb the spread of coronavirus and its new variants, state news agency SPA said on Tuesday.

It cited an unnamed interior ministry official as saying some Saudi citizens, who in May were allowed to travel abroad without prior permission from authorities for the first time since March 2020, had violated travel regulations.

“Anyone who is proven to be involved will be subject to legal accountability and heavy penalties upon their return, and will be banned from travel for three years,” the official said.

Saudi Arabia has banned travel to or transit at a number of countries including Afghanistan, Argentina, Brazil, Egypt, Ethiopia, India, Indonesia, Lebanon, Pakistan, South Africa, Turkey, Vietnam and the United Arab Emirates.

“The Ministry of Interior stresses that citizens are still banned from travelling directly or via another country to these states or any other that has yet to control the pandemic or where the new strains have spread,” the official said.

The kingdom, the largest Gulf state with a population of some 30 million, on Tuesday recorded 1,379 new COVID-19 infections, bringing its total to 520,774 cases and 8,189 deaths.

It saw daily infections fall from a peak above 4,000 in June 2020 to below the 100 mark in early January.

(Reporting by Marwa Rashad; additional reporting by Raya Jalabi; Editing by Steve Orlofsky)

Biden administration releases COVID funds to boost local economies

WASHINGTON (Reuters) -The Biden administration on Thursday released $3 billion in COVID-19 rescue funds aimed at helping localities bolster their economies in the wake of the pandemic, calling on communities to seek funding for a range of revitalization projects.

The funding, authorized by the $1.9 trillion American Rescue Plan Act, is part of President Joe Biden’s “Build Back Better” agenda to rebuild the nation after the novel coronavirus triggered widespread shutdowns and led to more than 600,000 U.S. deaths so far. The Democrat-backed bill was passed in March.

New funding will be available to communities nationwide through six programs run through the Department of Commerce targeting jobs, for instance, in tourism, the agency said in a statement.

“This investment will ensure that they have the resources to recover from the pandemic and will help create new jobs and opportunities, including through the development or expansion of a new industry sector,” the Commerce Department said.

Commerce Secretary Gina Raimondo told reporters the initiative could create as many as 300,000 jobs “in the near term.”

Of the total funding, $1 billion will be allocated for up to 30 localities that apply for money for up to eight community projects such as building infrastructure or training workers, it said.

There is also $100 million “specifically for Indigenous communities, which were disproportionately impacted by the pandemic,” the department added.

State and local governments, universities and colleges, nonprofit organizations, unions and tribes may apply for the funds, which must be awarded by September 2022, the Commerce Department said. For-profit companies and individuals are excluded.

Some $300 million in funding will also be set aside to aid hard-hit communities dependent on coal and other energy-sector work.

(Reporting by Susan Heavey; Additional reporting by Jeff Mason and Trevor Hunnicutt; Editing by Steve Orlofsky and Leslie Adler)

Factbox-Five ways fraudsters try to claim U.S. unemployment benefits

By Paresh Dave

(Reuters) – The U.S. government’s preliminary “conservative” estimates show improper unemployment benefits payments during the pandemic could exceed $87 billion nationwide.

Here are some of the tactics people with stolen identities have attempted to siphon funds.

MASKS

Twenty-seven states have adopted a system from ID.me requiring applicants to take pictures of themselves and their photo IDs, which are then compared against each other using software from ID.me.

But ID.me says some users have tried to fool the system by wearing costume masks, some with wrinkles, beards or other distinctive features.

PHOTO TRICKS

Carlos Moran, a former ID.me contractor who reviewed applicants for several months, said he saw purported Social Security cards with the wrong fonts, driver’s licenses with expiration dates clearly altered with photo-editing software and photos of applicants that were actually just a screengrab of someone else’s online selfies.

EMAIL MANIUPLATION

To avoid creating hundreds of fake email accounts, fraudsters try to use features of Gmail and Yahoo email systems. Gmail properly directs email regardless of where periods are placed in a Gmail address. A similar issue arises with “+” in Gmail addresses and a “-” in Yahoo addresses. Some fraudsters also use the period trick on physical addresses, aiming to evade systems that detect too many claims from the same location.

PROXY SERVERS

With many states now checking on the location of users’ devices, people have taken to use virtual private networking software to pretend they are applying from an area that would make sense.

FAKE WEBPAGES

Hackers have gone as far as texting or emailing identity theft victims with phishing links, hoping to trick them into taking a selfie or revealing login information for government benefits systems. Some even have created fake job listings to draw information.

(Reporting by Paresh Dave; editing by Edward Tobin)

1.5 million children have lost parents to pandemic; potential brain gateway for virus found

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.

1.5 million children lost parents to COVID-19 so far

During the first 14 months of the pandemic, an estimated 1.5 million children worldwide experienced the death of a parent, custodial grandparent, or other relative who cared for them, as a result of COVID-19, according to a study published in The Lancet on Tuesday. The orphanhood estimates are drawn from mortality data from 21 countries that account for 77% of global COVID-19 deaths and from the United Nations Population Division. “For every two COVID-19 deaths worldwide, one child is left behind to face the death of a parent or caregiver,” Dr. Susan Hillis from the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention COVID-19 Response Team, who led the study, said in a statement. The number of COVID-19 orphans will increase as the pandemic progresses, she added. There is an urgent need to prioritize these children and “support them for many years into the future,” Hillis said. Said study coauthor Lucie Cluver of Oxford University: “And we need to respond fast because every 12 seconds a child loses their caregiver to COVID-19.”

Potential brain gateway found for coronavirus

Researchers have found a potential route of entry for the coronavirus into the human brain that may help explain the effects of COVID-19 on the brain and nervous system that have plagued many patients. To date there is no evidence that the virus directly infects neurons – the brain cells that receive and send messages to and from the body. In a new study, experimenting with an artificially grown mass of cells created to resemble the brain, researchers found that neurons seemed “impervious” to the coronavirus, said Joseph Gleeson of the University of California, San Diego. But cells called pericytes, which wrap around blood vessels and carry the surface protein the virus uses for entry, proved to be a different story. When researchers added pericytes to their artificial brain and then added the virus, “we found incredibly robust infection,” not just of the pericytes but also of the neurons, Gleeson said. They report in Nature Medicine that the pericytes served as “factories” for the virus, from which it could multiply. The primary targets were astrocytes, which have crucial roles in regulating the brain’s electrical impulses, providing neurons with nutrients, and maintaining the “blood-brain barrier” that shields the brain from foreign substances. The findings, Gleeson said, suggest “pericytes could serve as an entry point for SARS-CoV-2,” which could either lead to local increases in the virus or to inflammation of blood vessels that can cause stroke.

Vaccine boosters not yet needed, researchers say

Two doses of an mRNA vaccine from Pfizer/BioNTech or Moderna are effective at neutralizing the highly contagious Delta variant of the coronavirus that is or will soon be dominant in most places, suggesting immediate booster doses are not likely needed, researchers said. They did not measure the vaccines’ ability to protect against infection in the real world. In their lab experiments using blood samples from vaccinated volunteers, however, Delta’s mutations caused only low reductions in the proportion of antibodies that could neutralize the virus, they said. Mutations in the less prevalent Beta and Gamma variants reduced antibody neutralization capacity more significantly, but not to a point where vaccine recipients would appear to be unprotected, the researchers reported on Sunday in a paper posted on medRxiv ahead of peer review. Vaccine boosters may be needed in the future to help overcome some variants, coauthor Akiko Iwasaki of Yale University said in a tweet on Tuesday. Her team also found that overall, neutralizing antibody levels after vaccination were higher in COVID-19 survivors than in uninfected vaccine recipients. “This is not surprising,” Iwasaki told Reuters, “because infection itself induces immune responses, which were boosted by the two doses of vaccines.”

(Reporting by Nancy Lapid; Editing by Bill Berkrot)

India’s excess deaths during pandemic up to 4.9 million, study shows

By Ankur Banerjee and Neha Arora

(Reuters) -India’s excess deaths during the COVID-19 pandemic could be as high as 4.9 million, a new study shows, providing further evidence that millions more may have died from coronavirus than the official tally.

The report by the Washington-based Center for Global Development, co-authored by India’s former chief economic adviser Arvind Subramanian, included deaths from all causes since the start of the pandemic through June this year.

India’s official tally of more than 414,000 deaths is the world’s third highest after the United States and Brazil, but the study adds to growing calls from experts for a rigorous nationwide audit of fatalities.

A devastating rise in infections in April and May, driven largely by the more infectious and dangerous Delta variant, overwhelmed the healthcare system and killed at least 170,000 people in May alone, official data show.

“What is tragically clear is that too many people, in the millions rather than hundreds of thousands, may have died,” the report said, estimating between 3.4 million and 4.9 million excess deaths during the pandemic.

But it did not ascribe all excess deaths to the pandemic.

“We focus on all-cause mortality, and estimate excess mortality relative to a pre-pandemic baseline, adjusting for seasonality,” the authors said.

The health ministry did not immediately respond to a Reuters email seeking comment.

Some experts have said excess deaths are the best way to measure the real toll from COVID-19.

“For every country, it’s important to capture excess mortality – the only way to prepare the health system for future shocks and to prevent further deaths,” Soumya Swaminathan, the chief scientist of the World Health Organization, said on Twitter.

The New York Times said the most conservative estimate of deaths in India was 600,000 and the worst-case scenario several times that. The government has dismissed those figures.

Health experts blame the undercounting largely on scarce resources in the vast hinterland home to two-thirds of India’s population of nearly 1.4 billion, and also many deaths at home without being tested.

India has reported a decline in daily infections from a May peak, with Tuesday’s 30,093 new cases making up its lowest daily count in four months.

Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s government has also been criticized for a messy vaccination campaign that many say helped worsen the second wave of infections.

Just over 8% of eligible adult Indians have received both vaccine doses.

In July, the government administered fewer than 4 million daily doses on average, down from a record 9.2 million on June 21, when Modi flagged off a free campaign to inoculate all 950 million adults.

(Reporting by Ankur Banerjee in Bengaluru and Neha Arora in New Delhi; Editing by Clarence Fernandez and Giles Elgood)

U.S. drug overdose deaths rise 30% to record during pandemic

By Julie Steenhuysen and Daniel Trotta

(Reuters) – A record number of Americans died of drug overdoses last year as pandemic lockdowns made getting treatment difficult and dealers laced more drugs with a powerful synthetic opioid, according to data released on Wednesday and health officials.

U.S. deaths from drug overdoses leapt nearly 30% to more than 93,000 in 2020 – the highest ever recorded.

“During the pandemic, a lot of (drug) programs weren’t able to operate. Street-level outreach was very difficult. People were very isolated,” said Dr. Joshua M. Sharfstein, a health policy expert at the Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health in Baltimore.

Arman Maddela, 24, recognizes he was at risk of being among those who died. A recovering addict, he relapsed during the pandemic and was using fentanyl, a synthetic opioid that is 80-100 times stronger than morphine, and heroin.

“It’s so easy to pass away from using drugs nowadays, just because of the amount of fentanyl out there. A lot of people in the past were able to relapse and come back. But nowadays, that’s not the case,” he said.

He checked himself into rehab a second time in October. “I actually know quite a few people personally that have unfortunately passed away since then from overdose,” said Maddela, who lives in Encinitas, California.

While overdose deaths were already increasing in the months preceding the COVID-19 outbreak, the latest data show a stark acceleration during the pandemic.

Social distancing reduced access to programs that offer needle exchange, opioid substitution therapy or safe injection sites where observers could deploy the overdose antidote Narcan, leaving many addicts to die alone.

Moreover, during stay-at-home orders, addicts were unable to attend support group meetings in person or visit their therapists for live one-on-one sessions.

Pandemic lockdowns and distancing likely contributed to the rise in overdose deaths in less obvious ways, too.

Isolation is known as a factor in anxiety and depression, said Kate Judd, program director at Shoreline Recovery Center, the San Diego rehab facility that treated Maddela. Those feelings can lead to drug abuse.

The drugs themselves became more deadly as well. Drug suppliers more frequently mixed fentanyl with cocaine and methamphetamine to boost their effects, said Dr. Nora Volkow, director of the National Institute on Drug Abuse at the National Institutes of Health.

“The type of drugs that are now available are much more dangerous,” Volkow said. Closing national borders did not staunch the flow of fentanyl as hoped. Instead, it accelerated.

The deadly combination of events resulted in 93,331 overdose deaths in the 12 months ended in December 2020, compared with an estimated 72,151 deaths in 2019, according to provisional data from the National Center for Health Statistics, part of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.

The data showed opioids were involved in 74.7% of overdose deaths, rising to 69,710 in 2020 from 50,963 in 2019.

“We do know the primary driver of the increase (in deaths) involves synthetic opioids, primarily fentanyl,” Bob Anderson, chief of the Mortality Statistics Branch at the health statistics center, said.

Most U.S. states were swept by the trend, Anderson said, with the highest increases in overdose deaths seen in Vermont, up 57.6%; followed by Kentucky, up 54%; South Carolina, up 52%; West Virginia, up nearly 50%; and California, up 46%.

On a day-to-day basis, Sharfstein estimates that the United States is now seeing more overdose deaths than COVID-19 deaths.

“This is a different kind of crisis, and it’s not going to go away as quickly.”

(Reporting by Julie Steenhuysen in Chicago and Daniel Trotta in Carlsbad, California, additional reporting by Mrinalika Roy in Bengaluru; Editing by Caroline Humer and Cynthia Osterman)

Spain surpasses 4 million coronavirus cases since pandemic began

MADRID (Reuters) -Spain surpassed 4 million coronavirus cases since the pandemic began on Tuesday after adding 43,960 new cases, as the more contagious Delta variant drives a surge of infections among unvaccinated young people.

The nationwide 14-day infection rate reached nearly 437 cases per 100,000 people on Tuesday, up from 368 cases a day earlier, health ministry data showed. Among 20 to 29-year-olds, that figure was 1,421 per 100,000.

“With the end of the school year, increased mobility, greater social interaction and super-spreader events, the cumulative incidence curve has risen again,” Spain’s Health Minister Carolina Darias said on Tuesday.

Cases began to surge again in the middle of June after a long decline, propelled by the Delta variant and more socializing among younger groups.

Although infection numbers have been rising steadily, daily deaths remain low, with the new cases primarily reported among younger, unvaccinated people who are less likely to fall seriously ill.

The country reported 13 new fatalities on Tuesday, bringing the total death toll total to 81,033. Darias said the current pressure on the country’s health system was nothing like it was in previous waves of the pandemic.

Some hard-hit Spanish regions have introduced new rules such as night-time curfews to tackle the surge.

The Catalan regional government said all activities would have to shut at 12:30 a.m. and eating or drinking in public areas would be banned. The measures are pending court approval.

“The most important thing at the moment is to contain the spread of the virus, which will require regional measures,” Darias said.

Spain’s tourism continues to be in a tight spot, with many businesses struggling to make ends meet. The same is happening across the border in Portugal, where the variant is responsible for all cases in the popular Algarve region.

(Reporting by Andrei Khalip and Catarina Demony; Editing by Sonya Hepinstall)

‘Be cautious’: Johnson goes ahead with lifting England’s COVID curbs

By Costas Pitas and Alistair Smout

LONDON (Reuters) -British Prime Minister Boris Johnson urged people on Monday to show caution when nearly all remaining COVID-19 restrictions are lifted in England next week, saying an increase in cases underlined that the pandemic was by no means over.

England will from July 19 be the first nation in Britain to lift the legal requirement to wear masks and for people to socially distance. The government says Britain’s vaccination drive – one of the world’s fastest – has largely broken the link between infections and serious illness or death.

But what was once billed as “freedom day” is now being treated with wariness by ministers after a new surge in cases and fears that there could be as many as 100,000 new infections a day over the summer.

Johnson set a somber tone, defending his decision to lift most of the remaining restrictions by saying the four conditions the government set itself had been met, but also warning the country that more people would die from the coronavirus.

“We think now is the right moment to proceed…But it is absolutely vital that we proceed now with caution and I cannot say this powerfully or emphatically enough – this pandemic is not over,” he told a press conference.

“To take these steps we must be cautious and must be vaccinated,” he said, adding that England would see “more hospitalizations and more deaths from COVID”.

Johnson added: “I generally urge everyone to keep thinking of others and to consider the risks.”

Earlier, health minister Sajid Javid told parliament that people should still wear masks in crowded areas like on public transport and should only gradually move back to the workplace, and that the government would encourage businesses holding mass events to use health certification as a way to open up.

Business welcomed the move, but also called on the government to offer clearer guidance. Claire Walker, co-executive director of the British Chambers of Commerce, said companies still did not have the full picture they needed.

“Business leaders aren’t public health experts and cannot be expected to know how best to operate when confusing and sometimes contradictory advice is coming from official sources,” she said.

GLOBAL STRUGGLE

After 18 months of pandemic, governments around the world have been wrestling with how and when to reopen their economies.

Dutch Prime Minister Mark Rutte conceded on Monday that coronavirus restrictions had been lifted in the Netherlands too soon and he apologized as infections surged to their highest levels of the year.

Britain has implemented one of the world’s swiftest vaccination programs, with more than 87% of adults having received at least one dose of a COVID-19 vaccine and 66% having received two.

The Conservative government argues that the fact that deaths and hospital admissions remain far lower than before, even though cases have risen sharply, is proof that the vaccines are saving lives and it is now safer to open up.

But the surge in infections to rates unseen since the winter has raised concern, with some epidemiologists saying the Euro soccer championships might have helped fuel the rise.

Britain, which ranks 20th in the world for per-capita reported deaths from COVID-19, on Monday reported a further 34,471 COVID-19 cases, up 26% in a week, and six additional deaths within 28 days of a positive test.

London’s Wembley Stadium hosted the Euro 2020 final on Sunday between England and Italy. Large crowds gathered in London, including around the stadium, and there were reports that some had gained entry to the match without tickets to join the more than 60,000 who had them – much to the dismay of the World Health Organization.

“Am I supposed to be enjoying watching transmission happening in front of my eyes?” WHO epidemiologist Maria Van Kerkhove tweeted in the late stages of the match.

“The #COVID19 pandemic is not taking a break tonight … #SARSCoV2 #DeltaVariant will take advantage of unvaccinated people, in crowded settings, unmasked, screaming/shouting/singing. Devastating.”

(Additional reporting by Elizabeth Piper, William James and Michael Holden in London, Emma Farge in Geneva; Editing by Nick Macfie and Mark Heinrich)

U.S. oil mergers surge as energy, share prices recover from pandemic

HOUSTON (Reuters) – U.S. oil and gas mergers surged last quarter with the most $1 billion plus combinations since 2014, according to data released on Monday, as rising energy and share prices led to larger oil patch deals.

Producers are consolidating in U.S. shale as oil and natural gas prices recover from last year’s pandemic swoon and this month traded at multi-year highs. Smaller producers also are snapping up unwanted properties in a bet on continued demand for oil and gas while some big oil companies shift their acquisition emphasis to renewables.

Total value of the 40 reported deals last quarter was $33 billion, estimated energy data provider Enverus Inc, up from $44.5 billion for all of last year.

The quarter’s seven $1 billion plus deals were mostly in Texas and Colorado oilfields but a fifth of the total value was spend on natural gas properties in the U.S. east, said Andrew Dittmar, Enverus’ senior M&A analyst.

BIG GAS MERGERS

Natural gas shot into the spotlight with U.S. prices rising 40% this year, helping spark Southwestern Energy’s $2.7 billion acquisition of Indigo Natural Resources and EQT Corp’s $2.9 billion deal for northeast gas producer Alta Resources.

“There is still a lot of activity out there,” said Dittmar, citing recovering share prices and the number of private-equity backed firms looking to sell. “Public companies are not done consolidating” smaller, closely-held producers, he said.

“If commodity prices stay strong, we’ll see a fairly active rest of the year,” Dittmar said.

A number of top oil companies including Royal Dutch Shell, Chevron, Exxon Mobil, and Occidental Petroleum are considering or have put U.S. oil properties on the market due to rising buyer interest.

CABOT-CIMAREX TOPS LIST

Top deals by price last quarter were Cabot Oil and Gas’s $7.4 billion combination with Cimarex Energy and Pioneer Natural Resources’ $6.4 billion acquisition of closely held DoublePoint Energy, both for assets in the Permian Basin of West Texas and New Mexico.

KKR & Co’s Independence Energy merged with Contango Oil & Gas, a deal that valued the pair at $5.7 billion, including debt, and will become a platform to acquire other producers.

(Reporting by Gary McWilliams; Editing by David Gregorio)