Tag Archives: Coronavirus

Pandemic throws ‘curve ball’ at California wildland firefighters

A firefighter is working on extinguishing the Lilac Fire, a fast moving wildfire in Bonsall.

By Nathan Frandino

SANTA ROSA, Ca. (Reuters) – The coronavirus pandemic has forced California officials to rethink how they train for and fight wildfires to avoid spreading the virus among firefighters and the public.

In Sonoma County north of San Francisco, firefighters now receive training at the station level to maintain social distancing instead of coming together in large groups at their St. Helena headquarters.

When it comes to fighting fires, the big changes will be seen at incident command posts, which can bring together thousands of firefighters, according to Ben Nicholls the county’s division chief for the California Department of Forestry and Fire Protection (CalFire).

Briefings will likely be done via radio or video feed rather than in-person to avoid spreading the virus. Meal shifts will be staggered to avoid shoulder-to-shoulder contact among firefighters. Base facilities will have to be larger to house firefighters coming in from out of state to maintain social distancing, Nicholls said.

“COVID-19 has definitely thrown us a curve ball,” Nicholls said in an interview.

In California, as in the rest of the United States, the 2020 fire year has seen more and larger fires than in 2019 but the acreage burned remains below the 10-year average, according to data from CalFire and the National Interagency Fire Center.

There is a higher chance this year in California of earlier offshore winds that have in the past fanned the state’s largest and deadliest blazes, Nicholls said, adding they have not appeared.

One issue that remains uncertain for California firefighters is their budget. With California’s tax revenue deeply impacted by the pandemic, Nicholls said CalFire will be affected as well.

“At this point, it appears that we will see some sort of reduction. We just don’t know what that will look like,” Nicholls said.

(Reporting by Nathan Frandino in Santa Rosa, California; Editing by Bill Tarrant and Aurora Ellis)

‘A recipe for disaster,’ U.S. health official says of Americans ignoring coronavirus advice

By Susan Heavey and Doina Chiacu

WASHINGTON Reuters) – A spike in U.S. coronavirus infections is fueled in large part by people ignoring public health guidelines to keep their distance and wear masks, the government’s top infectious disease official said.

A daily surge in confirmed cases has been most pronounced in southern and western states that did not follow health officials’ recommendations to wait for a steady decline in infections for two weeks before reopening their economies.

“That’s a recipe for disaster,” Anthony Fauci, who directs the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases, told CNN in an interview broadcast on Monday.

“Now we’re seeing the consequences of community spread, which is even more difficult to contain than spread in a well-known physical location like a prison or nursing home or meatpacking place,” Fauci told the cable channel in the interview, which was recorded on Friday.

More than 2.5 million people have tested positive for the coronavirus in the United States and more than 125,000 have died of COVID-19, the respiratory illness it causes, according to a Reuters tally. The U.S. tally is the highest in the world while the global death toll in the pandemic surpassed half a million people on Sunday.

California ordered some bars to close on Sunday, the first major rollback of efforts to reopen the economy in the most populous U.S. state, following Texas and Florida ordering the closure of all their bars on Friday. Arizona and Georgia are among 15 states that had record increases in cases last week.

U.S. Vice President Mike Pence on Sunday pressed Americans to adopt face masks during a trip to Texas and wore one himself, a sharp turnaround for the administration. Republican President Donald Trump has refused to cover his face in public.

Pence and other top health officials were expected to visit Arizona and Florida later this week.

In places where cases are soaring, U.S. health officials are also considering “completely blanketing these communities with tests,” Fauci said, to try to get a better sense of an outbreak.

They would either test groups, or “pools,” of people or have community groups do contact tracing in person rather than by phone. Contact tracing involves identifying people who are infected and monitoring people who may have been exposed and asking them to voluntarily go into quarantine.

Fauci said that he was optimistic that a vaccine could be available by year’s end but that it was unclear how effective it would prove to be, adding that no vaccine would be 100% effective and citing challenges to achieve so-called herd immunity.

The top Republican in the U.S. House of Representatives, Kevin McCarthy, on Monday stressed individual actions to stop the spread of the virus, deflecting criticism from Democrats and some health experts that Trump botched the prevention effort.

“You can’t say the federal government should do everything, and then say the federal government can’t tell the states what to do,” McCarthy told CNBC. “The governors have a big responsibility here but every American has a responsibility. They should wear a mask.”

(Reporting by Susan Heavey and Doina Chiacu in Washington; Writing by Grant McCool; Editing by Howard Goller)

Global coronavirus deaths top half a million

By Jane Wardell and Cate Cadell

SYDNEY/BEIJING (Reuters) – The death toll from COVID-19 surpassed half a million people on Sunday, according to a Reuters tally, a grim milestone for the global pandemic that seems to be resurgent in some countries even as other regions are still grappling with the first wave.

The respiratory illness caused by the new coronavirus has been particularly dangerous for the elderly, although other adults and children are also among the 501,000 fatalities and 10.1 million reported cases.

While the overall rate of death has flattened in recent weeks, health experts have expressed concerns about record numbers of new cases in countries like the United States, India and Brazil, as well as new outbreaks in parts of Asia.

More than 4,700 people are dying every 24 hours from COVID-19-linked illness, according to Reuters calculations based on an average from June 1 to 27.

That equates to 196 people per hour, or one person every 18 seconds.

About one-quarter of all the deaths so far have been in the United States, the Reuters data shows. The recent surge in cases has been most pronounced in a handful of Southern and Western states that reopened earlier and more aggressively. U.S. officials on Sunday reported around 44,700 new cases and 508 additional deaths.

Case numbers are also growing swiftly in Latin America, on Sunday surpassing those diagnosed in Europe, making the region the second most affected by the pandemic, after North America.

On the other side of the world, Australian officials were considering reimposing social distancing measures in some regions on Monday after reporting the biggest one-day rise in infections in more than two months.

The first recorded death from the new virus was on Jan. 9, a 61-year-old man from the Chinese city of Wuhan who was a regular shopper at a wet market that has been identified as the source of the outbreak.

In just five months, the COVID-19 death toll has overtaken the number of people who die annually from malaria, one of the most deadly infectious diseases.

The death rate averages out to 78,000 per month, compared with 64,000 AIDS-related deaths and 36,000 malaria deaths, according to 2018 figures from the World Health Organization.

CHANGING BURIAL RITES

The high number of deaths has led to changes to traditional and religious burial rites around the world, with morgues and funeral businesses overwhelmed and loved ones often barred from bidding farewell in person.

In Israel, the custom of washing the bodies of Muslim deceased is not permitted, and instead of being shrouded in cloth, they must be wrapped in a plastic body bag. The Jewish tradition of Shiva where people go to the home of mourning relatives for seven days has also been disrupted.

In Italy, Catholics have been buried without funerals or a blessing from a priest. In New York, city crematories were at one point working overtime, burning bodies into the night as officials scouted for temporary interment sites.

In Iraq, former militiamen have dropped their guns to instead dig graves for coronavirus victims at a specially created cemetery. They have learned how to conduct Christian, as well as Muslim, burials.

ELDERLY AT RISK

Public health experts are looking at how demographics affect the death rates in different regions. Some European countries with older populations have reported higher fatality rates, for instance.

An April report by the European Center for Disease Prevention and Control looked at more than 300,000 cases in 20 countries and found that about 46% of all fatalities were over the age of 80.

In Indonesia, hundreds of children are believed to have died, a development health officials have attributed to malnutrition, anemia and inadequate child health facilities.

Health experts caution that the official data likely does not tell the full story, with many believing that both cases and deaths have likely been under reported in some countries.

(Reporting by Jane Wardell in Sydney and Cate Cadell in Beijing; Editing by Tiffany Wu and Daniel Wallis)

Gilead prices COVID-19 drug candidate remdesivir at $2,340 per patient

(Reuters) – Gilead Sciences Inc has priced its COVID-19 drug candidate remdesivir at $2,340 for a five-day treatment in the United States and some other developed countries, it said on Monday, as it set the price for a single vial at $390.

The price for U.S. private insurance companies will be $520 per vial, the drug maker said, which equates to $3,120 per patient for a treatment course using 6 vials of remdesivir.

This is below the $5,080 per course recommendation by U.S. drug pricing research group, the Institute for Clinical and Economic Review, last week.

Gilead has entered into an agreement with the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services (HHS), with the agency and states set to manage allocation to hospitals until the end of September.

HHS has secured more than 500,000 treatment courses of the drug for American hospitals through September, the agency said on Monday.

This represents 100% of Gilead’s projected production for July of 94,200 treatment courses, 90% of production in August and September, in addition to an allocation for clinical trials, HHS said.

After this period, once supplies are less constrained, HHS will stop managing the allocation, Gilead said.

Remdesivir’s price has been a topic of intense debate since the U.S. Food and Drug Administration approved its emergency use in some COVID-19 patients in May. Experts have said that Gilead would need to avoid the appearance of taking advantage of a health crisis for profits.

Wall Street analysts have said the antiviral drug could generate billions of dollars in revenue over the next couple of years if the pandemic continues.

Gilead has tied up with generic drug makers based in India and Pakistan, including Cipla Ltd and Hetero Labs Ltd, to make and supply remdesivir in 127 developing countries.

Cipla’s version is priced at less than 5,000 Indian rupees ($66.24), while Hetero Lab’s version is priced at 5,400 rupees.

(Reporting by Manojna Maddipatla in Bengaluru; Editing by Arun Koyyur)

Pence says U.S. in ‘better place’ on coronavirus even as new cases rise in 16 states

WASHINGTON (Reuters) – U.S. Vice President Mike Pence on Friday sounded a note of optimism about the novel coronavirus pandemic, saying that 34 states show a measure of stabilizing numbers of new cases, but encouraged people to continue social distancing and other strategies to help contain the spread of the virus.

Pence, at the first U.S. coronavirus task force briefing in months, said that 16 states are seeing an increase in infections and that the federal government is focused on rising cases in the South.

“As we see the new cases rising, and we’re tracking them very carefully, there may be a tendency among the American people to think that we are back to that place that we were two months ago, that we’re in a time of great losses and great hardship on the American people. The reality is we’re in a much better place,” Pence said.

“The truth is we did slow the spread. We did flatten the curve,” he added.

In about four months, more than 2.4 million people have been confirmed to have the coronavirus in the United States and over 124,000 have died of COVID-19, the disease caused by the virus.

Pence also encouraged people to follow local, state and federal guidance on containing the virus, saying they should avoid touching their faces, disinfect frequently, wash their hands, stay home when they feel sick, and practice social distancing.

“We still have work to do, so we say to every American particularly those in counties and in states that are being impacted by rising cases, now is the time for everybody to do their part,” Pence said.

(Reporting by Alexandra Alper and Susan Heavey; Additional reporting by Daphne Psaledakis; Writing by Lisa Lambert, Editing by Franklin Paul and Grant McCool)

U.S. CDC reports 2,414,870 coronavirus cases

(Reuters) – The U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) on Friday reported 2,414,870 cases of new coronavirus, an increase of 40,588 cases from its previous count, and said the number of deaths had risen by 2,516 to 124,325.

The CDC reported its tally of cases of the respiratory illness known as COVID-19, caused by a new coronavirus, as of 4 pm ET on June 25 versus its previous report a day earlier.

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

(Reporting by Manojna Maddipatla in Bengaluru; Editing by Shinjini Ganguli)

Microsoft to close physical stores, take $450 million hit

(Reuters) – Microsoft Corp said on Friday it would close its retail stores and take a related pretax asset impairment charge of $450 million in the current quarter.

The Redmond, Washington-based software giant said it would continue to serve customers online, with team members working remotely from corporate facilities.

A Microsoft spokeswoman told Reuters all current retail employees would be given an opportunity to remain with the company in different roles.

“Speaking over 120 languages, their diversity reflects the many communities we serve,” Microsoft Corporate Vice President David Porter said of the company’s retail employees in a statement. “Our commitment to growing and developing careers from this talent pool is stronger than ever.”The company also said it will rethink other spaces that serve all customers, including operating Microsoft Experience Centers in London, New York, Sydney, and Redmond campus locations.

“This is a tough but smart strategic decision for (CEO) Nadella & Co. to make at this point. The physical stores generated negligible retail revenue for Microsoft and ultimately everything was moving more and more towards the digital channels over the last few years,” Wedbush analyst Dan Ives said in a note. Retailers, whose stores shuttered in mid-March due to coronavirus-prompted lockdowns, have seen a huge surge in online demand amid stay-at-home orders.

(Reporting by Akanksha Rana in Bengaluru and Stephen Nellis in San Francisco)

New York coronavirus positive test rate lowest in U.S., governor says

(Reuters) – The percentage of people in New York state who are testing positive for the novel coronavirus is the lowest in the United States, Governor Andrew Cuomo said on Friday, citing data from Johns Hopkins University.

Cuomo said the 7-day average of the percentage of positive tests in New York was at 1.3 percent, a big improvement from an earlier peak in the state of 50 percent.

(reporting by Gabriella Borter in New York and Nathan Layne in Wilton, Connecticut, Editing by Franklin Paul)

Take Five: World stocks’ 2020 rollercoaster ride rumbles on

HALF TIME

World stocks have been on a roller-coaster ride in the first half of 2020. Having slumped 35% from Feb. 20 to March 23, they are now within 10% of February’s record highs thanks to lashings of fiscal stimulus, interest rates slashed to 0% or below in most major economies, and massive amounts of QE. Borrowing costs for high-grade U.S. companies have in fact fallen below January levels.

So what happens over the rest of the year? Much depends on whether another coronavirus wave comes crashing down, further testing policymakers. And if an effective treatment or a vaccine is found, the severest global recession in living memory could also turn out to be the shortest.

Nevertheless, the crisis has exposed weaknesses such as companies’ high debt levels and their over-reliance on share buybacks.

LINES OF CONTROL

Asian market anxiety levels look set to rise another notch in coming days due to geopolitical tensions.

Hong Kong will be in the Chinese parliament’s sights when it meets on June 28-30 to finalize a security law aimed at tackling separatism, subversion, terrorism and collusion with foreign forces.

After a year of sometimes violent anti-government and anti-Beijing protests, the focus is on how far-reaching the law is, what activities constitute such crimes and what the punishment would be. Investors also want to know whether the laws will be retroactive or create new avenues for asset seizures.

China and much of Asia will also publish manufacturing surveys. But as North Korea’s military threats ebb and flow and troops amass on both sides of a disputed part of the Indo-Chinese border, geopolitics will likely trump other factors.

PLEASANT SURPRISE

After the dire numbers of April and May, recent U.S. economic data flow has delivered good news for the most part, helping keep stock markets within 10% of their pre-coronavirus levels.

On the heels of comebacks in employment and retail sales, Citi’s U.S. Economic Surprise Index, which tracks economic data relative to economists’ expectations, is at a record high.

Now the focus is on whether the rebound remains in force. Consumer confidence on Tuesday, manufacturing data on Wednesday and U.S. employment figures on Thursday – both weekly and monthly – are among reports due.

Non-farm jobs actually rose 2.5 million in May, versus April’s record 20 million-plus plunge. Another improvement could allow markets to push higher – bar further coronavirus-linked lock downs.

INFLATION WATCH

Economies are bouncing back from the COVID-19 shock, so will inflation follow? Preliminary June euro area data may offer clues.

Already, inflation expectations are reacting to data showing the worst of the economic gloom has lifted; a long-term gauge of where markets see euro zone inflation headed is just above 1% — near its highest since early-March and almost 40 bps above record lows hit that month.

Some investors are already buying gold and other inflation hedging assets. But others say that if you dig deeper into activity indicators, they suggest little evidence of inflationary pressures picking up. And until that happens, expect the ECB to keep its foot on the stimulus pedal.

EUROPE’S TURNING TIDE

Is the U.S. share juggernaut slowing? Seems like it. In the past month, U.S. equities have under-performed world stocks by 2.5%; Europe outperformed by a similar margin. European stocks enjoyed investment inflows in three of the past four weeks, BofA says.

Behind the shift perhaps are the growing odds of a presidential election victory for Democrat Joe Biden, worsening U.S./China ties and the continued rise in U.S. coronavirus infections that prevent economic activity from fully resuming.

Europe, meanwhile, has largely controlled the virus spread, economies are turning the corner quicker than expected and a proposed EU recovery fund is speeding up euro zone integration.

BlackRock and Goldman Sachs are among those recommending clients shift focus towards European stocks, which lagged U.S. peers throughout the previous economic cycle due to a paucity of “growth” stocks.

European out-performance looks likely until at least November’s U.S. election. Longer-term though, U.S. firms, such as tech names, may face headwinds from higher taxes especially from a Democrat administration. And in a world where investors attach increasing importance to environmental, social and governance (ESG) credentials, Europe’s higher ESG scores will be a plus.

 

(Reporting by Marc Jones, Dhara Ranasinghe and Thyagaraju Adinarayan in London; Vidya Ranganathan in Singapore and Saqib Iqbal Ahmed in New York; compiled by Sujata Rao; Editing by Hugh Lawson)

IMF’s Georgieva says virus crisis could ultimately test $1 trillion war chest

By David Lawder

WASHINGTON (Reuters) – International Monetary Fund Managing Director Kristalina Georgieva said on Friday that the global economic crisis spurred by the coronavirus could ultimately test the Fund’s $1 trillion in total resources, “but we’re not there yet.”

Georgieva told a Reuters Newsmaker webcast event that it was now clear that an economic recovery would have to get underway without a medical breakthrough and the virus’ presence still widespread throughout the world. IMF member countries were standing by to provide more support to the Fund if necessary, she said.

The IMF on Tuesday forecast a deeper global recession than initially anticipated, as business closures, travel restrictions and social distancing measures persist in most countries. It now anticipates a global GDP contraction of 4.9% this year and a total output loss of $12 trillion through the end of 2021.

“We still have about three quarters of our lending capacity available,” Georgieva said. “I wouldn’t put it beyond us that we might be in a place where the IMF resources are being tested, but we’re not there yet.”

Regarding the possibility of additional resources, she said: “Our members are telling us, ‘Everything is on the table. You come to us if you need to do more of something, we are there for you.'”

The IMF has been rapidly deploying some $100 billion in emergency financing and has now provided loans and grants to 72 countries in just over seven weeks, Georgieva said.

(Reporting by David Lawder; Editing by Chizu Nomiyama and Jonathan Oatis)