Tag Archives: Pandemic

U.S. weekly jobless claims remain perched at higher levels; housing marches on

By Lucia Mutikani

WASHINGTON (Reuters) – The number of Americans filing new claims for unemployment benefits fell less than expected last week and applications for the prior period were revised up, suggesting the labor market recovery had shifted into low gear amid fading fiscal stimulus.

The weekly jobless claims report from the Labor Department on Thursday, the most timely data on the economy’s health, also showed nearly 30 million people were on unemployment benefits at the end of August.

Signs the labor market was stalling came a day after the Federal Reserve vowed to kept interest rates near zero for a long time. The U.S. central bank noted that the COVID-19 pandemic “will continue to weigh on economic activity” in the near term and “poses considerable risks to the economic outlook over the medium term.” Fed Chair Jerome Powell said more fiscal support was likely to be needed for the economy.

Initial claims for state unemployment benefits fell 33,000 to a seasonally adjusted 860,000 for the week ended Sept. 12. Data for the prior week was revised to show 9,000 more applications received than previously reported. Economists polled by Reuters had forecast 850,000 applications in the latest week.

Un-adjusted claims dropped 75,974 to 790,021 last week. Economists prefer the un-adjusted claims number given earlier difficulties adjusting the claims data for seasonal fluctuations because of the economic shock inflected by the coronavirus crisis. Despite last week’s big drop in un-adjusted claims, they remain extraordinarily high.

A total 658,737 applications were received for the government-funded pandemic unemployment assistance last week. The PUA is for the self-employed, gig workers and others who do not qualify for the regular state unemployment programs. Altogether, 1.45 million people filed claims last week.

The claims data added to reports this week showing a slowdown in retail sales and production at factories in August.

U.S. stocks opened lower. The dollar was steady against a basket of currencies. U.S. Treasury prices were higher.

STALL SPEED

After declining from a record 6.867 million at the end of March as businesses reopened after being shuttered to stem the spread of the coronavirus, claims have flattened, with layoffs spilling over to industries that were not initially impacted by the mandated closures.

A program to help businesses with wages expired in August, while $25 billion in government assistance for airlines’ payroll expires this month. Last week’s claims covered the period during which the government surveyed businesses for the non-farm payrolls component of September’s employment report.

The economy created 1.371 million jobs in August after adding 1.734 million in July. About 10.6 million of the 22.2 million jobs lost at the depth of the coronavirus crisis have been recovered.

While other sectors of the economy are losing steam, the housing market continues to power ahead, thanks to record-low interest rates and a migration to suburbs and low-density areas, spawned by the pandemic. Unemployment has disproportionately affected low-wage workers, who are typically renters.

A separate report from the Commerce Department on Thursday showed singe-family home building, which accounts for the largest share of the housing market, increased 4.1% to a seasonally adjusted annual rate of 1.021 million units in August.

Further gains are likely, with building permits for single-family housing units accelerating 6.0% to a rate of 1.036 million units. A 22.7% tumble in starts for the volatile multi-family housing segment, however, led to a 5.1% drop in overall home building to a rate of 1.416 million units last month.

(Reporting by Lucia Mutikani; Editing by Andrea Ricci)

Virtual schooling dents retail sales, Trump economic message

By Ann Saphir

(Reuters) – Slower-than-expected sales at retailers in August suggest a speed bump is emerging in the U.S. economic recovery from coronavirus lockdowns, less than two months before the Nov. 3 presidential election.

Overall, retail sales have returned to their pre-crisis levels and then some, gaining 0.6% in August, the Commerce Department said on Wednesday. The rebound plays into U.S. President Donald Trump’s narrative of resurgent growth after a sharp pandemic downturn. Incumbent presidents are generally helped at the polls by a strong economy, and hurt by a weak one.

But last month’s rise was driven in part by an increase in gasoline prices, not typically a cause for consumer celebration. Meanwhile core retail sales, a closer measure of underlying spending trends, fell 0.1% last month. Both readings fell short of economists’ expectations.

Back-to-school shopping season, or the lack of it, was one cause. Many students actually could not head back to the classroom because of COVID-19 restrictions, and their curbed spending on supplies helped drive down core retail spending, said Regions Financial Corp economist Richard Moody. Meanwhile, a jump in sales at restaurants and bars drove most of the gain in overall retail sales.

The softening comes as nearly 30 million Americans are on some form of unemployment insurance. An extra $600 weekly that out-of-work-adults were getting in government aid expired at the end of July; it was replaced by a program that sent out $300 payments, but stopped taking new applicants on Sept. 10.

Lawmakers have so far failed to agree to any new aid package, and without more fiscal help, economists say the recovery will stall.

“The economy is weak: there are no two sides around that,” says Eric Winograd, senior economist at AllianceBernstein. Part of a voter’s calculus in picking a president may be, “Do you think additional stimulus is necessary, and if so what do you want that to look like?”

(Reporting by Ann Saphir; editing by Heather Timmons and Nick Zieminski)

New York mayor furloughs himself, staff for week to ease pandemic budget gap

NEW YORK (Reuters) – Everyone in the New York City mayor’s office, including the mayor himself, will be furloughed for one week without pay beginning Oct. 1 to close a budget shortfall created by the pandemic, Mayor Bill de Blasio announced on Wednesday.

The coronavirus outbreak had caused the city to lose $9 billion in revenue and forced a $7 billion cut to the city’s annual budget, de Blasio told reporters.

The furloughs will save only about $1 million, the mayor said, but may serve as a useful symbol as he continues to negotiate with labor unions representing municipal employees over broader payroll savings. De Blasio plans to work without pay during his own week-long furlough, the New York Times reported.

“It was not a decision I made lightly,” he told reporters. “To have to do this is painful for them and their families, but it is the right thing to do at this moment in history.”

With the furloughs and other savings, the mayor’s office budget this fiscal year will be 12% smaller than it was last year, de Blasio said, though he did not provide absolute totals.

The policy will affect 495 staff, the Times reported, and the week-long furloughs will be staggered among them between October and March 2021. De Blasio has warned he may have to lay off 22,000 city employees if savings cannot be found in the negotiations with the labor unions.

He is also seeking greater borrowing power from state lawmakers in Albany, New York state’s capital, who have been resistant so far.

(Reporting by Jonathan Allen; Editing by Jonathan Oatis and Lisa Shumaker)

Pandemic ‘hero’ Filipino nurses struggle to leave home

By Karen Lema and Clare Baldwin

MANILA (Reuters) – From across the Philippines, they gathered to pray by Zoom.

They were praying to be allowed to leave: To be allowed to take up nursing jobs in countries where the coronavirus is killing thousands in hospitals and care homes. In recent months, these care workers have taken to calling themselves “priso-nurses.”

With infections also surging in the Philippines, the government in April banned healthcare workers from leaving the country. They were needed, it said, to fight the pandemic at home.

But many of the nurses on the two-hour Zoom call on Aug. 20, organised by a union and attended by nearly 200 health workers both in the Philippines and abroad, were unwilling to work at home. They said they felt underpaid, unappreciated and unprotected.

Nurses have been leaving the Philippines for decades, encouraged by the government to join other workers who send back billions of dollars each year.

With COVID-19 sweeping the globalized economy, the Philippine ban squeezed a supply line that has sent hundreds of thousands of staff to hospitals in the United States, the Gulf and Britain, where some commentators have called the nurses “unsung heroes” of the pandemic.

The Philippines’ healthcare system is already short-handed. In Germany there are 430 doctors and nurses per 10,000 people, in the United States 337 and in Britain 254, International Labor Organization data shows.

The Philippines – where the coronavirus death rate is one of the highest in Southeast Asia – has 65.

The April ban has stopped more than 1,000 nurses from leaving the country. Of those, only 25 have applied to work in local hospitals, Health Secretary Francisco Duque III told journalists late last month. The Department of Health did not reply to a request for an updated figure.

The government has since partially eased the restrictions, but sometimes also tightens them, so nurses are still clamoring to get out.

On the Zoom call in August, someone played a recording of the Philippine national anthem. A Catholic priest prayed and a man with a soft voice crooned a song about passing off your burdens to God.

One nurse, 34-year-old April Glory, had already spent years away from her young son and had been about to leave again when the ban kicked in. Even before the pandemic, she told Reuters separately, she was better off in a war zone in the Middle East than at home.

Soon after she arrived in Yemen in 2011, a bullet pierced the wall of her private hospital, she said. Staff moved patients to safety.

Still, she said, “we were insured, we had free lodging so my salary was intact and I could send more to my family.” Abroad, there was no need to do any work outside her job description: “You are not expected to sweep the floor.”

SIMPLE MATH

It’s mainly money that drives the Filipinos abroad.

A nurse in the United States can earn as much as $5,000 per month; in the Middle East it’s $2,000 per month, tax free. In Germany, nurses can earn up to $2,800 per month, and get language training, labor organizers, recruiters and the Philippine government’s overseas employment agency say.

Even with its emergency hiring efforts, the Philippine Department of Health is only offering nurses a starting salary of $650 per month. It says it will pay another $10 per day as COVID-19 hazard allowance.

Private nurses sometimes make just $100 per month.

“I felt that I was not earning enough,” said Glory, explaining why she left. Her son, now 11, was a year and a half old at the time. “My mother told me: Better to leave now because my child will not really remember.”

Abroad, Glory’s shifts were a standard eight hours and she only looked after one or two patients at a time in intensive care. Working in Yemen and then Saudi Arabia, she said she bought a house and a car.

Nurses have recently left faster than they are trained. Last year, 12,083 new nurses graduated in the Philippines. That same year, 16,711 signed contracts to go abroad, data from the Commission on Higher Education and the Philippine Overseas Employment Administration shows. Those renewing foreign contracts are counted separately. So far this year there have been 46,000 such renewals.

The Philippine government wasn’t able to provide figures for the total number of nurses overseas, or say which countries they are working in.

Filipinos are the biggest group of foreign nurses in the United States. In 2018, there were 348,000, an analysis of U.S. government data by Washington D.C.-based think tank Migration Policy Institute showed. Even with the pandemic, another 3,260 Filipinos have passed the U.S. nurse licensing exam this year.

A report to Britain’s House of Commons Library in May said more than 15,000 of the National Health Service nursing jobs held by foreigners went to Filipinos – nearly a third of the total and more than any other nationality. The NHS employs a further 6,600 Filipinos in other healthcare jobs.

Labor brokers say that, besides the UK and US, Filipino nurses are sought-after in Germany, Saudi Arabia, the United Arab Emirates and Singapore.

36-HOUR SHIFTS

Nine months into the pandemic in the Philippines, reported coronavirus infections in the Philippines have soared to around 270,000. Not all hospitals allow family members to visit, so nurses must feed and clean patients as well as giving health care, said Filipino Nurses United President Maristela Abenojar.

Some nurses are working up to 36-hour shifts because relief staff are calling in sick or not reporting for duty, she said, and sometimes nurses are issued just one set of protective gear per shift. Nurses can’t get tested regularly and if they get sick, there aren’t always hospital beds reserved for them, she said.

At least 56 healthcare workers have died in the Philippines, Department of Health data shows.

“It seems they don’t really value our contributions,” said Jordan Jugo, who works at a private hospital in the Philippines. “It hurts.” He had a contract to work in Britain, but the ban prevented him from leaving.

He said he could sometimes only eat two meals a day and could no longer support his siblings.

The Philippine Department of Health said its healthcare workers work long hours and “it is natural for them to feel tired and overwhelmed with their immense responsibilities.” It said it had arranged for “substitution teams” in some areas.

It said hospitals should provide sufficient protective gear and that healthcare workers should not go on duty without it. Healthcare workers should be prioritized for regular COVID-19 testing, it said, and the Department would ensure there are enough beds for everyone.

Health Secretary Duque has said previously that the government was appealing to the nurses’ “sense of nation, sense of people and sense of service.”

“I DON’T WANT TO BE A HERO”

Foreign countries have gone all-out to show Filipino nurses they are valued.

Saudi Arabia sent chartered planes to help them return to work, and only partly filled them so the nurses could maintain social distance.

British ambassador to the Philippines Daniel Pruce went on an 11-minute segment on Philippine television to praise the “incredible commitment and dedication” of Filipino healthcare workers in Britain.

When nurse Aileen Amoncio, 36, got trapped by a lockdown and then the travel ban during a vacation to the Philippines in March, Britain’s NHS granted her a special “COVID leave” and kept paying her, she said. The NHS said staff stuck abroad due to COVID-19 could qualify for such leave.

Amoncio got out of the Philippines in June, after the government eased the ban slightly.

Working at an NHS neurological rehabilitation hospital in the UK, she said she sympathized with the nurses back home, where she once handled as many as 80 patients on a surgical ward at a small hospital. Now she looks after no more than 10 at a time.

Not only are the pay and conditions better in Britain, she said, but she also hopes her daughter will one day be able to join her and get free treatment on the NHS. The hearing implant she needs would cost $20,000 in the Philippines.

“I’ve served my country already,” said Amoncio. “I don’t want to be a hero again. I am looking out for the future of my children.”

On the Zoom call, Labor Secretary Silvestre Bello III dialed in with an update: Some of those who had existing contracts could leave, he announced. Cheers went up.

Nurse Glory was one of them. She wept.

“I hope the government will not take it against us that we are leaving,” she said. “We are looking forward to helping the government with this fight in other ways. When we are able, when we’ve risen out of poverty, we will.”

Hours later, on the pavement outside the airport, she quickly hugged her son, then raced to board her flight in case the government changed its mind.

(Additional reporting by Eloisa Lopez; Edited by Matthew Tostevin and Sara Ledwith)

IEA says oil demand recovery set to slow for rest of 2020

By Noah Browning

LONDON (Reuters) – The International Energy Agency (IEA) trimmed its 2020 oil demand forecast on Tuesday, citing caution about the pace of economic recovery from the pandemic.

The Paris-based IEA cut its 2020 outlook by 200,000 barrels per day (bpd) to 91.7 million bpd in its second downgrade in as many months.

“We expect the recovery in oil demand to decelerate markedly in the second half of 2020, with most of the easy gains already achieved,” the IEA said in its monthly report.

“The economic slowdown will take months to reverse completely … in addition, there is the potential that a second wave of the virus (already visible in Europe) could cut mobility once again.”

Renewed rises in COVID-19 cases in many countries and related lockdown measures, continued remote working and a still weak aviation sector are all hurting demand, the IEA said.

China – which emerged from lockdown sooner than other major economies and provided a strong prop to global demand – continues a strong recovery, while a virus upsurge in India contributed to the biggest demand drop since April, the IEA said.

Increasing global oil output and the downgraded demand outlook also mean a slower draw on crude oil stocks which piled up at the height of lockdown measures, it added.

The agency now predicts implied stock draws in the second half of the year of about 3.4 million barrels per day, nearly one million bpd less than it predicted last month, with July storage levels in developed countries again reaching record highs.

However, preliminary data for August showed industry crude oil stocks fell in the United States, Europe and Japan.

As output cuts eased among producers from the Organization of the Petroleum Exporting Countries (OPEC) and allies such as Russia, global oil supply rose by 1.1. million bpd in August.

After two months of increases, recovery among countries outside the OPEC+ pact stalled, with production in the United States falling 400,000 bpd as Hurricane Laura forced shut-ins.

(Reporting by Noah Browning; editing by Jason Neely)

Exclusive: AstraZeneca COVID-19 vaccine trial in U.S. on hold until at least midweek – sources

By Julie Steenhuysen and Marisa Taylor

CHICAGO (Reuters) – AstraZeneca’s COVID-19 vaccine trial remains on hold in the United States pending a U.S. investigation into a serious side effect in Britain even as other trials of the vaccine resume, sources familiar with the details told Reuters.

AstraZeneca on Saturday said it had restarted its trial in Britain after regulators completed their review of a serious side effect in one trial participant there.

This was the first indication that the U.S. trial will remain on hold until the U.S. Food and Drug Administration and a safety panel investigate the case.

Enrollment in the company’s global trials of the vaccine, which it is developing with researchers at Oxford University, was put on pause on Sept. 6.

Sources told Reuters that enrollment of new patients and other trial procedures for the pivotal U.S. trial were being rescheduled until at least midweek and that it was not clear how long it would take for the FDA to complete its probe.

Governments around the world are desperate for a vaccine to help end the pandemic, which has caused more than 900,000 deaths and global economic turmoil. The World Health Organization (WHO) had flagged AstraZeneca’s as the most promising. A prolonged delay in the U.S. trial could slow access to the vaccine in the United States.

The British adverse event involved a study patient thought to be suffering a rare spinal inflammatory disorder called transverse myelitis.

An AstraZeneca spokeswoman declined to comment on when the U.S. trial would resume. She said in an email the company “will continue to work with health authorities across the world, including the FDA, and be guided as to when other clinical trials can resume.”

The status of the South African and Indian trials remains unknown, but the trial in Brazil has also restarted. The company has not commented on timing of resumption in other parts of the world besides Britain.

FDA did not immediately respond to a request for comment.

(Reporting by Julie Steenhuysen and Marisa Taylor; Editing by Peter Henderson and Cynthia Osterman)

Pandemic preparedness panel slams collective failure to heed warnings

By Kate Kelland

LONDON (Reuters) – A collective failure by political leaders to heed warnings and prepare for an infectious disease pandemic has transformed “a world at risk” to a “world in disorder,” according to a report on international epidemic preparedness.

“Financial and political investments in preparedness have been insufficient, and we are all paying the price,” said the report by The Global Preparedness Monitoring Board (GPMB).

“It is not as if the world has lacked the opportunity to take these steps,” it said. “There have been numerous calls for action … yet none has generated the changes needed.”

The GPMB, co-convened by the World Bank and the World Health Organization (WHO), is co-chaired by former WHO director-general Gro Harlem Brundtland.

The board’s 2019 report, released a few months before the novel coronavirus emerged in China, said there was a real threat of “a rapidly spreading pandemic due to a lethal respiratory pathogen” and warned such an event could kill millions and wreak havoc on the global economy.

This year’s report – entitled “A World in Disorder” – said world leaders had never before “been so clearly forewarned of the dangers of a devastating pandemic”, and yet they had failed to take adequate action.

“Tragically and catastrophically, we have seen our worst fears realized,” Brundtland told a media briefing on Monday. “The impact of COVID-19 is even worse than we anticipated.”

The COVID-19 pandemic has exposed “a collective failure to take pandemic prevention, preparedness and response seriously and prioritize it accordingly,” the report said.

“Pathogens thrive in disruption and disorder. COVID-19 has proven the point.”

The report noted that despite calling a year ago for heads of government to commit and invest in pandemic preparedness, for health systems to be strengthened and for financial risk planning to take seriously the threat of a devastating pandemic, little progress had been made on any of these.

A lack of leadership, it said, was exacerbating the current pandemic. “Failure to learn the lessons of COVID-19 or to act on them with the necessary resources and commitment will mean that the next pandemic, which is sure to come, will be even more damaging,” it said.

Jeremy Farrar, director of the Wellcome Trust global health charity and a member of the monitoring board, urged leaders not to repeat the same mistakes. “This needs more than warm words of solidarity,” he said. “This needs a moment of visionary, historic, political and financial leadership.”

(Reporting by Kate Kelland, Editing by William Maclean and Alex Richardson)

Hospital ICUs lean on telemedicine amid U.S. COVID-19 crisis

By Chad Terhune

(Reuters) – As the coronavirus pandemic spreads deeper into America’s small towns and rural outposts, Dr. Tallulah Holmstrom has seen familiar faces fill her intensive-care unit in Camden, South Carolina.

A native of this hamlet of 7,000 people, Holmstrom saw its ICU threatened with closure in recent years as specialists departed for bigger cities. Now faraway doctors are helping treat the community’s COVID-19 patients, thanks to technology.

KershawHealth, the local hospital, installed cameras and other equipment for 24-hour monitoring by a company that employs doctors and nurses remotely. Sitting in cubicles in St. Louis, Houston and Honolulu, as well as other countries including Israel and India, these medical workers watch patients’ vital signs on computer screens and talk to local staff on two-way video about medications and treatments. KershawHealth employees can summon emergency help from these teleworkers by hitting a button on the wall.

Holmstrom said those changes, begun four years ago, have helped her hospital better handle the current crisis. While Camden and surrounding Kershaw County have seen more than 1,600 confirmed infections and 34 deaths, the technology has enabled many of the area’s COVID-19 patients to be hospitalized close to home.

“Now a patient can look up from their ICU bed here and they are seeing a friend’s daughter or son taking care of them or someone they go to church with,” said Holmstrom, chief medical officer at KershawHealth.

Camden is among a growing number of communities relying on this elaborate form of telemedicine to cope with an unrelenting COVID-19 case load and to manage unpredictable surges.

Well before the current crisis, vast stretches of rural America lacked easy access to advanced medical care. More than 130 rural hospitals have closed in the United States since 2010, including 18 last year, according to University of North Carolina researchers.

Rural areas tend to have higher rates of underlying health conditions such as diabetes and hypertension. Their populations often are older and poorer – making them more vulnerable to COVID-19.

Even if beds were available, qualified staff are hard to find. It’s estimated that 43 states, including South Carolina, face a shortage of highly trained ICU doctors, known as intensivists, according to researchers at George Washington University. These shortages may worsen with hospitalizations in many states predicted to peak this fall, when the coronavirus mixes with flu season, according to Patricia Pittman, director of the university’s Mullan Institute for Health Workforce Equity.

“No one is suggesting telemedicine is ideal, but it’s probably one of the least bad options,” she said. “It is definitely better than having no one and helicoptering people out.”

SCALING EXPERTISE

About a third of U.S. hospitals surveyed in 2017 said they had access to a formal program of telemedicine for critically ill patients. Studies have shown telemedicine can benefit ICU patients by promoting the best practices supported by medical evidence and by reducing complications. During the pandemic, doctors say, it has helped conserve personal protective equipment and reduce workers’ exposure to the virus.

There can be drawbacks, too, if physicians try to monitor too many people at once, which can lead to poor decisions or even medical errors. Tele-ICU generally requires physicians working remotely to hold a license in each state where people are hospitalized.

The Trump administration has eased rules on telehealth during the pandemic and expanded reimbursement by Medicare. Shares of telemedicine companies such as Teladoc Health Inc have soared as patients embraced online visits.

Sutter Health, a large hospital system in California, said it manages more than 300 ICU beds across 18 hospitals from offices in Sacramento and San Francisco.

Earlier this month at its Sacramento hub, Dr. Vanessa Walker checked in remotely on a patient who was taken off a ventilator earlier in the day at Sutter’s Roseville hospital about 25 miles away. Using a headset and camera, she clicked the patient’s name on her screen, which rang a doorbell to notify the patient that she was entering the room via video.

“Save your breath. You’re doing well otherwise,” she told the patient.

Walker, the medical director of Sutter’s electronic ICU for its hospitals in California’s Central Valley, had a wide array of information across six monitors at her desk. She could review medical records and see multiple scans of the patient’s lungs before and after treatment.

CAUTIONARY TALE

As use of this technology grows, patient-safety advocates warn hospitals not to cut corners. They say cameras and computers are no substitute for trained professionals at the bedside who can respond rapidly to life-threatening complications.

The Leapfrog Group, a nonprofit that monitors patient safety, recommends that a physician certified in critical care medicine perform an in-person review of each ICU patient daily before handing off monitoring to colleagues remotely. The group says remote doctors should lower their patient loads if they can’t respond within five minutes to requests from on-site staff and evaluate the patient.

Steve Burrows, a Los Angeles filmmaker, remains a skeptic.

He said his mother had complications during a hip operation in 2009 and suffered permanent brain damage in surgery and the ICU at a Wisconsin hospital.

In litigation, Burrows said, he learned that a doctor was remotely monitoring more than 150 ICU patients, and there was no physician in the ICU who could respond to his mother’s low blood pressure. He released an HBO documentary, “Bleed Out,” in 2018 about his mother’s case.

“Telemedicine is fantastic if it’s used properly,” he said in an interview. “But I think replacing doctors at the bedside with technology is insane.”

At trial, a jury found there was no negligence by the hospital. Advocate Aurora Health, the current hospital owner after a merger, said its electronic ICU “does not replace bedside caregivers. Instead, it serves as an additional set of eyes that provides an extra layer of safety.”

‘CONSTANT ATTENTION’

Advanced ICU Care, the St. Louis company serving Camden, works with more than 90 hospitals in 26 states. Overall, it has treated more than 1,300 COVID-19 patients.

“These patients need constant attention and continuous adjustments. That is a lot of what we do,” said Dr. Ram Srinivasan, the company’s chief medical officer.

South Carolina remains a hot spot for coronavirus infections with more than 126,000 cases and 2,877 confirmed deaths as of September 11.

The state’s first two cases of COVID-19 were announced the same day in early March and one was in Camden, a place so rural that signs remind people not to ride horses on the sidewalk.

Holmstrom, the chief medical officer at KershawHealth, got a call with the news while driving home that Friday, March 6. Within a matter of days, there were six people infected and four were hospitalized.

The Camden ICU was nearly full for weeks as the medical staff juggled COVID-19 patients alongside the normal flow of critically ill people. Hospitalizations eased around Memorial Day, Holmstrom said, only to surge again in July and much of August.

“When you’re a town this small and 32 people get sick in one day that’s a lot,” said Vic Carpenter, Kershaw County administrator.

Holmstrom, who was born in the hospital where she now works, has experienced highs and lows. A close friend who spent six weeks in the hospital is now back to full strength. Holmstrom arranged final video calls for others to say goodbye to their families.

KershawHealth is bracing for another surge this fall, when it once again will turn to remote doctors to back up busy hospital staff.

“It’s like someone constantly in the background overlooking everything with your care,” Holmstrom said.

(Reporting by Chad Terhune in Los Angeles; Additional reporting by Nathan Frandino in Sacramento; Editing by Marla Dickerson)

Mexico nears 70,000 official COVID-19 deaths, but toll likely far higher

MEXICO CITY (Reuters) – The confirmed coronavirus death toll in Mexico is primed to hit 70,000 when official data is released on Friday, a grim milestone for a country among those most affected by the pandemic.

Making matters worse, excess mortality data from mid-March through early August indicates that the total number of deaths beyond the official count is likely tens of thousands higher.

The spread of the virus has ravaged an already ailing economy, which is now seen contracting by up to 13% this year, the deepest recession since the 1930’s-era Great Depression.

On Thursday, the health ministry announced that 652,364 infections and 69,649 deaths have been attributed to the strain of the coronavirus that was first detected late last year in China.

Based on official data, Mexico is the nation with the fourth highest number of deaths globally, and the 13th highest on a per capita basis, according to a tally by Johns Hopkins University.

But earlier this month, the health ministry said it recorded more than 120,000 “extra” deaths from mid-March through August 1. The measure compares mortality figures this year with a four-year average from 2015 to 2018.

Brazil remains No. 1 in Latin America, the region with the most infections globally, for both confirmed coronavirus cases and deaths. It has posted a total of 4.2 million infections and more than 128,000 deaths so far.

In a sliver of good news, the rate of new cases in Peru, Colombia and Mexico has fallen slightly in recent weeks.

Overall, more than 900,000 people have died worldwide from the pandemic, with the deadliest outbreaks in the United States, Brazil, India and Mexico.

(Reporting by David Alire Garcia; Editing by Tom Brown)

Both Biden, Pence attend New York 9/11 memorial, Trump at Pennsylvania crash site

By Trevor Hunnicutt

NEW YORK (Reuters) – Democratic presidential candidate Joe Biden and Vice President Mike Pence, both masked, joined New York’s somber 19th anniversary of the Sept. 11 attacks, while President Donald Trump marked it at the Pennsylvania crash site of a hijacked jet.

Biden and Pence bumped elbows in greeting, one of the many ways the anniversary ceremony has been changed by the coronavirus pandemic, which has killed more than 191,000 people in the United States including 32,700 in New York state.

About 200 people including Governor Andrew Cuomo and U.S. Senator Chuck Schumer joined the New York ceremony, where family members read the names of the nearly 3,000 people killed when two hijacked jets slammed into the Twin Towers, with a third hitting the Pentagon and a fourth taken down in Shanksville, Pennsylvania, when its passengers rose up against the al Qaeda hijackers.

A similar memorial ceremony was being held at the Pentagon and in Shanksville, where people sat socially distanced on folding chairs near the site that Flight 93 went down.

“The only thing that stood between the enemy and a deadly strike at the heart of American democracy was the courage and resolve of 40 men and women – the amazing passengers and crew of Flight 93,” Trump told the crowd.

Biden is also due to visit Shanksville separately later in the day. Prior to boarding a plane from his Delaware home, Biden pledged not to make any news during the solemn day.

“I’m not going to talk about anything other than 9/11. We took all our advertising down. It’s a solemn day, and that’s how we’re going to keep it, okay?,” Biden said.

‘IT NEVER GOES AWAY’

The sun struggled to pierce hazy clouds in New York, a contrast with the 2001 morning of the attacks, which people present that day remember for its piercing, clear skies.

At the memorial site, Biden spoke to 90-year-old Maria Fisher, who lost her son in the 9/11 attacks. He told her he lost his son as well, and lamented, “It never goes away, does it?”

He handed her the rose he was holding.

Asked what today means for him, Biden replied, “It means I remember all my friends that I lost.”

The ruins of the shattered World Trade Center have since been replaced by a glittering $25 billion complex that includes three skyscrapers, a museum and the memorial with the goal that it would be again be an international hub of commerce.

But the pandemic has rendered it somewhat of a small ghost town, adding an eerie quality to the commemoration of the attack, with office workers staying home and tourists avoiding the memorial site.

The virus also altered the memorial event, with family members pre-recording the traditional reading of the names of the victims and the crowds at the site severely restricted.

Amanda Barreto, 27, of Teaneck, New Jersey, lost her godmother and aunt in the attacks. Biden came up to her and offered his condolences.

“He knows what it means to lose someone. He wanted me to stay strong,” Barreto said afterward. “And he’s so sorry for my loss.”

The Shanksville event was also closed to the public because of coronavirus concerns, the National Park Service said.

Flight 93, bound for San Francisco from Newark, New Jersey, never hit its intended target — the four hijackers were believed to be planning to crash it into either the U.S. Capitol or the White House — after passengers stormed the cockpit and attempted to regain control of the aircraft.

(Reporting by Trevor Hunnicutt in New York and Jeff Mason in Shanksville, Pennsylvania, additional reporting by John Whitesides, Joseph Ax and Jarrett Renshaw; Writing by James Oliphant; Editing by Scott Malone, Rosalba O’Brien and Diane Craft)