Tag Archives: United States

U.S. consumer confidence hits one-year high; house prices soar

By Lucia Mutikani

WASHINGTON (Reuters) -U.S. consumer confidence raced in March to its highest level since the start of the COVID-19 pandemic, supporting views that economic growth will accelerate in the coming months, driven by more fiscal stimulus and an improving public health situation.

The survey from the Conference Board on Tuesday also showed consumers were fairly upbeat about the labor market, with a measure of household employment rebounding after declining in February. Restrictions on non-essential businesses are being rolled back as more Americans get vaccinated against COVID-19.

That, along with the White House’s massive $1.9 trillion pandemic relief package, has led economists to predict the economy will this year experience it best performance in nearly four decades. The survey showed more consumers intended to buy homes, cars and household appliances over the next six months.

“Consumers finally are fully on board with the pending expansion,” said Robert Frick, corporate economist with Navy Federal Credit Union in Vienna, Virginia. “What remains to be seen is how quickly services industries such as travel and leisure will open up, allowing venues for consumers to release their pent-up demand.”

The Conference Board’s consumer confidence index jumped 19.3 points to a reading of 109.7 this month, the highest level since the onset of the pandemic in March 2020. The increase was the largest since April 2003. Confidence remains well below its lofty reading of 132.6 in February 2020. Economists polled by Reuters had forecast the index would rise to 96.9.

The survey’s present situation measure, based on consumers’ assessment of current business and labor market conditions, soared to a reading of 110.0 from 89.6 last month. The expectations index, based on consumers’ short-term outlook for income, business and labor market conditions increased to 109.6 from a reading of 90.9 in February.

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

INFLATION WORRIES

The survey’s so-called labor market differential, derived from data on respondents’ views on whether jobs are plentiful or hard to get, rebounded to a reading of 7.8 this month from -0.8 in February. That measure closely correlates to the unemployment rate in the Labor Department’s employment report.

That fits in with expectations for a sharp acceleration in job growth this month. According to a Reuters survey of economists, nonfarm payrolls likely increased by 639,000 jobs in March after rising by 379,000 in February. The government is due to publish its closely-watched employment report for March on Friday.

The share of consumers expecting an increase in income over the next six months rose to 15.5% from 14.8% last month. The proportion anticipating a drop increased to 13.3% from 12.9% in February. More consumers expected to purchase homes, motor vehicles and major household appliances compared to February.

Consumers’ inflation expectations over the next 12 months increased to 6.7% from 6.5% in February.

“Consumers’ renewed optimism boosted their purchasing intentions for homes, autos and several big-ticket items,” said Lynn Franco, senior director of economic indicators at the Conference Board. “However, concerns of inflation in the short-term rose, most likely due to rising prices at the pump, and may temper spending intentions in the months ahead.”

The rise in house-buying intentions suggests demand for homes could remain strong and continue to drive up prices as supply remains tight. The housing market is being powered by demand for more spacious accommodations for home offices and schooling. It remains strong despite a rise in mortgage rates this year.

A separate report on Tuesday showed the S&P CoreLogic Case-Shiller 20-metro-area house price index soared 11.1% in January from a year ago, the fastest in 15 years, after increasing 10.2% in December.

“A wave of eager buyers is being forced to act swiftly and face heightened competition for the few homes available,” said Matthew Speakman, an economist at Zillow. “The combined dynamic is pushing prices upward at their strongest pace in years, and it doesn’t appear that there is an end in sight.”

(Reporting by Lucia MutikaniEditing by Chizu Nomiyama and Paul Simao)

Migrant caravan of hundreds departs in Honduras for United States

TEGUCIGALPA (Reuters) – Several hundred Hondurans set off for the Guatemalan border on Tuesday, seeking to reach the United States to escape the impact of the coronavirus pandemic and natural disasters, according to local media and a Reuters witness.

The group of migrants was the second large caravan to set out from Honduras this year, on the heels of catastrophic flooding in November from hurricanes Eta and Iota, which battered an economy that was already seriously struggling.

Central Americans have made up the bulk of a sharp increase in migrants trying to reach the United States via Mexico in recent weeks, putting pressure on U.S. President Joe Biden. The crisis includes the arrival of thousands of unaccompanied children who have crossed the U.S.-Mexico border.

The migrant caravan in Honduras, mostly young adults with backpacks and women carrying children, began walking in the early morning from a bus terminal in the northern city of San Pedro Sula to the town of Corinto at the Guatemalan border.

“You have to take risks to have a better life in the United States, in Honduras we’re never going to do anything,” migrant Carlos Flores told a local television station. “Here you can hardly eat with what you earn, if you can even find work.”

(Reporting by Gustavo Palencia; Writing by Daina Beth Solomon; Editing by Jonathan Oatis)

More under-30 Americans report anxiety, depression during pandemic – CDC

By Vishwadha Chander

(Reuters) – More young adults in the United States reported feeling anxious or depressed during the past six months of the COVID-19 pandemic, and fewer people reported getting the help they needed, according to a U.S. government study released on Friday.

The percentage of adults under age 30 with recent symptoms of an anxiety or a depressive disorder rose significantly about five months after the U.S. imposed COVID-19 related lockdowns, and reported rising deaths from the fast-spreading virus.

Between August 2020 and February 2021, this number went up to 41.5% from 36.4%, as did the percentage of such people reporting that they needed, but did not receive, mental health counseling.

The study suggests that the rise in anxiety or depressive disorder symptoms reported correspond with the weekly number of reported COVID-19 cases.

The findings are based on a Household Pulse Survey conducted by the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) and the Census Bureau to monitor changes in mental health status and access to care during the pandemic.

“Trends in mental health can be used to evaluate the impact of strategies addressing adult mental health status and care during the pandemic, “the authors of the study wrote in the CDC’s Morbidity and Mortality Weekly Report released on Friday.

The study also found those with less than a high school education were more at risk, though it did not provide an explanation for it.

Even with more vaccines gaining authorization beginning late 2020, the effects of the pandemic on mental health continued into 2021.

During Jan. 20, 2021 through Feb. 1, 2021, about two in five adults aged over 18 years experienced recent symptoms of an anxiety or a depressive disorder, the survey found.

Demand for mental health and meditation apps, and investments in tech startups building these apps have also risen during this period.

(Reporting by Vishwadha Chander in Bengaluru; Editing by Caroline Humer and Shailesh Kuber)

U.S. administers nearly 137 million doses of COVID-19 vaccines: CDC

(Reuters) – The United States has administered 136,684,688 doses of COVID-19 vaccines and distributed 177,501,775 doses in the country as of Friday morning, the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention said.

The tally is for Moderna, Pfizer/BioNTech, and Johnson & Johnson’s vaccines as of 6:00 a.m. ET on Friday, the agency said.

According to the tally posted on March 25, the agency had administered 133,305,295 doses of the vaccines, and distributed 173,525,335 doses.

The agency said 89,559,225 people have received at least one dose, while 48,695,172 people were fully vaccinated as of Friday.

A total of 7,699,428 vaccine doses have been administered in long-term care facilities, the agency said.

(Reporting by Mrinalika Roy in Bengaluru; Editing by Shinjini Ganguli)

U.S. to distribute 11 million Johnson & Johnson COVID-19 shots next week – White House

By Carl O’Donnell

(Reuters) – The U.S. government will distribute 11 million doses of Johnson & Johnson’s COVID-19 vaccine next week in its continued effort to get 200 million shots in people’s arms in the first 100 days of President Joe Biden’s term, the White House said on Friday.

The United States is still on track to deliver on its goal of making shots available to all adults by the end of May, Jeff Zients, the White House’s COVID-19 response coordinator, told reporters.

Vaccine manufacturers Pfizer Inc and Moderna Inc expect to hit their target of supplying 220 million shots between them in the first quarter of 2021, he added.

J&J had said last month it would deliver 20 million doses of its single-dose inoculation in March. However, shipments were delayed because key U.S. manufacturing partners, including Catalent Inc, did not immediately receive U.S. regulatory clearance to send out doses made in their facilities.

The White House is also working to speed up administration of shots by increasing the number of active duty troops assisting with vaccinations, to more than 6,000 from 2,900, Zients said.

As of Friday, 71% of adults aged 65 and over have received at least one vaccine dose, Zients said.

Dr. Rochelle Walensky, head of the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, said she was deeply concerned about the trajectory of COVID-19 cases in the United States. The country’s seven-day average daily case count is up 7% over last week, to 57,000 daily cases.

“We know from higher surges that if we don’t control things now, there is a real potential for the epidemic curve to soar again,” she said.

(Reporting by Carl O’Donnell; Editing by Chizu Nomiyama and Frances Kerry)

More under-30 Americans report anxiety, depression during pandemic – CDC

By Vishwadha Chander

(Reuters) – More young adults in the United States reported feeling anxious or depressed during the past six months of the COVID-19 pandemic, and fewer people reported getting the help they needed, according to a U.S. government study released on Friday.

The percentage of adults under age 30 with recent symptoms of an anxiety or a depressive disorder rose significantly about five months after the U.S. imposed COVID-19 related lockdowns, and reported rising deaths from the fast-spreading virus.

Between August 2020 and February 2021, this number went up to 41.5% from 36.4%, as did the percentage of such people reporting that they needed, but did not receive, mental health counseling.

The study suggests that the rise in anxiety or depressive disorder symptoms reported correspond with the weekly number of reported COVID-19 cases.

The findings are based on a Household Pulse Survey conducted by the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) and the Census Bureau to monitor changes in mental health status and access to care during the pandemic.

“Trends in mental health can be used to evaluate the impact of strategies addressing adult mental health status and care during the pandemic,” the authors of the study wrote in the CDC’s Morbidity and Mortality Weekly Report released on Friday.

The study also found those with less than a high school education were more at risk, though it did not provide an explanation for it.

Even with more vaccines gaining authorization beginning late 2020, the effects of the pandemic on mental health continued into 2021.

During Jan. 20, 2021 through Feb. 1, 2021, about two in five adults aged over 18 years experienced recent symptoms of an anxiety or a depressive disorder, the survey found.

Demand for mental health and meditation apps, and investments in tech startups building these apps have also risen during this period.

(Reporting by Vishwadha Chander in Bengaluru; Editing by Caroline Humer and Shailesh Kuber)

GSK and Vir seek emergency use of COVID-19 therapy in United States

(Reuters) -GSK and Vir Biotechnology have filed an application to U.S. regulators for emergency use authorization of their antibody therapy to treat early-stage COVID-19 infections, the drugmakers said on Friday.

Earlier this month, London-listed GSK and U.S.-based Vir found their experimental treatment, VIR-7831, reduced the risk of hospitalization and deaths among patients by 85%, based on interim data from a study.

The application is to treat adults and adolescents of over 12 yeas of age and weighing at least 40 kilograms that have mild-to-moderate COVID-19 and are at risk of being hospitalized due to severe illness which could also lead to death.

The United States has already recommended similar therapies from Eli Lilly and Regeneron, while European health regulators are reviewing treatments from the class of medicines called monoclonal antibodies.

These monoclonal antibodies are synthetically manufactured copies of the human body’s natural infection-fighting proteins and are already being used to treat some types of cancers. Regeneron’s therapy was given to former U.S. President Donald Trump during his COVID-19 infection.

GSK and Vir said they are in discussions with the European Medicines Agency and other global regulators for approvals of their treatment, part of a wider collaboration on developing COVID-19 drugs based on monoclonal antibodies.

(Reporting by Pushkala Aripaka in Bengaluru and Ludwig Burger in Frankfurt; Editing by Arun Koyyur and Krishna Chandra Eluri)

U.S. COVID-19 cases top 30 million as states race to vaccinate

By Anurag Maan

(Reuters) – The United States crossed 30 million coronavirus cases on Wednesday, according to a Reuters tally, as states accelerate the vaccination process by lowering age limits.

Health authorities are racing to vaccinate in the face of the first uptick in new cases on a weekly basis since January. Against the advice of health experts, several states have lifted mask mandates and more infectious variants have also spread across the nation.

Although cases are trending higher in 30 out of 50 states compared with the previous week, health officials hope the vaccinations will prevent a rise in deaths. The United States has lost a total of 544,000 lives to the virus.

New York on Monday joined Florida and a handful of other states that have made vaccines available to people who are at least 50 years old.

In the past two weeks, many states including Alaska, Arizona and Texas have lowered down their eligibility age for coronavirus vaccines.

Arizona lowered the eligibility age to 16 at state-run vaccination sites in three populous southern counties, effective Wednesday. Three other counties already have eligibility at 16, but most are at 55.

Earlier this month, Alaska became the first U.S. state to make vaccine available to everyone 16 and older and currently has one of the highest vaccination rates in the country, with 31.5% of its residents having received at least one dose, according to data from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.

Nearly one-fourth of Americans have received at least one dose while about 13% of the population is fully vaccinated.

(Reporting by Anurag Maan in Bengaluru; Editing by Lisa Shumaker)

New U.S. COVID-19 cases show weekly uptick for first time since January

(Reuters) – New cases of COVID-19 in the United States rose 5% to more than 394,000 last week, the first increase after declining for nine straight weeks, according to a Reuters analysis of state, county and CDC data.

Thirty out of 50 states reported more new infections in the week ended March 21 compared with the previous seven days, up from 19 states in the prior week, according to the Reuters analysis.

Nationally, the weekly number of new cases had been on a downward trend since January, though health authorities have warned that infections could surge again if Americans relaxed social distancing restrictions too quickly. More infectious variants have also spread across the country.

“I am worried that if we don’t take the right actions now we will have another avoidable surge just as we are seeing in Europe right now and just as we are so aggressively scaling up vaccinations,” said Dr. Rochelle Walensky, director of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, on Monday.

The Northeast logged some of the highest rates of infection per capita, led by New Jersey, New York and Rhode Island.

Deaths from COVID fell 15% to 7,793 last week, or about 1,100 per day, according to the Reuters analysis. Health officials hope the country’s vaccination effort can prevent a rise in deaths even if cases surge again.

For a fourth week, daily average vaccinations set a record, with 2.5 million shots given per day last week. As of Sunday, 25% of the U.S. population has received at least one dose of a vaccine, up from 21% a week ago, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. About 13% has received two doses, up from 11%.

The average number of COVID-19 patients in U.S. hospitals fell 6% to 36,000, the lowest since October, according to a Reuters tally.

Hospitalizations have fallen for 10 weeks nationally, but they are rising in 18 states, up from four states the previous week.

(Graphic by Chris Canipe, writing by Lisa Shumaker, editing by Tiffany Wu)

AstraZeneca vaccine safe and effective in new trial data

FRANKFURT/LONDON (Reuters) – AstraZeneca’s COVID-19 vaccine developed with Oxford University was 79% effective in preventing symptomatic illness in a large trial in Chile, Peru and the United States, the company said on Monday, paving the way for it to apply for U.S. approval.

The vaccine was also 100% effective against severe or critical disease and hospitalization, and was safe, the partners said on Monday, releasing results of the late-stage human trial study of more than 32,000 volunteers across all age groups.

The data will give credence to the British shot after results from earlier, separate late-stage studies raised questions about the robustness of the data.

It will also help to allay safety concerns that have disrupted its use in the European Union after a small number of reports of rare blood clots in people who received the vaccine.

After briefly halting its use, many European countries have resumed using the shot in their inoculation programs after a regional regulator said it was safe, while several country leaders are also taking the vaccine to boost confidence.

AstraZeneca said an independent safety committee conducted a specific review of the blood clots in the U.S. trial, as well as cerebral venous sinus thrombosis (CVST), which is an extremely rare blood clot in the brain, with the help of an independent neurologist.

The London-listed company said the panel found “no increased risk of thrombosis or events characterized by thrombosis among the 21,583 participants receiving at least one dose of the vaccine. The specific search for CVST found no events in this trial.”

“These results are great news as they show the remarkable efficacy of the vaccine in a new population and are consistent with the results from Oxford-led trials,” Andrew Pollard, who runs the Oxford Vaccine Group, said.

AstraZeneca said it was preparing to submit the data to the U.S. Food and Drug Administration and for a launch in the United States should it win Emergency Use Authorization.

University of Oxford professor Sarah Gilbert told BBC radio that work to prepare the submission will take a few weeks.

The efficacy read-out was above a rate of about 60%, cited by the European Union’s drugs regulator in its December recommendation.

It was, however, in line with the maximum efficacy found by Britain’s Medicines and Healthcare products Regulatory Agency (MHRA), based on cases with a three-month gap between the first and the second dose.

In the trial, participants received either two standard doses of the Oxford-AstraZeneca vaccine or a placebo vaccine, at a four-week interval.

Amongst participants in the interim analysis, about 79% were white/Caucasian, 8% black/African American, 4% native American and 4% Asian, and 22% of participants were Hispanic, the company said.

About 20% of participants were 65 years and over, and approximately 60% had co-morbidities associated with an increased risk for progression of severe COVID-19, such as diabetes, severe obesity or cardiac disease.

(Reporting by Ludwig Burger in Frankfurt, Pushkala Aripaka and Muvija M in Bengaluru; Editing by Josephine Mason, Mark Potter, Sherry Jacob-Phillips and Edmund Blair)