Tag Archives: COVID-19

U.S. inks $1.5 billion deal with Moderna for 100 million doses of COVID-19 vaccine

By Jeff Mason and Carl O’Donnell

(Reuters) – The United States has entered an agreement with drugmaker Moderna Inc to acquire 100 million doses of its potential COVID-19 vaccine for around $1.5 billion, the company and White House said on Tuesday.

The United States in recent weeks has made deals to acquire hundreds of millions of doses of potential COVID-19 vaccines from several companies as part of its Operation Warp Speed program, which aims to deliver a vaccine in the country by the end of the year.

Moderna’s price per dose comes to around $30.50 per person for a two dose regimen.

With the exception of its deal with AstraZeneca, which offered a lower price per drug in exchange for upfront research and development costs, all the deals price COVID-19 vaccines between $20 to $42 for a two dose course of treatment.

Moderna’s vaccine candidate, mRNA-1273, is one of the few that have already advanced to the final stage of testing and is on track to be completed in September, the company said this month.

Moderna’s deal with the U.S. only pays out in full if the drugmaker hits certain unspecific timing benchmarks for vaccine delivery.

The United States has advanced purchase agreements with Johnson & Johnson, AstraZeneca Plc, Pfizer Inc and BioNTech SE, and Sanofi SA and GlaxoSmithKline Plc for their respective vaccine candidates.

The agreements would lock in more than 500 million doses of COVID-19 vaccine for the U.S., assuming that the companies involved receive regulatory approval. Some deals also give the United States an option to purchase additional doses.

The U.S. government previously gave Moderna around $1 billion to fund its research efforts, bringing total U.S. funding to around $2.5 billion.

Other countries, including Japan, the United Kingdom and Canada, have forged similar deals with drugmakers.

(Reporting by Jeff Mason and Carl O’Donnell; Editing by Peter Henderson, Chris Reese and Tom Brown)

Mnuchin declines to say if U.S. COVID-19 aid deal can be reached

WASHINGTON (Reuters) – U.S. Treasury Secretary Steven Mnuchin said on Wednesday that the White House and top Democrats in Congress may not be able to reach a deal on coronavirus aid, in the fifth day without talks on the stalemate blocking relief to tens of millions of Americans.

Mnuchin, who spent nearly two weeks trying to broker a deal in talks with House Speaker Nancy Pelosi, Senate Democratic leader Chuck Schumer and White House Chief of Staff Mark Meadows, also described the potential outcome of negotiations in terms of President Donald Trump’s reelection prospects.

“I can’t speculate. If the Democrats are willing to be reasonable, there’s a compromise. If the Democrats are focused on politics and don’t want to do anything that’s going to succeed for the president, there won’t be a deal,” he told Fox Business Network in an interview.

Schumer accused Republicans of refusing to meet in the middle, after Democrats offered to agree on midpoint between Senate Republicans $1 trillion offer and the $3 trillion measure passed by the Democratic-controlled House of Representatives in May. Mnuchin on Wednesday again dismissed the Democrats’ offer as “ridiculous.”

The impasse, which began last Friday when talks broke down without an agreement, has put U.S. investors on edge with more than 5.16 million COVID-19 cases in the United States.

The global pandemic has taken a particularly heavy toll on the United States, where it has killed more than 164,000 people, more than any other country.

(Reporting by Susan Heavey and David Morgan; Editing by Toby Chopra and Chizu Nomiyama)

U.S. companies should consider slavery reparations, Vista Equity CEO says

By Jessica DiNapoli

(Reuters) – The COVID-19 pandemic has hit Black Americans especially hard after decades of social and economic injustices, but it also presents an opportunity for systemic change, said financier Robert Smith, the wealthiest African-American according to Forbes.

In a video interview with Reuters, the CEO of private equity firm Vista Equity Partners said companies that profited from the Transatlantic slave trade should consider making reparations to African-Americans.

“I think that’s going to be a political decision that’s going to have to be made and decided upon. But I think corporations have to also think about, well, what is the right thing to do?” Smith said in a video interview.

Corporations “can bring their expertise and capital to repair the communities that they are directly associated with in the industries in which they cover,” he added. “I think that has to be a very, a very thoughtful approach. But I think action needs to be taken.”

The death of George Floyd in May reignited protests in the United States and globally against racism and police brutality. Floyd, an African-American man, died after a Minneapolis police officer knelt on his neck for more than eight minutes.

“People are saying now, what can I do to make real systemic change and eliminate and eradicate racism in America?” said Smith. “That is an outgrowth of the protest and the realization that this racism is unjust and can’t stand.”

Smith said he was pushing U.S. lawmakers to make more aid available to Black communities. The average small business has two months of working capital, whereas Black businesses have just two weeks, he said.

“How do we restore, repair and regenerate the economic activity in these communities utilizing the force of the U.S. government and business and partnerships?” Smith said.

Smith said he has been focused on getting capital to community development financial institutions and minority depository institutions, that serve Black and economically disadvantaged communities.

Roughly 70% of the African-American community does not have access to a bank branch, he said, leaving many reliant on the financial institutions specifically targeting minorities and economically disadvantaged areas.

Smith, who grew up during the late 1960’s Civil Rights era and now runs a buyout firm that focuses on investing in software companies, said he sees a more broad-based coalition of support for equality for Black people.

“The allies weren’t as widespread,” when he was growing up, Smith said. “Employees of companies are also going to hold the leaders accountable to do something about it. We have a chance for systemic change.”

Smith, the first African-American to sign Warren Buffett and Bill and Melinda Gates’ ‘Giving Pledge’, has supported Black people extensively in his philanthropic efforts. Last year, he pledged to pay off the student loan debt of the class of 2019 at the historically Black Morehouse College.

(Reporting by Jessica DiNapoli in New York; Editing by Greg Roumeliotis and David Gregorio)

U.S. CDC reports 5,064,171 coronavirus cases

(Reuters) – The U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) on Tuesday reported 5,064,171 cases of the novel coronavirus, an increase of 40,522 cases from its previous count, and said that the number of deaths had risen by 565 to 162,407.

The CDC reported its tally of cases of the respiratory illness known as COVID-19, caused by the new coronavirus, as of 4 p.m. ET on Aug. 10 versus its previous report a day earlier.

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

(Reporting By Mrinalika Roy in Bengaluru; Editing by Maju Samuel)

Facebook removes seven million posts for sharing false information on coronavirus

(Reuters) – Facebook Inc. said on Tuesday it removed 7 million posts in the second quarter for sharing false information about the novel coronavirus, including content that promoted fake preventative measures and exaggerated cures.

Facebook released the data as part of its sixth Community Standards Enforcement Report, which it introduced in 2018 along with more stringent decorum rules in response to a backlash over its lax approach to policing content on its platforms.

The company said it would invite external experts to independently audit the metrics used in the report, beginning 2021.

The world’s biggest social media company removed about 22.5 million posts containing hate speech on its flagship app in the second quarter, up from 9.6 million in the first quarter. It also deleted 8.7 million posts connected to extremist organizations, compared with 6.3 million in the prior period.

Facebook said it relied more heavily on automation technology for reviewing content during the months of April, May and June as it had fewer reviewers at its offices due to the COVID-19 pandemic.

That resulted in company taking action on fewer pieces of content related to suicide and self-injury, child nudity and sexual exploitation on its platforms, Facebook said in a blog post.

The company said it was expanding its hate speech policy to include “content depicting blackface, or stereotypes about Jewish people controlling the world.”

Some U.S. politicians and public figures have caused controversies by donning blackface, a practice that dates back to 19th century minstrel shows that caricatured slaves. It has long been used to demean African-Americans.

(Reporting by Katie Paul in San Francisco and Munsif Vengattil in Bengaluru; Additional Reporting by Bart Meijer; Editing by Shinjini Ganguli and Anil D’Silva)

Big U.S. companies form group to boost hiring of minorities in New York

By Kanishka Singh

(Reuters) – Leaders from major U.S. companies, including banks and tech giants, have formed a group aimed at increasing the hiring of individuals from minority communities in New York.

The New York Jobs CEO Council, which counts chief executives from 27 firms among its members, aims to hire 100,000 people from low-income Black, Latino and Asian communities by 2030.

Jamie Dimon, chief executive of JPMorgan Chase & Co, IBM CEO, Arvind Krishna, and Accenture CEO, Julie Sweet, will co-chair the group.

Other companies in the group include Amazon.com Inc., Google, Microsoft Corp. and Goldman Sachs, according to a press statement.

U.S. companies have been under increasing pressure to do more to provide minority groups with access to opportunities in the wake of anti-racism protests sparked by the death of a 46-year-old African-American man, George Floyd. Floyd died in May after a white police officer knelt on his neck for nearly nine minutes.

The protests also came as minorities were disproportionately represented in coronavirus deaths, and lower-income communities in the United States were hit hard economically.

“Today’s economic crisis is exacerbating economic and racial divides and exposing systemic barriers to opportunity,” Dimon said in an opinion piece in the Wall Street Journal on Monday, adding that often high-achieving people across New York were not given opportunities at the city’s top employers.

“Young people in low-income and minority communities feel this failure the most. Unless we actively work to close the gap, COVID-19 will make matters worse,” said the opinion piece which was co-authored with Félix V. Matos Rodríguez, the chancellor of the City University of New York.

(Reporting by Kanishka Singh in Bengaluru; Editing by Edwina Gibbs)

J&J eyes one billion doses of potential COVID-19 shot in 2021, weighs challenge trials

By Francesco Guarascio

BRUSSELS (Reuters) – Johnson & Johnson could produce 1 billion doses of its potential COVID-19 vaccine next year if it proves successful and would consider injecting healthy volunteers with the novel coronavirus if there are not enough patients for final trials, a company executive said.

J&J kicked off in July early-stage human safety trials for its potential COVID-19 vaccine after releasing details of a study in monkeys that showed its best-performing candidate offered strong protection in a single dose.

It is developing the vaccine in collaboration with its Belgian subsidiary, Janssen.

Large-scale trials are set to start by the beginning of October and J&J aims to have results on the vaccine’s efficacy between the end of this year and mid-2021, Johan Van Hoof, head of vaccines at Janssen, told Reuters on Tuesday in a telephone interview.

Earlier on Tuesday, President Vladimir Putin said Russia had become the first country to grant regulatory approval to a COVID-19 vaccine after less than two months of human testing, and before large-scale trials had been conducted.

Van Hoof said that production of the vaccine had already begun despite the financial risks involved, to make sure it would be available as soon as possible should it prove effective against the new coronavirus.

Several million doses will be ready by the beginning of 2021, with a total capacity of 1 billion shots by the end of the year, he said. He added that the company was likely to favor a single-jab approach, although a final decision on whether a booster would be needed had not yet been made.

ETHICAL ISSUES

Outcomes of large-scale, or Phase III, trials will depend on the incidence of infections, Van Hoof said, with faster results expected with higher virus transmission.

That is why J&J is likely to conduct those trials in the United States and Latin America, the world’s regions currently with the highest number of cases.

If infections drop significantly, J&J is also considering so-called challenge trials, in which volunteers are infected with the virus so that a vaccine candidate can be tested on them.

“We are looking into that possibility,” Van Hoof said, noting though that such trials posed ethical issues that needed to be resolved before they could be conducted. For instance, an effective therapy against the disease should be available to minimize risks for volunteers exposed to the virus.

In May British drugmaker AstraZeneca, which is developing a leading coronavirus vaccine with Oxford University, said it was too early to deliberately expose trial participants to the pathogen, but that may become an option if ongoing tests hit a snag.

Van Hoof said that preparations to stock the virus for possible challenge trials were already underway and J&J was part of ongoing discussions with universities and other bodies involved in these projects.

“We find it a very interesting idea,” he said, adding however, that setting up facilities for such trials would perhaps take longer than testing vaccines on people who are already infected in the community – as long as transmission remained relatively high.

(Reporting by Francesco Guarascio; editing by Emelia Sithole-Matarise)

U.S. health chief, visiting Taiwan, attacks China’s pandemic response

By Yimou Lee

TAIPEI (Reuters) – U.S. Health Secretary Alex Azar attacked China’s response to the coronavirus pandemic on Tuesday and said that if such an outbreak had emerged in Taiwan or the United States it could have been “snuffed out easily”.

The Trump administration has repeatedly criticized Beijing for trying to cover up the virus outbreak, first identified in the central Chinese city of Wuhan late last year, and prevaricating on information sharing. China angrily denies the accusations.

“The Chinese Communist Party had the chance to warn the world and work with the world on battling the virus. But they chose not to, and the costs of that choice mount higher every day,” Azar said in Taipei, capital of self-ruled Taiwan, an island China claims as its own.

As the virus emerged, China did not live up to its “binding” international obligations in a betrayal of the cooperative spirit needed for global health, he added, wearing a face mask as he has done for all his public events in Taiwan.

“I believe it is no exaggeration to say that if this virus had emerged in a place like Taiwan or the United States, it might have been snuffed out easily: rapidly reported to public health authorities, who would have shared what they knew with health professionals and with the general public,” Azar said.

“Instead, Beijing appears to have resisted information sharing, muzzling doctors who spoke out and hobbling the world’s ability to respond.”

The United States has the highest number of coronavirus infections and deaths in the world and President Donald Trump has come under scathing attack from critics at home for not taking what he calls the “China virus” seriously enough.

Taiwan has been praised by health experts for its early and effective steps to control the outbreak, with only 480 infections, including seven deaths.

Azar arrived in Taiwan on Sunday as the highest-level U.S. official to visit in four decades, a trip condemned by China.

China considers Taiwan a breakaway province and has vowed to bring it under its rule, by force if necessary.

Chinese fighter jets on Monday briefly crossed the median line of the sensitive Taiwan Strait, and were tracked by Taiwanese anti-aircraft missiles, part of what Taipei sees as a pattern of harassment by Beijing.

Washington broke off official ties with Taipei in 1979 in favor of Beijing but is still Taiwan’s biggest arms supplier. The Trump administration has made strengthening its support for the democratic island a priority as relations with China sour over issues including human rights, the pandemic, Hong Kong and trade.

Azar said the world should recognize Taiwan’s health accomplishments and not try to push it out, pointing to Taiwan’s exclusion from the World Health Organization due to Chinese objections.

“This behavior is in keeping with Beijing’s approach to WHO and other international organisations. The influence of the PRC (People’s Republic of China) far outweighs its investment in this public health institution – and it uses influence not to advance public health objectives, but its own narrow political interests.”

Both China and the WHO say Taiwan has been provided with the help it needs during the pandemic, which Taiwan disputes.

(Reporting by Yimou Lee; Writing by Ben Blanchard; Editing by Lincoln Feast and Nick Macfie)

Some U.S. colleges stick to in-person reopening in pandemic despite doubts, pushback

By Jan Wolfe and Catherine Koppel

(Reuters) – Many U.S. universities are revamping campuses to resume in-person classes despite COVID-19, requiring students to be tested, wear masks and socially distance, but some college town residents and critics say schools are putting profits before public safety.

Tulane University, a private college in New Orleans, plans to reopen on Aug. 19 to as many as 13,000 students. Before students move in to dormitories, they must report to an “Arrival Center” at a city hotel “where they will be guided through two days consisting of COVID-19 testing and orientation sessions” according to Tulane’s published guidance.

Maintenance workers at Tulane and other colleges are fitting auditoriums and classrooms with signage for social distancing. Students are being asked to wear masks, and at Tulane, those who host parties or gatherings with more than 15 people could face expulsion, the college said.

Rice University in Houston, Texas has contracted for 60,000 COVID-19 tests, and has bought temporary structures and open-sided tents for classes and meeting space.

Cornell University in Ithaca, New York, will require that students enter into a “behavioral compact” aimed at stemming the spread of the novel coronavirus, which has killed more than 162,000 people in the United States and infected over five million.

Tulane president Michael Fitts said enrollment has been largely unaffected by the pandemic.

“The interest in sort of the classic, undergraduate, on-ground experience has never been stronger,” he said.

While college presidents like Fitts say public health is paramount, some industry experts point to schools’ powerful financial motivation to be on campus and in residences because of auxiliary revenue from services such as dining halls, bookstores, and vending machines.

“I don’t think it’s only about money – but it leads with money,” higher education researcher Jeff Selingo said. “Their entire business model, including their financial stability, is predicated on bringing people together in close proximity.”

HYBRIDS

Some colleges, however, are lowering the number of people allowed on campus to reduce risk of contagion, offering hybrids of in-person and online learning or altering the academic year’s structure.

When the novel coronavirus shook the world back in March, U.S. colleges almost uniformly shut down, dormitories emptied and classes moved online.

“What we are seeing this fall is a million different scenarios,” Selingo said.

In late May, about two-thirds of U.S. colleges and universities said they were planning to resume in-person instruction in the fall, according to data compiled by the Chronicle of Higher Education. That number declined to about 50 percent as of late July.

Johns Hopkins University, a research institution in Baltimore, Maryland, is one of several schools that abandoned plans to have students return to campus.

“Unfortunately, the pandemic is worsening,” Johns Hopkins President Ronald Daniels said in an Aug. 6 letter. “We have concluded that returning in person would pose unacceptable risks.”

Cornell, which has about 23,000 students, has said that in-person classes actually will result in fewer coronavirus cases than a virtual semester.

Thousands of students live off-campus, and many have indicated they will return to Ithaca even if classes are online, Cornell president Martha Pollack said in an Aug. 5 letter.

Resuming campus life makes it easier to monitor and test those students, wrote Pollack, who declined to be interviewed for this article.

Students, for example, will have to fill out a daily online health assessment as part of a behavioral compact and will face penalties, including suspension, for misleading the school.

Still, Cornell’s plan has drawn objections from some Ithaca residents. Ri Bornstein, an artist and administrative assistant, said townspeople have kept the virus under control by acting responsibly and that some students who already have returned to campus are not.

“Cornell is saying people will act appropriately, but then I look outside and see frat parties,” Bornstein said.

“They are enacting the plan that’s about the most possible profit for them,” he asserted, saying Cornell’s modeling seems questionable and self-serving.

Pollack’s letter said that the reopening plan was driven by science, not financial considerations.

Pollack said that while there could be more than a thousand coronavirus cases during the coming semester, online learning would result in several thousand infections, according to statistical modeling done by Cornell data scientist Peter Frazier.

“As we all have learned, there are no perfect solutions to this deeply imperfect situation,” she said. “All we can do is strive our hardest for the best solutions we can find.”

(Reporting by Jan Wolfe and Catherine Koppel; editing by Noeleen Walder and Grant McCool)

Mexico to conduct late-stage trials for China, US COVID-19 vaccines

MEXICO CITY (Reuters) – Mexico will conduct late-stage clinical trials for COVID-19 vaccines in development by Johnson & Johnson and two Chinese companies, the foreign ministry said on Tuesday.

Large-scale, phase three human testing for the J&J unit Janssen Pharmaceuticals’ candidate could start in the second half of September, the company has previously said.

Mexico will also help test candidates for Chinese companies CanSino Biologics Inc and Walvax Biotechnology Co Ltd, the ministry said in a presentation at a news conference.

More than 150 vaccines are being developed and tested around the world to stop the COVID-19 pandemic, with 25 in human clinical trials, according to the World Health Organization.

Russia is the first country to approve a COVID-19 vaccine, which it named ‘Sputnik V’ for foreign markets, an official said on Tuesday.

Johnson & Johnson kicked off U.S. human safety trials in July for its COVID-19 vaccine after releasing details of a study in monkeys that showed its best-performing vaccine candidate offered strong protection in a single dose.

Walvax’s experimental vaccine is currently under early testing at a Chinese military research institute.

CanSino Biologics’ vaccine candidate is already in clinical trials. The company is also collaborating with Canada’s National Research Council to “pave the way” for future trials in Canada, the research council in May.

Mexico has lobbied in world forums including at the G20 group of nations and the United Nations to secure equitable access for an eventual vaccine.

Latin America’s second largest economy has suffered more than 50,000 deaths from COVID-19, according to official data, making it the third country with most deaths globally.

It ranks 13th adjusted for deaths per capita, according to Johns Hopkins University School of Medicine.

(Reporting by Frank Jack Daniel; Editing by Chizu Nomiyama and Alistair Bell)