Tag Archives: COVID-19

Surveillance scheme hunts for COVID traces in Israel’s sewers

ASHKELON, Israel (Reuters) – Sewer surveillance in Israel’s coastal city of Ashkelon has pinpointed unknown outbreaks of COVID-19 by identifying traces of the virus in the sewage system.

The project, similar to those undertaken in other countries, was carried out by wastewater management technology firm Kando and researchers from Israeli educational institutions including Ben Gurion University and the Technion in Haifa.

The research pointed to wastewater as a means of detecting outbreaks of the disease early as well as the ability to narrow hotspots down to specific streets, Kando said on Thursday.

Early studies by scientists in The Netherlands, France, Australia and elsewhere suggest sewage sampling for signs of the SARS-CoV-2 coronavirus could help assess the number of infections in a geographic area, without having to test every person.

Samples of wastewater from the Paris sewage system have been showing traces of COVID-19 again since the end of June, having vanished when France imposed a lockdown.

For the Israeli pilot study, the coastal city of Ashkelon, with 150,000 residents, was chosen as it was thought to have a low number of cases. But researchers discovered significant remnants of the coronavirus in municipal wastewater, Kando said.

The results suggest that tracking coronavirus remnants in the sewer network can be a more efficient gauge of the extent of outbreaks than testing individuals, especially given the asymptomatic nature of many suffering from COVID-19, it said.

“This will allow authorities to take actions to contain future outbreaks,” said Nadav Davidovitch, director of Ben Gurion University’s School of Public Health.

Kando said it is in talks with several cities in Israel and abroad about deploying the system.

(Reporting by Tova Cohen and Amir Cohen; Editing by Steven Scheer and Mike Collett-White)

UPS profit beats as pandemic drives healthcare, e-commerce shipments

(Reuters) – United Parcel Service Inc <UPS.N> exceeded analyst estimates for profit and revenue on Thursday as lucrative healthcare and air shipments helped offset a margin squeeze from surging e-commerce home deliveries, sending shares up 11.5%.

The novel coronavirus pandemic is driving more shipments in everything from face masks and medical equipment to food and furniture.

UPS is raising prices, containing costs and investing in projects to speed up service as it manages economic uncertainty – particularly in the United States, where COVID-19 deaths are spiking, unemployment benefits could shrink, and a presidential election looms in November.

“The fact that margins compressed so little on 65% growth in residential deliveries is encouraging. The company did much better than (Wall) Street was expecting adjusting the network to more residential demand,” Bernstein analyst David Vernon said.

UPS shares jumped 10.6% to $136.82 in early trading. The stock is up roughly 6% this year, outperforming the 9% decline in the Dow Jones Transports index <.DJI>.

The report was the first from UPS Chief Executive Carol Tomé, who took the helm at the world’s biggest package delivery firm on June 1. She is the first outsider to lead UPS in its more than 100-year history.

Average daily volumes in the United States jumped 22.8% to 21.1 million daily packages during the second quarter.

That came at a cost, since dropping packages on doorsteps is less lucrative than delivering to businesses as it requires more truck miles and stops per route.

Amazon.com Inc <AMZN.O>, its largest customer, drove much of that growth.

UPS also grabbed more air cargo from Asia, in part due to rival FedEx Corp’s <FDX.N> split with Amazon last summer. Rates for air cargo were sky-high in the second quarter.

Atlanta-based UPS said net income rose 4.9% to $1.77 billion in the quarter. Excluding items, it earned $2.13 per share, beating estimates of $1.07 per share.

Revenue grew 13.4% to $20.46 billion, beating estimates for $17.48 billion, according to IBES data from Refinitiv.

(Reporting by Sanjana Shivdas in Bengaluru and Lisa Baertlein in Los Angeles; Editing by Amy Caren Daniel and Bernadette Baum)

Coronavirus spikes in Asia spur warnings against complacency

By Colin Packham and Alasdair Pal

SYDNEY/NEW DELHI (Reuters) – Spikes in novel coronavirus infections in Asia have dispelled any notion the region may be over the worst, with Australia, India and Hong Kong reporting record daily cases, Vietnam testing thousands and North Korea urging vigilance.

Asian governments had largely prided themselves on rapidly containing initial outbreaks after the virus emerged in central China late last year, but flare-ups this month have shown the danger of complacency.

“We’ve got to be careful not to slip into some idea that there’s some golden immunity that Australia has in relation to this virus,” Prime Minister Scott Morrison told reporters.

Australia recorded its deadliest day with at least 13 deaths and more than 700 new infections, mostly in the second-most populous state of Victoria, where the government ordered all residents to wear face-coverings outside.

The country has confirmed a total of 16,298 cases since the pandemic began, with 189 fatalities, more than half in Victoria and its capital Melbourne, which is under a new lockdown.

Victoria’s new infections have seeded outbreaks in other areas, including Australia’s most populous state, New South Wales, which reported 18 new cases.

Further restrictions on movement would deal a blow to the economy, already in its first recession for 30 years, but failure to control the outbreaks would do more economic harm in the long run, Morrison said.

‘FULL FORCE TO TEST’

Vietnam, virus-free for months, has also had a harsh reminder of the dangers with a new surge spreading to six cities and provinces in six days, linked to an outbreak in the central city of Danang.

Authorities told tens of thousands of people who visited Danang to report to disease control centres, as nine new cases were confirmed, taking total infections to 42 since the virus resurfaced at the weekend.

Cases have also appeared in the capital, Hanoi, the southern commercial hub of Ho Chi Minh City and in the Central Highlands.

Thanks to a centralised quarantine programme and aggressive contact-tracing, Vietnam has registered a total of only 459 cases, with no deaths.

But now more than 81,000 people are in quarantine and authorities in Hanoi said the more than 20,000 residents who recently returned from Danang, a holiday getaway that has been a big draw since restrictions were eased, would be tested.

Hanoi also banned big gatherings and ordered bars closed while its chairman, Nguyen Duc Chung, declared the city must “act now and act fast”.

“We have to use full force to test all 21,063 returnees,” Chung said. “All must be done in three days.”

India reported more than 52,000 new cases over the previous 24 hours, its highest in a single day and taking its tally to almost 1.6 million.

India has the third highest number of infections globally, and while its major cities like New Delhi and Mumbai have seen their case-loads ease, infections are increasing sharply in rural areas.

Hong Kong also reported a daily record with 149 new cases, including 145 that were locally transmitted, as authorities warned that the global financial hub faced a critical period.

The Chinese territory reported 118 new cases on Wednesday. More than 3,000 people have been infected in Hong Kong, 24 of whom have died.

NORTH KOREAN WARNING

China reported 105 new coronavirus cases on the mainland, up from 101 the previous day, with 96 of them in the far western region of Xinjiang, five in the northeastern province of Liaoning, one was in Beijing and three imported cases.

As of Wednesday, China had 84,165 confirmed cases, with 4,634 deaths.

Isolated North Korea was on alert after a defector suspected of having the virus sneaked back in from South Korea.

North Korea, which says it has had no domestic cases, imposed strict quarantine and screening in Kaesong, just north of the border with South Korea, where the suspected infection was reported in a 24-year-old man who defected to South Korea in 2017 and slipped back in to the North this month.

North Korea has not confirmed the man tested positive for the virus but said he was showing symptoms.

The Rodong Sinmun newspaper, a ruling Workers’ Party mouthpiece, warned against carelessness.

“A moment of inattention could cause a fatal crisis,” it said.

(Reporting by Colin Packham in Sydney, Phuong Nguyen in Hanoi, Hyonhee Shin in Seoul, Huizhong Wu and Judy Hua in Beijing and Alasdair Pal in New Delhi; Writing by Robert Birsel, Editing by Raju Gopalakrishnan and Edwina Gibbs)

UK worries about second COVID-19 wave in Europe, more quarantine steps possible

By Estelle Shirbon

LONDON (Reuters) – British authorities are worried about a second wave of coronavirus infections in Europe and will not hesitate to bring back more quarantine measures, possibly within the next few days, as they did with Spain.

Prime Minister Boris Johnson said COVID-19 was under some measure of control in Britain, but a resurgence in some European countries showed the pandemic was not over.

“It is absolutely vital as a country that we continue to keep our focus and our discipline, and that we don’t delude ourselves that somehow we are out of the woods or that that is all over, because it isn’t all over,” he said.

Last weekend Britain re-imposed a 14-day quarantine period on people arriving from Spain, a move that caused havoc with the reopening of the continent for tourism in the summer high season.

Health minister Matt Hancock stopped short of naming other European countries that might end up back on the quarantine list, but cited France as an example of one where infections have lately risen.

“I am worried about a second wave. I think you can see a second wave starting to roll across Europe, and we’ve got to do everything we can to prevent it from reaching these shores, and to tackle it,” Hancock said during an interview on Sky News.

When asked whether Britons should be prepared for more measures to be announced within the next few days, he said yes.

“The number of cases have gone up sharply in some countries in Europe … France now has more cases than we do, per day, and in Spain we saw the numbers shoot up which is why we had to take the rapid action that we did,” Hancock said on Talk Radio.

France reported almost 1,400 new cases on Wednesday, the highest daily increase in more than a month.

Britain reported 763 new confirmed cases on Wednesday.

Hancock said the authorities were working on possible ways to shorten the quarantine period for people coming from Spain, such as by testing them during the quarantine period.

“But we are not imminently making an announcement on it,” he said in a BBC television interview.

In Britain, the number of cases had stopped falling and was at best flat, which was a result of increased social contact as lockdown measures have gradually been eased, Hancock said. He urged people to keep following social distancing guidelines.

An analysis from Britain’s statistics office showed on Thursday that the United Kingdom has suffered the highest rate of excess deaths during the COVID-19 pandemic in a comparison of 21 European countries.

(Writing by Estelle Shirbon; Editing by Peter Graff and Frances Kerry)

Johnson & Johnson starts human study of COVID-19 vaccine after promising monkey data

By Julie Steenhuysen

(Reuters) – Johnson & Johnson on Thursday kicked off U.S. human safety trials 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.

When exposed to the virus, six out of six animals who got the vaccine candidate were completely protected from lung disease and five out of six were protected from infection as measured by the presence of virus in nasal swabs, according to the study published in the journal Nature.

“This gives us confidence that we can test a single-shot vaccine in this epidemic and learn whether it has a protective effect in humans,” Dr. Paul Stoffels, J&J’s chief scientific officer, told Reuters in a telephone interview.

The drugmaker said it had started early-stage human trials in the United States and Belgium and would test its vaccine candidate in more than 1,000 healthy adults aged 18 to 55 years, as well as adults aged 65 years and older.

The U.S. government is backing J&J’s vaccine effort with $456 million in funding as part of a spending spree aimed at speeding production of a vaccine to end the pandemic, which has infected millions and killed more than 660,000 people.

Stoffels said prior tests of this type of vaccine in other diseases found that a second shot significantly increases protection. But in a pandemic a single-shot vaccine has a significant advantage, sidestepping a lot of the logistical issues involved in getting people to come back for their second dose.

The company plans to take up the question of one or two doses in its phase 1 trial.

Depending on those results, J&J plans to start large-scale, phase 3 testing with a single-shot regimen in the second half of September. Around the same time, the company will start a parallel phase 3 study testing a two-shot regimen of the vaccine, Stoffels said.

“The Johnson & Johnson vaccine is exciting because it’s a single dose,” White House Coronavirus Task Force Coordinator Deborah Birx said in an interview with Fox News.

Having one dose “show protection in monkeys like the other vaccines have shown with two doses does shorten the time period for development because your readout becomes 30 days quicker,” she said.

J&J’s vaccine uses a common cold virus known as adenovirus type 26, or Ad26, to ferry coronavirus proteins into cells in the body, causing the body to mount an immune defense against the virus.

In the monkey study, scientists from J&J and Harvard’s Beth Israel Deaconess Medical Center studied seven different potential vaccines in 32 animals and compared the results to 20 control animals who got placebo shots.

Six weeks later, all of the animals were exposed to the SARS-CoV-2 virus. All 20 animals that received the placebo developed high levels of virus in their lungs and nasal swabs.

In the best-performing candidate, which J&J selected for human testing, none of the animals had virus in their lungs and only one showed low levels of virus in nasal swabs. Lab tests showed they all had developed antibodies capable of neutralizing the virus after a single shot.

“This study shows that even just a single immunization with the Ad26 vaccine leads to neutralizing antibody responses and robust protection of monkeys against COVID-19,” said Dr. Dan Barouch, a vaccine researcher at Beth Israel Deaconness who led the research in collaboration with J&J.

J&J shares were up nearly 2% at $149.93 before the market open on Thursday.

(Reporting by Julie Steenhuysen in Chicago; Additional reporting by Ankur Banerjee in Bengaluru and Lisa Lambert in Washington; Editing by Richard Pullin, Shounak Dasgupta and Paul Simao)

COVID-19 tanks U.S. economy in second quarter, outlook shaky

By Lucia Mutikani

WASHINGTON (Reuters) – The U.S. economy contracted at its steepest pace since the Great Depression in the second quarter as the COVID-19 pandemic shattered consumer and business spending, and a nascent recovery is under threat from a resurgence in new cases of coronavirus.

Gross domestic product collapsed at a 32.9% annualized rate last quarter, the deepest decline in output since the government started keeping records in 1947, the Commerce Department said on Thursday. The drop in GDP was more than triple the previous all-time decline of 10% in the second quarter of 1958. The economy contracted at a 5.0% pace in the first quarter.

Economists polled by Reuters had forecast GDP plunging at a 34.1% rate in the April-June quarter.

The bulk of the historic tumble in GDP occurred in April when activity almost ground to an abrupt halt after restaurants, bars and factories among others were shuttered in mid-March to slow the spread of the coronavirus.

Though activity picked up starting in May, momentum has slowed amid a resurgence in new cases of the illness, especially in the densely populated South and West regions where authorities in hard-hit areas are closing businesses again or pausing reopenings. That has tempered hopes of a sharp rebound in growth in the third quarter.

Federal Reserve Chair Jerome Powell on Wednesday acknowledged the slowdown in activity. The U.S. central bank kept interest rates near zero and pledged to continue pumping money into the economy.

“The bottom fell out of the economy in the second quarter,” said Sung Won Sohn, a finance and economics professor at Loyola Marymount University in Los Angeles. “The outlook is not very good. Americans are not behaving well in terms of social distancing, the infection rate is unacceptably high and that means economic growth cannot gain any traction.”

The plunge in GDP and faltering recovery could put pressure on the White House and Congress to agree on a second stimulus package. President Donald Trump, whose opinion poll numbers have tanked as he struggles to manage the pandemic, economic crisis and protests over racial injustice three months before the Nov. 3 election, said on Wednesday he was in no hurry.

Economists say without the historic fiscal package of nearly $3 trillion, the economic contraction would have been deeper. The package offered companies help paying wages and gave millions of unemployed Americans a weekly $600 supplement, which expires on Saturday. Many companies have exhausted their loans.

This, together with the sky-rocketing coronavirus infections is keeping layoffs elevated. In a separate report on Thursday, the Labor Department said initial claims for unemployment benefits totaled 1.434 million in the week ending July 25.

(Reporting by Lucia Mutikani; Editing by Chris Reese)

U.S. records 10,000 coronavirus deaths in 11 days as fatalities surpass 150,000

By Lisa Shumaker

(Reuters) – U.S. deaths from the novel coronavirus surpassed 150,000 on Wednesday, the highest level in the world and rising by 10,000 in 11 days, according to a Reuters tally.

This is the fastest increase in fatalities since the United States went from 100,000 cases to 110,000 cases in 11 days in early June, according to the tally. (Graphic: https://tmsnrt.rs/2P87LUu)

Nationally, COVID-19 deaths have risen for three weeks in a row while the number of new cases week-over-week recently fell for the first time since June.

A spike in infections in Arizona, California, Florida and Texas this month has overwhelmed hospitals. The rise has forced states to make a U-turn on reopening economies that were restricted by lockdowns in March and April to slow the spread of the virus.

Texas leads the nation with nearly 4,000 deaths so far this month, followed by Florida with 2,900 and California, the most populous state, with 2,500. The Texas figure includes a backlog of hundreds of deaths after the state changed the way it counted COVID-19 fatalities.

While deaths have rapidly risen in July in these three states, New York and New Jersey still lead the nation in total lives lost and for deaths per capita, according to a Reuters tally.

Of the 20 countries with the biggest outbreak, the United States ranks sixth for deaths per capita, at 4.5 fatalities per 10,000 people. It is exceeded by the United Kingdom, Spain, Italy, Peru and Chile.

(Reporting by Lisa Shumaker; Editing by Aurora Ellis)

Boeing cuts output of big jets as pandemic hammers sales

By Ankit Ajmera and Eric M. Johnson

(Reuters) – Boeing Co <BA.N> slashed production on its widebody programs, delayed the arrival of its newest jet, and confirmed the demise of its iconic 747, as it reported a bigger-than-expected quarterly loss on Wednesday amid fallout from the COVID-19 pandemic.

The U.S. planemaker, which is also grappling with the 16-month-old ban on its 737 MAX after fatal crashes, delayed its timeline to hit build rates of 31 narrowbodies monthly to early 2022 from 2021, as the pandemic decimates new jet demand.

The production cuts reflect concern among aviation companies across the board about the pace of the coronavirus recovery. Global airlines warned on Tuesday it would take a year longer than expected for air traffic to return to normal levels, with long-range travel hit harder than short hops.

The outbreak has crippled passenger travel and pushed major airlines to the brink of bankruptcy, resulting in many carriers deferring aircraft deliveries.

Boeing also confirmed the last 747, the iconic hump-topped jumbo jet that democratized global air travel in the 1970s but fell behind modern twin-engine aircraft, would roll out of its Seattle-area factory in around two years.

Boeing Chief Executive Dave Calhoun said the Chicago-based company was working closely with airlines and suppliers to manage a COVID-19 recovery process that could take three years.

“Air travel has always proven to be resilient – and so has Boeing,” Calhoun added.

The 737 MAX grounding has cost Boeing some $20 billion, ousted executives, halted production and hobbled its supply chain, with criminal and congressional investigations and lawsuits still ongoing.

The coronavirus pandemic has exacerbated this crisis.

Boeing will now reduce 787 production to six jets a month in 2021 – a third rate drop from a year ago, when it was producing the Dreamliners at a record monthly rate of 14 planes.

Boeing also said it would again reduce the combined production rate of the 777 and 777X jets to two planes per month in 2021, while delaying the 777X’s entry into service by up to a year, as Reuters previously reported.

Boeing’s commercial airplanes operating profit was hit by $845 million in abnormal production costs on 737 and factory closures related to COVID-19 fears. Boeing also logged $468 million in severance expenses related to reducing its roughly 160,000 workforce by 10%, saying on Wednesday deeper cuts were possible.

“We’ll have to further assess the size of our workforce,” Calhoun told employees in a memo on Wednesday.

While Calhoun said the 737 MAX certification process was proceeding well, investors on an analyst call will be waiting for any signal that Boeing would push back the already delayed timeline for resuming MAX deliveries beyond end-September. That means the jet’s U.S. return to service could slip to 2021.

“The plethora of downside risks are not fully reflected in Boeing’s current share price,” Vertical Research Partners analyst Rob Stallard said, noting that clearing an inventory of some 400 built MAX aircraft could take longer than expected.

Shares were down 1.1%.

On an adjusted basis, Boeing lost $4.79 per share, bigger than analysts’ average estimate of a loss of $2.54, according to IBES data from Refinitiv.

The company’s sales tumbled 25% to $11.81 billion in the quarter, missing estimates of $13.16 billion.

(Reporting by Eric M. Johnson in Seattle and Ankit Ajmera in Bengaluru; Additional reporting by David Shepardson in Washington and Tracy Rucinski in Chicago; Editing by Sriraj Kalluvila and Nick Zieminski)

‘Vaccine nationalism’: Is it every country for itself?

By Kate Kelland and Julie Steenhuysen

LONDON/CHICAGO (Reuters) – It’s dog eat dog in the world of COVID-19 vaccines.

That’s the fear of global health agencies planning a scheme to bulk-buy and equitably distribute vaccines around the world. They are watching with dismay as some wealthier countries have decided to go it alone, striking deals with drugmakers to secure millions of doses of promising candidates for their citizens.

The deals – including those agreed by the United States, Britain and the European Union with the likes of Pfizer, BioNtech, AstraZeneca and Moderna – are undermining the global drive, experts say.

“Everybody doing bilateral deals is not a way to optimize the situation,” said Seth Berkley, chief executive of the GAVI alliance which co-leads the scheme called COVAX designed to secure rapid and fair global access to COVID-19 vaccines.

Pfizer said this week it was in concurrent talks with the EU and several of its member states on supplying them with its potential vaccine.

And in the latest swoop, Britain announced a deal on Wednesday to secure advanced supplies of potential COVID-19 vaccines from GlaxoSmithKline and Sanofi.

This, according to global health charity Medecins Sans Frontieres (MSF), will further fuel “the global scramble to hoard vaccines by rich countries” and feed “a dangerous trend of vaccine nationalism”.

The concern is that vaccine supply and allocation in this pandemic will echo the last – caused by the H1N1 flu virus in 2009/2010 – when rich nations bought up the available supply of vaccines, initially leaving poor countries with none.

In that instance, since H1N1 turned out to be a milder disease and the pandemic ultimately petered out, the impact on infections and deaths from vaccine imbalances was limited.

However COVID-19 is a far greater threat, and leaving swathes of the world’s people vulnerable will not only harm them, but also extend the pandemic and the damage it can cause, health experts say.

“There is a risk that some countries are doing exactly what we feared – which is every man for himself,” said Gayle Smith, former head of the U.S. Agency for International Development and CEO of the One Campaign, a non-profit aimed at ending poverty and preventable disease.

‘I AM WORRIED’

More than 75 wealthier countries including Britain have expressed interest in the COVAX financing scheme, which is also co-led by the World Health Organization and the Coalition for Epidemic Preparedness Innovations, or CEPI, joining 90 poorer ones who would be supported through donations.

But the United States, China and Russia are not among countries expressing interest in COVAX, according to GAVI.

And an EU source said last week that the European Commission, which is the bloc’s executive arm and leads EU talks with drugmakers, has advised EU countries not to buy COVID-19 vaccines via COVAX.

“I am worried,” said Thomas Bollyky, director of the global health program at the Council on Foreign Relations. “What is happening with the handful of nations that are locking up supply of vaccine competes with the multilateral supply deals.

“At the end of the day, vaccine manufacturing is a finite resource. You can expand it, but only so much.”

Experts estimate the world can reasonably hope to have around 2 billion doses of effective COVID-19 vaccines by the end of next year, if several of the leading candidates prove effective in expedited late-stage trials currently underway. COVAX’s aim is to distribute doses for at least 20% of its signed-up countries’ populations.

ANOTHER TWO YEARS?

Berkley of GAVI said, however, that if self-interested countries or regions snapped those up to cover their entire populations – instead of sharing them across nations and protecting the most at-risk people first – the pandemic could not be controlled.

“If you were to try to vaccinate the entire U.S., (and) the entire EU, for example, with two doses of vaccine – then you’d get to about 1.7 billion doses. And if that is the number of doses that’s available, there’s not a lot left for others.”

If a handful, or even 30 or 40 countries have vaccines, but more than 150 others don’t, “then the epidemic will rage there” Berkley said.

“This virus … moves around like lightning. So you’ll end up in a situation where you will not be able to go back to normal. You won’t be able to have commerce, tourism, travel, trade, unless you can get the whole pandemic to be slowed down.”

He and Smith and other health experts said ending the pandemic meant ending it globally.

“It’s the difference from a pandemic (for) another two years as opposed to one year,” Smith added. “The economics and health consequences of that are enormous.”

(Reporting by Kate Kelland in London and Julie Steenhuysen in Chicago; Editing by Pravin Char)

Florida reports record increase in COVID-19 deaths for second day in a row

(Reuters) – Florida reported a record increase in new COVID-19 deaths for a second day in a row on Wednesday, with 217 fatalities in the last 24 hours, according to the state health department.

Florida also reported 9,446 new cases, bringing its total infections to over 451,000, the second highest in the country behind California. Florida’s total death toll rose to 6,457, the eighth highest in the nation, according to a Reuters tally.

(Reporting by Lisa Shumaker; Editing by Chris Reese)