Tag Archives: COVID-19

As coronavirus ‘storm cloud’ gathers, church in Missouri braces for mourning

By Makini Brice

(Reuters) – When Traci Blackmon, the senior pastor for a predominantly black church in the suburbs of St. Louis, Missouri, is finally able to open the doors for service again, one of her main concerns is the collective sorrow her congregation will experience.

Five members of her 180-strong congregation have gotten sick from the coronavirus and two have died. Two others have died during lockdown due to other causes.

But because the doors of Christ the King United Church of Christ have been closed since the end of March to help stop the spread of the virus, members of the church have not been able to be together and console each other.

“It’s almost like a suspended grief,” said Pastor Blackmon. “It’s like when a storm cloud is hanging over and you know that it is going to rain, but it hasn’t fully rained yet.”

Protestant churches with predominantly African-American congregations has played a crucial role in U.S. history, forging historically black colleges and universities such as Morehouse College in Georgia, fueling the Civil Rights Movement, and serving as campaign stop mainstays for political candidates interested in appealing to black voters.

Many of these churches are now bracing to play a prominent role as the United States grieves for its coronavirus dead.

More than 98,000 people in the United States have lost their lives after battling COVID-19, the respiratory disease caused by the novel coronavirus, and a disproportionate number of them have been black.

In Missouri, while only 11.8% of the state’s residents are black, they account for 37% of reported deaths from COVID-19, according to figures released by the Missouri Department of Health.

Similar racial disparities have appeared across the United States.

Black Americans are the most religious ethnic group in the country, with nearly half attending religious service at least once a week.

One of those faithful was Christ the King’s Eugene Young.

Young would drive his wife, Annie, who he married nearly 45 years ago, to and from church services in the St. Louis area every Sunday, she recalled recently in a telephone interview. He called her “Precious” and was always able to make her laugh. She called him “Sunshine.”

She described a “storybook romance,” with three sons she calls her “kings,” 10 grandchildren and three great-grandchildren.

Young became sick from the coronavirus in April, though it remains unclear how he caught it. He died at the age of 61, on Easter Sunday, April 12.

“It’s so fresh for me. It’s still unbelievable to me,” Annie Young said.

Because of social distancing guidelines to stop the spread of the virus, Young’s family had a visitation at a funeral home, not the church, limited to ten people at a time. There was no touching or hugging to comfort family members. Everyone needed to wear a mask.

“My three kings and myself got to see him by ourselves, just the four of us, and we got to spend just a little while with him,” she recalled. “So that was our time to say goodbye.”

Christ the King’s congregation has been keeping in touch through the crisis through Zoom calls, Facebook live streams of sermons given from Blackmon’s dining room and Bible studies conducted over the phone, but it isn’t exactly the same, members say.

Wesley Hurt, 77, and his wife Linda joined the Christ the King congregation more than 40 years ago, and have continued to attend services online during the lockdown.

“The whole camaraderie thing is lost, to a certain extent. We are a church that likes to fix meals for each other and we do a lot of cooking. So we haven’t had that opportunity to meet and come together and have our church dinners like we’d normally have,” Hurt said.

Though Missouri allowed churches to reopen on May 4, Christ the King United Church of Christ remains closed. Blackmon said she remains cautious until she sees progress in a number of factors, including testing.

Blackmon had initially planned to hold an Easter service when people were able to safely sit in the pews again, no matter the date.

But she worries now that the celebratory holiday would ring false for people grappling with all that had been lost from the pandemic.

Instead, she is considering devoting the first service to Good Friday, the Christian holiday commemorating the death of Jesus.

“There are a lot of things you can do over Zoom and there are a lot of things that you can do on different channels of the Internet, but what you cannot do is feel,” she said.

(Reporting by Makini Brice in Washington; Editing by Heather Timmons, Ed Tobin and Rosalba O’Brien)

Kudlow says Trump administration looking at ‘back to work bonus’

WASHINGTON (Reuters) – White House economic adviser Larry Kudlow said on Tuesday that President Donald Trump’s administration is looking carefully at a potential “back to work bonus” to encourage Americans who had been laid off as the coronavirus pandemic spread to return to work.

Kudlow, speaking on Fox News Channel, also said he does not think Congress will approve another $600 per week in extra jobless benefits to laid-off workers in a future coronavirus relief legislation.

(Reporting by Tim Ahmann, Lisa Lambert and Daphne Psaledakis)

Wilderness camps to $50,000 RV rentals: Luxury travelers in pandemic ready to pay for privacy

By Helen Coster

(Reuters) – Before the coronavirus pandemic, Melanie Burns and her husband between them had planned five trips between April and September, including three to Europe.

With only one still a possibility, the Oklahoma City resident is turning to a more reliable option: driving eight hours to the 550,000-acre Vermejo resort in Raton, New Mexico, where the couple can hike, fly fish and dine under the stars while avoiding other guests.

“We didn’t want a large property,” said Burns. “We didn’t want a hotel situation where there was daily housekeeping and you had to walk down a hall with rooms across from each other.”

As borders and much of the travel industry remained closed after the Memorial Day weekend, historically the start of the U.S. summer travel season, most Americans are staying put, with travel within the United States expected to plunge by over half a trillion dollars this year, a nearly 54% decline from 2019.

Even so, some cooped-up Americans are starting to think about stepping out. Nearly one-third of Americans would consider taking a vacation outside the home between now and the end summer, according to a study from The Points Guy, a U.S. travel website.

Some of the first to book trips will likely be those who can minimize their risk of exposure to the virus, with budgets that allow for more isolated and private forms of travel.

“There’s a redefining of what luxury means,” said Eliza Scott Harris, chief operating officer of Indagare, a members-only boutique travel company. “It’s less about the ‘wow’ factor of the design and more about the privacy you’re afforded.”

High-end travelers are upgrading to more self-contained transportation, resulting in a “huge uptick” in private air travel, according to Joanna Kuflik, director of travel services at Marchay, a membership-based luxury travel agency.

For those who prefer a road trip, luxury RVs are expected to be popular. Goss RV, which offers weeklong luxury RV rentals with a driver for up to $50,000 per week, saw a 62% increase in revenue from rentals compared to the same month last year, as of May 21.

Cities are less popular options and small, elite properties in remote destinations are in, according to industry experts.

The country’s wealthiest travelers are beginning to book U.S. properties like the Amangiri, a 600-acre, $3,000 per night resort in southern Utah, which reopened May 21 with employees who have been trained to perform spa treatments while wearing masks and gloves.

The Amangiri has bookings through July and beyond, according to a resort spokesperson, with clients coming from nearby California, Arizona, Nevada and Colorado at a time when flights remain limited. To enhance social distancing, the resort is limiting occupancy of its already-low room count of 34 suites.

Low density is a big draw.

“In a smaller boutique hotel or Airbnb you can trust that it’s a better-contained staff and a manager could be confident that 12 rooms could be cleaned very well, rather than 600 rooms,” said Kristin Peterson Edwards, an art consultant in Connecticut.

To attract more guests driving from San Francisco and Los Angeles – 11 and 10 hours away, respectively – the Lodge at Blue Sky in Wanship, Utah, may work with another outfitter to set up luxury camps in wilderness settings midway between the resort and those cities. The resort is reopening with limited occupancy on June 1, said general manager Joe Ogdie, who isn’t seeing a “major push of demand” yet, although he’s fielding inquiries about bookings.

On the international front, Indagare’s Harris said when borders reopen and international travel picks back up, many high-end travelers will head to New Zealand, which recorded just over 1,500 cases of coronavirus after imposing one of the world’s strictest lockdowns. Based on bookings for late December and early 2021, the country is now for the first time her firm’s top foreign destination from a revenue standpoint, beating out Italy and France, Harris said.

For now, New Orleans resident Catherine Makk is not ready to fly and is instead planning a road trip with her daughter, possibly to Santa Fe, New Mexico. She’ll seek out small resorts where she can have more direct access to management, as well as experiences like private art tours.

“I think there will be more private one-on-one experiences with people in the region,” Makk said. “Everything will be much more relationship-based, much more considered.”

(Reporting by Helen Coster in New York; Editing by Kenneth Li and Leslie Adler)

Where U.S. coronavirus cases are on the rise

By Chris Canipe and Lisa Shumaker

(Reuters) – Twenty U.S. states reported an increase in new cases of COVID-19 for the week ended May 24, up from 13 states in the prior week, as the death toll from the novel coronavirus approaches 100,000, according to a Reuters analysis.

South Carolina had the biggest weekly increase at 42%. Alabama’s new cases rose 28% from the previous week, Missouri’s rose 27% and North Carolina’s rose 26%, according to the analysis of data from The COVID Tracking Project, a volunteer-run effort to track the outbreak.

New cases in Georgia, one of the first states to reopen, rose 21% after two weeks of declines. (Open https://tmsnrt.rs/2WTOZDR in an external browser for a Reuters interactive)

Nationally, new cases of COVID-19 fell 0.8% for the week ended May 24, compared with a decline of 8% in the prior week. All 50 states have now at least partially reopened, raising fears among some health officials of a second wave of outbreaks. The increase in cases could also be due to more testing.

The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) has recommended states wait for their daily number of new COVID-19 cases to fall for 14 days before easing social distancing restrictions.

As of May 24, 15 states had met that criteria, up from 13 in the prior week, according to the Reuters analysis. Washington state, where the U.S. outbreak started, has the longest streak with cases falling for eight weeks in a row, followed by Hawaii at seven weeks and Pennsylvania and New York at six weeks.

Washington state posted the biggest drop in cases, down over 50%, followed by Kentucky, where new cases fell nearly 30%. New York saw new cases drop 23%, according to the Reuters analysis.

Texas saw new cases fall 15% after they rose 22% in the prior week.

(GRAPHIC: Tracking the novel coronavirus in the U.S. – )

(Reporting by Chris Canipe in Kansas City, Missouri, and Lisa Shumaker in Chicago; Editing by Tiffany Wu)

U.S. veterans agency has given hydroxychloroquine to 1,300 coronavirus patients

WASHINGTON (Reuters) – The U.S. Department of Veterans Affairs (VA) has treated 1,300 coronavirus patients with the malaria drug hydroxychloroquine, which a study has tied to an increased risk of death, according to a document released by a Senate Democrat on Friday.

Senate Democratic Leader Chuck Schumer, who received the information from the VA in response to questions he submitted on the issue, said he was “deeply troubled” by the data.

President Donald Trump has long urged use of hydroxychloroquine against coronavirus and recently said he has been taking it himself, despite evidence that the treatment could be harmful.

A study published on Friday in the medical journal Lancet tied the drug to an increased risk of death in hospitalized patients with COVID-19, the disease caused by the novel coronavirus.

In April, doctors at VA itself also said hydroxychloroquine did not help COVID-19 patients and might pose a higher risk of death.

The VA, which provides care to 9 million veterans, said that about 1,300 coronavirus patients who received the drug are among more than 10,000 COVID-19 patients it has treated. It has also dispensed hydroxychloroquine to about 7,500 patients with other conditions including rheumatoid arthritis and lupus.

The VA said it will continue to dispense the drug under the guidelines of the Food and Drug Administration.

In answer to a question from Schumer, the VA said it was not pressured into using hydroxychloroquine by the White House, the Department of Health and Human Services or any other federal agency.

“VA, like so many medical facilities across this nation, is in a race to keep patients alive during this pandemic, and we are using as many tools as we can,” the VA told Schumer.

(Reporting by David Morgan; Editing by Andy Sullivan and Sonya Hepinstall)

Donated plasma benefits COVID-19 patients in small U.S. study

By Deena Beasley

(Reuters) – Patients with severe COVID-19 given plasma from someone who recovered from the disease were more likely to stabilize or need less oxygen support than other similar hospital patients, according to results of a small U.S. study released on Friday.

The study showed a trend toward better survival rates, but the number of patients was small and the results cannot be interpreted as applying to patients on mechanical ventilators, researchers at New York’s Mt. Sinai Medical Center said.

Mt. Sinai analyzed outcomes for 39 hospitalized patients with severe COVID-19 who received convalescent plasma transfusions compared to outcomes for patients with carefully matched medical status.

“This is a retrospective case-controlled study. It does not have the rigor of a randomized, controlled trial so that still needs to be done,” Dr. Nicole Bouvier, an infectious disease specialist at Mt. Sinai and the study’s lead author, told Reuters.

“This does show promise that convalescent plasma is effective.”

Nearly 70% of the 39 patients were on high-flow oxygen and 10% were on mechanical ventilation. After two weeks, the disease worsened in 18% of the plasma patients and 24% of the control patients.

As of May 1, nearly 13% of plasma recipients had died, compared with more than 24% of the control patients, with 72% and 67%, respectively, being discharged alive.

People who survive an infectious disease like COVID-19 are left with blood containing antibodies, or proteins made by the body’s immune system to fight off a virus. The blood component that carries the antibodies can be collected and given to newly infected patients – it is known as “convalescent plasma.”

Hospitals around the world have been using plasma donated by recovered COVID-19 patients, but there has been little information on how effective the treatment is.

The U.S. Food and Drug Administration on May 1 gave emergency approval to Gilead Sciences Inc’s antiviral drug remdesivir for COVID-19 based on data showing that it reduced hospitalization time by 31% compared to a placebo, but did not have a significant effect on survival.

(Reporting by Deena Beasley; Editing by Tom Brown)

Factbox: Latest on the worldwide spread of the coronavirus 5-25-20

(Reuters). – * The number of deaths in the United States from the new coronavirus was heading towards the 100,000 mark.

The U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention said on Saturday that the toll had risen 1,852 to reach 96,002. It also reported 1,595,885 cases, an increase of 24,268 from its previous count.

* British Prime Minister Boris Johnson backed his senior adviser Dominic Cummings on Sunday, despite calls from within his own Conservative Party for the aide to resign for traveling 250 miles during the coronavirus lockdown. Cummings, who masterminded the 2016 campaign to leave the European Union, came under pressure after it emerged that he had traveled from London to Durham in late March when Britain was under a strict lockdown to combat the coronavirus outbreak.

* Americans flocked to beaches and outdoor areas on Saturday, snarling roadways and forcing some closures on the Memorial Day weekend after weeks in lockdown.

In Destin, Florida, The Back Porch restaurant was full. In Arizona, holidaymakers flooded Interstate-17, causing a 15-mile backup on the highway used to reach some of the desert’s most beautiful canyons.

President Donald Trump played golf at his Trump National club in northern Virginia.

DEATHS AND INFECTIONS

* More than 5.27 million people were reported to have been infected globally with the virus and 339,267 have died, according to a Reuters tally.

* For an interactive graphic tracking the global spread, open https://tmsnrt.rs/3aIRuz7 in an external browser.

* For a U.S.-focused tracker with state-by-state and county map, open https://tmsnrt.rs/2w7hX9T in an external browser.

 

EUROPE

* Russia on Sunday reported 153 coronavirus deaths over the previous 24 hours, the epidemic’s highest daily toll there, raising total fatalities to 3,541, its coronavirus crisis response center said. It also said 8,599 new cases had been documented, fewer than on the previous day, pushing the nationwide tally of infections to 344,481.

* The University of Oxford’s COVID-19 vaccine trial has only a 50% chance of success as the coronavirus seems to be fading rapidly in Britain, the professor co-leading the development of the vaccine told the Daily Telegraph newspaper.

Adrian Hill, director of Oxford’s Jenner Institute, which has teamed up with drugmaker AstraZeneca Plc to develop the vaccine, said that an upcoming trial involving 10,000 volunteers threatened to return “no result” due to low transmission of COVID-19 in the community.

* First indications of the effectiveness of a potential vaccine against coronavirus may be available in the autumn, the head of the GAVI vaccine alliance told a Swiss newspaper, forecasting a long road from there to broad availability.

* Spain will reopen its borders to tourists in July and its top soccer division will kick off again in June, the prime minister said, marking another phase in the easing of one of the world’s strictest lockdowns. Pedro Sanchez’s announcements coincided with calls for his resignation over the lockdown’s impact on the economy from the far-right Vox party, which called protests in cities across Spain drawing thousands of horn-blaring cars and motorbikes.

* The public returned to St Peter’s Square on Sunday to receive Pope Francis’s blessing from his window for the first time in nearly three months. The few dozen people kept to social distancing rules and most wore masks.

* Police arrested about 60 protesters on Saturday as part of city-wide demonstrations against restrictions due to the coronavirus pandemic, German newspaper Tagesspiegel reported.

The protesters had violated official guidelines to keep the virus contained, and some had attacked police officials, the newspaper said.

AMERICAS

* Americans flocked to beaches and outdoor areas on Saturday, snarling roadways and forcing some closures on the Memorial Day weekend after weeks in lockdown. President Donald Trump played golf at his Trump National club in northern Virginia.

* Mexican health authorities registered 3,329 new cases of the novel coronavirus and 190 new deaths, a health official said on Saturday, bringing the total number to 65,856 cases and 7,179 deaths.

* Argentina extended until June 7 a mandatory lockdown in Buenos Aires on Saturday and tightened some movement restrictions, after a steady increase in the city’s confirmed coronavirus cases in recent days.

ASIA-PACIFIC

* Three large Indian states have sought to delay the planned opening of their airports on Monday as new cases of the novel coronavirus jumped, complicating the federal government’s plan to resume flights after a two-month lockdown.

India registered 6,767 new cases of the novel coronavirus on Sunday, its biggest 24-hour rise yet, taking the total to over 131,000.

* The Philippines’ tally of coronavirus cases surpassed 14,000 on Sunday and the number of fatalities rose to 868, the health ministry said.

* China recorded no new confirmed COVID-19 cases on the mainland for May 22, the first time it had seen no daily rise in the number of cases since the pandemic began in the central city of Wuhan late last year.

* Coronavirus cases in Singapore topped 30,000 as the city-state reported hundreds of new infections in cramped migrant worker dormitories every day. In Malaysia, a new cluster of coronavirus infections has broken out a detention center for undocumented migrants, authorities said.

MIDDLE EAST AND AFRICA

* Finance minister Mohammed al Jadaan said Saudi Arabia’s economy is solid and has the ability to deal with the coronavirus crisis despite the need to cut spending.

* Underground production at AngloGold Ashanti’s Mponeng mine in South Africa will remain shut down until further notice after 53 employees tested positive for the coronavirus, the provincial health department said.

* A 107-year-old Iranian woman who was infected with the new coronavirus has recovered, Iran’s Fars news agency reported.

* Zambia’s information minister Dora Siliya said she had tested positive for the coronavirus but was asymptomatic and had gone into self-isolation.

“Even after taking all precautions…yesterday I did test positive for COVID-19,” she said on social media.

ECONOMIC FALLOUT

* Chinese lenders could post flat or even falling profits in 2020 despite earnings growth in the first quarter as the coronavirus outbreak brings difficulties to the economy, the central bank said. For the first quarter of 2020, China’s commercial banks realized net profits of 600.1 billion yuan ($84.2 billion), up 5% year-on-year, mainly due to the expansion of banks’ assets and lower management costs, according to an article by the research bureau of the People’s Bank of China.

The possibility could not be ruled out that banks could log zero or even negative profit growth within 2020, due to mounting bad loans and a fast-draining of cash buffers, as the difficulties in the real economy spills over into the financial area, the PBOC said.

* France’s state debt to gross domestic product (GDP) ratio is set to increase to more than 115% by the end of the year due to the cost of coronavirus crisis measures, Budget Minister Gerald Darmanin said.

* Car rental firm Hertz Global Holdings Inc HTZ.N filed for bankruptcy protection after its business was decimated during the coronavirus pandemic and talks with creditors failed to result in much needed relief. The firm is reeling from government orders restricting travel and requiring citizens to remain home.

(Compiled by Angus MacSwan; Editing by John Stonestreet)

Americans pass pandemic holiday on beaches, in parks as death toll nears 100,000

By Lisa Shumaker

(Reuters) – Americans sunbathed on beaches, fished from boats and strolled on boardwalks this holiday weekend, even as the U.S. death toll from COVID-19 fast approaches 100,000.

The Memorial Day weekend that signals the start of the U.S. summer is normally a time when cemeteries across the nation fill with American flags and ceremonies to remember those who died in U.S. wars.

This year it has also become a time to mourn the loss of more than 97,000 people due to the coronavirus pandemic in the United States.

The New York Times filled its entire front page with the names and selected details of 1,000 victims on Sunday seeking to illustrate the humanity of the lives lost.

Graphic: Tracking the novel coronavirus in the U.S. –

“We were trying to capture that personal toll,” Marc Lacey, the newspaper’s national editor, told Reuters. “We were trying to humanize these numbers which keep growing and have reached such unfathomable heights that they’re really hard to grasp any more. …This is about everyday people. It’s about a death toll, reaching a number that’s really just jaw-dropping.”

Among the victims, drawn from obituaries and death notices in hundreds of U.S. newspapers: Lila Fenwick, 87, the first black woman to graduate from Harvard Law; Romi Cohn, 91, saved 56 Jewish families from the Gestapo; Hailey Herrera, 25, budding therapist with a gift for empathy.

All 50 states have relaxed coronavirus restrictions to some degree. In some states, like Illinois and New York, restaurants are still closed to in-person dining and hair salons remain shuttered. In many southern states, most businesses are open, with restrictions on capacity.

Last week, 11 states reported a record number of new COVID-19 cases, including Alabama, Arkansas, Minnesota, North Dakota, New Hampshire, Maryland, Maine, Nevada, Utah, Virginia and Wisconsin, according to a Reuters tally. It is not clear if the cases are rising from more testing or a second wave of infections.

Total U.S. cases are over 1.6 million, the highest in the world, while forecast models for possible COVID-19 deaths predict the death toll will exceed 100,000 by June 1.

Graphic: World-focused tracker with country-by-country interactive –

A plea by health officials and many state governors to wear masks in stores and in public is being met with protest and resistance from some Americans. Social media is filled with videos of businesses turning away a few angry customers who refuse to cover their mouths and noses.

“We need to be wearing masks in public when we cannot social distance. It’s really critically important we have the scientific evidence of how important mask-wearing is to prevent those droplets from reaching others,” Dr. Deborah Birx, response coordinator for the White House coronavirus task force, said on “Fox News Sunday.”

While Americans were largely adhering to warnings to maintain social distancing over the holiday weekend, there were notable exceptions.

Graphic: Where coronavirus cases are rising in the United States –

These included some packed beaches in Florida and other gulf states, forcing authorities to break up large gatherings. Videos posted on social media showed parties in other states where people crowded into pools and clubs elbow-to-elbow.

One such party at a Houston club called Cle prompted the city’s Mayor Sylvester Turner on Sunday to order firefighters across the metropolitan area to enforce social distancing rules.

Last week Turner said authorities would not forcibly make sure businesses were operating at capacity restrictions of 50% for restaurants and 25% for bars. But he reversed course after more than 250 crowd complaints were phoned into the city by Sunday evening.

“There are too many people who are coming together going to some of our clubs, our bars, to swimming pool parties, with no social distancing, no masks,” Turner said. “It’s clear people are crowding in, looks like to maximum capacity, almost on top of one another.”

(Reporting by Doina Chiacu in Washington, Sinead Carew and Koh Gui Qing in New York, and Brad Brooks in Austin, Texas; Editing by Sonya Hepinstall, Diane Craft and Ana Nicolaci da Costa)

Trump warns governors: let places of worship open this weekend

By Jeff Mason

WASHINGTON (Reuters) – U.S. President Donald Trump on Friday urged state governors to allow the reopening this weekend in the United States of places of worship which have been closed due to the coronavirus, warning that he will override governors who do not do so.

At a short appearance in the White House briefing room, Trump said he was declaring that places of worship – churches, synagogues and mosques – are providing essential services and thus should be opened as soon as possible.

Places of worship have been closed along as part of stay-at-home orders most states have tried to control the spread of the coronavirus. With the infection rate declining in many areas, there is pressure to begin reopening.

Trump issued a warning to governors who refuse his appeal but did not say under what authority he would act to force the reopening of religious facilities.

“If they don’t do it I will override the governors. In America we need more prayer, not less,” he said.

(Reporting Jeff Mason and Steve Holland, Editing by Franklin Paul and David Gregorio)

U.S. secures 300 million doses of potential AstraZeneca COVID-19 vaccine

By Aakash B, Guy Faulconbridge and Kate Holton

BENGALURU/LONDON (Reuters) – The United States has secured almost a third of the first 1 billion doses planned for AstraZeneca’s experimental COVID-19 vaccine by pledging up to $1.2 billion, as world powers scramble for medicines to get their economies back to work.

While not yet proven to be effective against the coronavirus, vaccines are seen by world leaders as the only real way to restart their stalled economies, and even to get an edge over global competitors.

After President Donald Trump demanded a vaccine, the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) agreed to provide up to $1.2 billion to accelerate British drugmaker AstraZeneca’s vaccine development and secure 300 million doses for the United States.

“This contract with AstraZeneca is a major milestone in Operation Warp Speed’s work toward a safe, effective, widely available vaccine by 2021,” U.S. Health Secretary Alex Azar said. The first doses could be available in the United States as early as October, according to a statement from HHS.

The vaccine, previously known as ChAdOx1 nCoV-19 and now as AZD1222, was developed by the University of Oxford and licensed to AstraZeneca. Immunity to the new coronavirus is uncertain and so the use of vaccines is unclear.

The U.S. deal allows a late-stage, or Phase III, clinical trial of the vaccine with 30,000 people in the United States.

Cambridge, England-based AstraZeneca said it had concluded agreements for at least 400 million doses of the vaccine and secured manufacturing capacity for 1 billion doses, with first deliveries due to begin in September.

Now the most valuable company on Britain’s blue-chip FTSE 100 Index, AstraZeneca has already agreed to deliver 100 million doses to people in Britain, with 30 million as soon as September. Ministers have promised Britain will get first access to the vaccine.

VACCINE SCRAMBLE

With leaders across the world surveying some of the worst economic destruction since at least World War Two and the deaths of more than 327,000 people, many are scrambling for a vaccine.

The U.S. government has struck deals to support vaccine development with Johnson & Johnson (J&J), Moderna and Sanofi, sparking fears the richest countries will be able to protect their citizens first.

Sanofi’s chief angered the French government earlier this month when he said vaccine doses produced in the United States could go to U.S. patients first, given the country had supported the research financially.

“We have a lot of things happening on the vaccine front or the therapeutic front,” Trump told reporters at the White House when asked about the AstraZeneca announcement. “You’re going to have a lot of big announcements over the next week or two” on therapeutics.

Trump, during a Thursday visit to a Ford Motor Co plant in Michigan, said the U.S. military is “in gear so we can give out 150 to 250 million shots quickly.”

AstraZeneca said it was in talks with governments and partners around the world – such as the Serum Institute of India – to increase access and production and is speaking to various organizations on fair allocation and distribution.

“We would like to thank the U.S. and UK governments for their substantial support to accelerate the development and production of the vaccine,” AstraZeneca Chief Executive Pascal Soriot said.

The Serum Institute of India, the world’s largest maker of vaccines by volume, has dedicated one of its facilities with a capacity to produce up to 400 million doses annually to producing the Oxford vaccine.

“We are scaling up on a conservative basis of about 4 to 5 million doses a month to begin with,” Chief Executive Adar Poonawalla told Reuters, adding the company was in discussions with AstraZeneca.

COVID-19 PROTECTION?

A Phase I/II clinical trial of AZD1222 began last month to assess safety, immunogenicity and efficacy in over 1,000 healthy volunteers aged 18 to 55 across several trial centers in southern England. Data from the trial is expected shortly.

There are currently no approved treatments or vaccines for COVID-19.

Governments, drugmakers and researchers are working on around 100 programs. Experts are predicting a safe, effective means of preventing the disease could take 12 to 18 months to develop.

Only a handful of the vaccines in development have advanced to human trials, an indicator of safety and efficacy, and the stage at which most fail.

“AstraZeneca recognizes that the vaccine may not work but is committed to progressing the clinical program with speed and scaling up manufacturing at risk,” it said.

Other drugmakers including Pfizer Inc, J&J and Sanofi are in various stages of vaccine development.

U.S.-based Inovio Pharmaceuticals said Wednesday its experimental vaccine produced protective antibodies and immune system responses in mice and guinea pigs.

And Moderna this week released positive data for its potential vaccine, which it said produced protective antibodies in a small group of healthy volunteers.

(Reporting by Aakash Jagadeesh Babu in Bengaluru, Ludwig Burger in Frankfurt and Zeba Siddiqui in New Delhi; writing by Guy Faulconbridge; editing by Alexander Smith, Jan Harvey, Mark Potter, Jonathan Oatis and Leslie Adler)