The Jim Bakker Show

More synchronized action needed to tackle COVID economic crisis, IMF’s Georgieva says

By Andrea Shalal and Marc Jones

WASHINGTON/LONDON (Reuters) – The international community must do more to tackle the economic fallout of the COVID-19 crisis, the head of the International Monetary Fund said on Monday, publicly calling on the World Bank to accelerate its lending to hard-hit African countries.

Some of the key events of the virtual and elongated annual meetings of the IMF and World Bank take place this week, with the most pressing issue how to support struggling countries.

“We are going to continue to push to do even more,” IMF Managing Director Kristalina Georgieva said during an online FT Africa summit.

“I would beg for also more grants for African countries. The World Bank has grant-giving capacity. Perhaps you can do even more… and bilateral donors can do more in that regard,” Georgieva said in an unusual public display of discord between the two major international financial institutions.

No immediate comment was available from the Bank.

Georgieva last week said the IMF had provided $26 billion in fast-track support to African states since the start of the crisis, but a dearth of private lending meant the region faced a financing gap of $345 billion through 2023.

The pandemic, a collapse in commodity prices and a plague of locusts have hit Africa particularly hard, putting 43 million more people at risk of extreme poverty, according to World Bank estimates. African states have reported more than 1 million coronavirus cases and some 23,000 deaths.

G20 governments are expected to extend for six months their Debt Service Suspension Initiative (DSSI) which has so far frozen around $5 billion of poorer countries’ debt payments, but pressure is on the main development banks and private creditors to provide relief too.

HOLDING ONTO GOLD RESERVES

Georgieva said the Fund was also pushing richer member countries to loan more of their existing Special Drawing Rights (SDR), the IMF’s currency, to countries that needed support most, and was “very committed” to finding a way forward for countries like Zambia now needing to restructure their debts.

The United States has blocked Georgieva’s early call for issuance of more SDRs, arguing that it would benefit mostly richer nations, not the developing countries that need it most.

Pledges to the Fund’s Poverty Reduction and Growth Trust, which supports low-income countries, have totaled $21 billion to date, including $14 billion in existing SDR holdings, but more resources were urgently needed, an IMF spokeswoman said.

The IMF chief dodged calls by civil society groups for the IMF to sell off some of its extensive gold reserves, saying the Fund viewed them as an important “financial buffer.”

Profit from selling less than 7% of the IMF’s gold could fund cancellation of all debt payments by the poorest countries to the IMF and World Bank for the next 15 months, the UK-based Jubilee Debt Campaign said in a new report issued Monday.

The IMF said its gold reserve of about 90.5 million ounces (2,814.1 metric tons) was worth about $137.8 billion at the end of December, compared to its historical cost of $4.4 billion.

Georgieva said countries in serious trouble must restructure their debts as soon as possible.

“This is the message for all countries in debt distress… If debt is not sustainable, please move towards restructuring, the sooner the better,” she said.

Georgieva said transparency in lending was critical for all parties, and welcomed what she called “encouraging” statements by China to move toward a more consolidated view of the debts held by the Chinese government and other institutions.

“I believe that now is the moment in this crisis, to make … transparency paramount and mandated to the extent possible everywhere,” she said.

(Reporting by Marc Jones in London, and Andrea Shalal and David Lawder in Washington; Editing by Tom Arnold, Ed Osmond and Andrea Ricci)

New U.S. COVID-19 cases rise 11% last week, Midwest hard hit

(Reuters) – The number of new COVID-19 cases rose 11% in the United States last week compared to the previous seven days, with infections spreading rapidly in the Midwest, which reported some of the highest positive test rates, according to a Reuters analysis.

Deaths fell 3% to about 4,800 people for the week ended Oct. 11, according to the analysis of state and county reports. Since the pandemic started, nearly 215,000 people have died in the United States and over 7.7 million have become infected with the novel coronavirus.

Twenty-nine out of 50 states have seen cases rise for at least two weeks in a row, up from 21 states in the prior week. They include the entire Midwest except Illinois and Missouri, as well as new hot spots in the Northeast, South and West.

In Idaho, 23.5% of more than 17,000 tests came back positive for COVID-19 last week, the highest positive test rate in the country, according to data from The COVID Tracking Project, a volunteer-run effort to track the outbreak. South Dakota, Iowa and Wisconsin also reported positive test rates above 20% last week.

For a third week in a row, testing set a record high in the country, with on average 976,000 tests conducted each day last week. The percentage of tests that came back positive for the virus rose to 5.0% from 4.6% the prior week.

The World Health Organization considers rates above 5% concerning because it suggests there are more cases in the community that have not yet been uncovered.

(Writing by Lisa Shumaker; Graphic by Chris Canipe; Editing by Tiffany Wu)

COVID-19 antibodies last at least three months; so do symptoms for many

By Nancy Lapid

(Reuters) – The following is a roundup of some of the latest scientific studies on the novel coronavirus and efforts to find treatments and vaccines for COVID-19, the illness caused by the virus.

COVID-19 antibodies last at least three months

People infected with COVID-19 develop antibodies targeting the new coronavirus that last for at least three months, according to two reports published on Thursday in Science Immunology. The two studies, together involving nearly 750 patients, both point to immunoglobulin G (IgG) antibodies, which start showing up well after an infection begins, as the longest-lasting. Researchers found IgG antibodies with two targets – a spike protein on the virus that helps it infect cells, and a part of the spike called the receptor binding domain (RBD) – lasted more than 100 days. While the protective effect of COVID-19 antibodies is not completely clear, Jen Gommerman of the University of Toronto, coauthor of the study, said her team also found levels of so-called neutralizing antibodies, which inactivate the virus, “appeared to be very stable.” The other study, from Harvard Medical School, reported similar findings. This means that a properly designed vaccine “should elicit a durable antibody response that has the potential to neutralize the virus,” Gommerman said. Her group also found that antibodies in saliva correlated with antibodies in blood, but at this point the saliva tests are not sensitive enough to replace blood tests.

COVID-19 symptoms linger for months for many

Three months after becoming ill, many COVID-19 patients still have symptoms, two studies confirm, and the more severe the initial infections, the higher the odds of persistent problems. In Spain, doctors checked back with 108 patients, including 44 who had been severely ill. At 12 weeks after diagnosis, 76% still reported after-effects, with 40% reporting three or more coronavirus-related health issues, doctors said in a paper posted on Thursday on medRxiv ahead of peer review. The most common complaints were shortness of breath, physical weakness, cough, chest pain, palpitations, and psychological and cognitive disorders. In a similar study of 233 U.S. COVID-19 patients – eight of whom had been severely ill – one in four still had symptoms 90 days after first feeling ill. Rates were higher for patients who had been sicker: 59.4% at 30 days and 40.6% at 90 days. “But even for very mild and initially asymptomatic cases, 14.3% have complications persist for 30 days or longer,” the authors reported on Sunday on medRxiv. In the U.S. study, the most common persistent symptoms were impaired smell and taste, difficulty concentrating, shortness of breath, memory loss, confusion, headache, heart palpitations, chest pain, pain with deep breaths, dizziness, and rapid heartbeat.

Remdesivir cut COVID-19 recovery time by 5 days

Final data from a large study of Gilead Sciences Inc’s antiviral drug remdesivir showed the treatment cut COVID-19 recovery time by five days among hospitalized patients, one day faster than preliminary data had indicated, researchers reported on Thursday in The New England Journal of Medicine. The 1,062-patient study compared up to up to 10 days of therapy with remdesivir – now sold in some markets as Veklury – to a placebo. The average recovery time was 10 days among those who got the Gilead drug versus 15 days in the placebo group. Among patients requiring oxygen at the start, those taking remdesivir continued to need oxygen for an average of 13 days, compared to 21 days for patients who got a placebo. In a separate analysis looking just at patients who received oxygen, the drug appeared to reduce the risk of death over the next month by 70%. “We now have data suggesting that giving remdesivir to patients on oxygen may significantly reduce their chances of death compared to other subgroups,” Dr. Andre Kalil, an infectious disease expert at the University of Nebraska Medical Center and the study’s lead investigator, said in a news release.

Coronavirus rarely travels from mother to newborn

Transmission of the new coronavirus from mothers to newborns is rare, doctors from New York-Presbyterian/Columbia University Irving Medical Center reported on Monday in JAMA Pediatrics. They studied 101 babies born to 100 mothers with COVID-19, including 10 whose mothers had been severely ill. Almost all of the babies tested negative for the virus, while tests in two newborns had indeterminate results. If these two indeterminate results are considered positive, the overall incidence of transmission was 2.0%. Even with a 2% transmission rate, “none of our babies exhibited clinical symptoms of COVID-19, either during their newborn nursery stay or during … the first few weeks of life,” coauthor Dr. Dani Dumitriu told Reuters Health by email. Roughly 90% of the newborns were breastfed at least partially. “As the country heads into what looks like a second wave of the COVID-19 pandemic, it is important to know that separation of affected mothers from their newborns may not be warranted, and direct breastfeeding appears to be safe,” study coauthor Dr. Melissa Stockwell said.

(Reporting by Nancy Lapid, Julie Steenhuysen and Will Boggs; Editing by Bill Berkrot)

Harris, fellow Democrats target Trump Supreme Court nominee on Obamacare

By Lawrence Hurley and Patricia Zengerle

WASHINGTON (Reuters) – Democratic senators including vice presidential nominee Kamala Harris on Monday painted President Donald Trump’s Supreme Court nominee Amy Coney Barrett as a threat to the Obamacare healthcare law during a deadly pandemic and denounced the Republican drive to approve her before the Nov. 3 U.S. election.

As the Senate Judiciary Committee began its four-day confirmation hearing for Barrett, Democrats voiced their strong opposition to the nomination even though they have little hope of derailing her nomination in the Republican-led Senate.

Barrett, a conservative appellate court judge nominated to replace the late liberal Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg, sat at a table facing the senators wearing a black face mask amid the pandemic as senators made opening statements. Barrett removed the mask when she was sworn in and delivered her own opening statement.

“I believe Americans of all backgrounds deserve an independent Supreme Court that interprets our Constitution and laws as they are written,” Barrett said, reading from prepared remarks that had been made public on Sunday, with her husband and seven children sitting behind her.

Barrett’s confirmation would give the court a 6-3 conservative majority that could lead to rulings rolling back abortion rights, expanding religious and gun rights, and upholding voting restrictions, among other issues.

But it was the fate of the 2010 Affordable Care Act (ACA), Democratic former President Barack Obama’s signature domestic policy achievement that has enabled millions of Americans to obtain medical coverage, that was the focus of Harris and her fellow Democrats. Barrett has criticized a 2012 Supreme Court ruling authored by conservative Chief Justice John Roberts that upheld Obamacare.

Harris, the running mate of Trump’s Democratic election opponent Joe Biden, called the confirmation process so near the election “illegitimate.”

“I do believe this hearing is a clear attempt to jam through a Supreme Court nominee who will take away healthcare from millions of people during a deadly pandemic that has already killed more than 214,000 Americans,” Harris said, speaking via a video link.

“A clear majority of Americans want whomever wins the election to fill this seat and my Republican colleagues know that. Yet they are deliberately defying the will of the people in their attempt to roll back the rights and protections provided under the Affordable Care Act,” Harris said.

Barrett could be on the Supreme Court in time to participate in a case due to be argued on Nov. 10 in which Trump and Republican-led states are seeking to invalidate Obamacare.

Barrett will face marathon questioning from senators on Tuesday and Wednesday. The hearing is a key step before a full Senate vote by the end of October on her confirmation to a lifetime job on the court. Republicans have a 53-47 Senate majority so Barrett’s confirmation seems almost certain.

A pivotal Obamacare provision that would be thrown out if the court strikes the law down bars insurance companies from denying coverage to people with pre-existing medical conditions. In the hearing room, Democrats displayed posters of patients who could lose their medical coverage if Obamacare is invalidated, with senators recounting their individual stories.

Repeated Republican efforts to repeal Obamacare in Congress have fallen short, and Republicans have taken the effort to the courts.

Republican Senator Ted Cruz said the Democratic focus on healthcare and other policy issues showed they were not contesting Barrett’s qualifications to serve as a justice.

Republican Senator Lindsey Graham, who chairs the committee, opened the hearing by saying it would be “a long contentious week” but implored senators to make the proceedings respectful.

“Let’s remember, the world is watching,” Graham added.

“This is probably not about persuading each other, unless something really dramatic happens. All Republicans will vote yes and all Democrats will vote no,” Graham said.

‘MAD RUSH’

Democratic Senator Patrick Leahy condemned the Republican “mad rush” to fill the vacancy.

“They see the ability to take the courts from being independent to making them instead an arm of the far right and the Republican Party, with the potential to accomplish in courts what they have failed to accomplish by votes in the halls of Congress. And at the top of the hit list is the Affordable Care Act,” Leahy said.

Graham defended the Republican approach even while acknowledging that four years earlier they had refused to act on Obama’s nominee to fill a Supreme Court vacancy because it was an election year, and that no Supreme Court nominee had a confirmation process so close to an election.

The Senate’s Republican leaders rejected Democratic pleas to delay the hearing over COVID-19 concerns.

Due to the pandemic, Harris and some other senators participated remotely. Republican Senator Mike Lee attended in person nine days after revealing he head tested positive for the coronavirus, arriving wearing a light-blue surgical mask. He took off the mask while giving his opening statement.

Barrett is a devout Catholic who has expressed opposition to abortion. Christian conservative activists long have hoped for the court to overturn the landmark 1973 Roe v. Wade ruling that legalized abortion nationwide.

Democratic Senator Cory Booker said that “Senate Republicans have found a nominee in Judge Barrett who they know will do what they couldn’t do – subvert the will of the American people and overturn Roe v. Wade.”

Republicans sought to portray the Democrats as attacking Barrett on religious grounds, though the Democrats steered clear of doing so. Speaking to reporters in Delaware, Biden said Barrett’s Catholic faith should not be considered during the confirmation process. Biden was the first Catholic U.S. vice president.

“This nominee said she wants to get rid of the Affordable Care Act. The president wants to get rid of the Affordable Care Act,” Biden said. “Let’s keep our eye on the ball.”

(Reporting by Lawrence Hurley, Andrew Chung and Patricia Zengerle; Editing by Will Dunham)

U.S. CDC reports 214,108 deaths from coronavirus

(Reuters) – The U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) on Monday reported 7,740,934 cases of the new coronavirus, an increase of 46,069 from its previous count, and said that the number of deaths had risen by 494 to 214,108.

The CDC reported its tally of cases of the respiratory illness known as COVID-19, caused by a new coronavirus, as of 4 pm ET on Oct. 11 versus its previous report a day earlier.

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

(Reporting by Dania Nadeem in Bengaluru; Editing by Devika Syamnath)

As globe gallops into vaccine trials, insurers remain unfazed

By Noor Zainab Hussain, Carolyn Cohn and Ludwig Burger

LONDON/FRANKFURT (Reuters) – The world is racing towards a vaccine in record time, stirring public concerns about safety to the extent that nine leading developers have felt compelled to issue a pledge to uphold scientific standards and testing rigor.

Yet, while more than 40 experimental COVID-19 vaccines are being tested on humans, the insurance companies with decades of experience in assessing the risks of clinical trials don’t see anything to be unduly concerned about.

Executives at insurer Allianz and brokers Gallagher and Marsh, among the leading players in clinical trials insurance, told Reuters that premiums had only marginally increased so far in the current pandemic.

They argued there was little structural difference to trials carried out in the past, despite drugmakers around the world competing to shatter the fastest time in history for developing a vaccine, which stands at around four years.

“Rates have been relatively stable. Even this year we have so far seen only moderate price increases on average, with higher price jumps for particularly exposed COVID-19 trials,” said Mark Piazzi, senior underwriter liability at Allianz Global Corporate & Specialty.

This was echoed by David Briggs, managing director, life sciences practice at Gallagher, who said every trial was rated on its methods and the kinds of patients involved.

Gallagher said premiums in Britain, for example, started at about 5,000 pounds ($6,500) per trial.

Total claims limits in policies were typically set at roughly $6-12 million, depending on the country’s rules, according to several insurance companies interviewed by Reuters.

In Britain, for instance, claim limits were usually set at no lower than 5 million pounds, while in Germany the figure was around 10 million euros ($11.8 million).

‘LOSS EXPERIENCE NOT DRAMATIC’

However part of the reason why premiums have not risen as sharply as some people might have expected is that claims from trial are generally uncommon, according to executives. This is because patients have often signed so-called informed consent agreements, they said.

Jim Walters, managing director of Life Sciences & Chemical Group at broker Aon, said such agreements outlined the risks that patients were taking by participating in the trial.

“So, you know, everything from you could have a sore spot on your arm. To you could potentially die. And you know, they would literally go that far in some of these protocols,” he added.

“Those generally tend to hold up in courts and in legal systems around the world. That means that the loss experience coming out of clinical trials is not very dramatic.”

Claims are often limited to circumstances linked to the improper conduct of trials or any wrongdoing, rather than side-effects of the treatment, executives said.

Such have been the worries about the vaccine race among some members of the public, who fear safety standards could slip, that nine developers issued a joint pledge last month to “uphold the integrity of the scientific process”.

ASTRAZENECA TRIAL SUSPENSION

AstraZeneca and Oxford University’s suspension of global Phase III trials of their experimental COVID-19 vaccine early last month due to a participant’s illness brought the risk of side effects in clinical trials to the public fore.

But the insurers said such delays were not unexpected, and could even reflect the extra caution of vaccine developers given the lack of data about COVID-19.

“Side effects always happen with clinical trials, but these are typically mild and expected. It is not very common to delay or suspend trials, it does happen though,” said Piazzi at AGCS, whose main peers in underwriting trials include Chubb, HDI and Fairfax’s Newline.

“Pharma companies and insurers alike are even more careful than usual with COVID-19 trials because there is so much at stake, particularly for the patients’ safety.”

All trials of the vaccine candidate have resumed, with the exception of the U.S. study.

There have been examples in recent memory of drug trials going catastrophically wrong, though.

In 2016, for instance, one participant died and five were hospitalized in a Phase I trial run by French company Biotrial in the city of Rennes, testing an experimental mood brightener made by Portuguese drugmaker Bial.

In 2006, six patients required intensive care after receiving a potential treatment against leukemia and auto-immune disease in London. One was described as looking like “the elephant man” after his head swelled. Another lost fingertips and toes. Germany’s TeGenero, the initial developer of the medicine, folded.

But insurance executives stress such disasters are rare, given the thousands of clinical drug trials being carried out every year.

Walters of Aon, speaking about the 2016 trial, said it was “obviously a horrible situation”.

“But that’s one of very few incidents of really bad loss experience that the industry has faced. So, clinical trial insurance is not hugely expensive. Let’s put it that way.”

(Reporting by Noor Zainab Hussain, Carolyn Cohn and Ludwig Burger; Editing by Pravin Char)

Abbott wins U.S. emergency use authorization for new COVID-19 antibody test

(Reuters) – Abbott Laboratories said on Monday the U.S. Food and Drug Administration has issued an emergency use authorization for its lab-based COVID-19 antibody blood test.

The test, AdviseDx, can be used to identify a type of antibody called Immunoglobulin M (IgM) in blood samples to determine if someone has been exposure to the novel coronavirus, potentially indicating a recent or prior infection.

Abbott has already received emergency use authorization for seven tests, including molecular tests, a rapid antigen test and another test which can detect a type of antibody called IgG.

The FDA’s emergency use authorization allows the use of unapproved medical products in an emergency to diagnose, treat, or prevent serious or life-threatening diseases with no adequate or approved alternatives.

IgG is longer lasting in the body after an infection, but IgM is more useful for determining a recent exposure to the coronavirus as these antibodies become undetectable weeks to months following an infection, Abbott said.

Unlike molecular tests, which can detect whether someone has the coronavirus, antibody tests determine if someone has had a previous infection by detecting disease-fighting proteins called antibodies.

However, antibody tests are not recommended as the sole basis of diagnosis of COVID-19 as these antibodies may not be detected in the early days of the infection.

Shares of Abbott were up 0.5% at $110.21 in early trading.

(Reporting by Manojna Maddipatla in Bengaluru; Editing by Amy Caren Daniel)

Caterpillar bets on self-driving machines impervious to pandemics

By Rajesh Kumar Singh

CHICAGO (Reuters) – Question: How can a company like Caterpillar try to counter a slump in sales of bulldozers and trucks during a pandemic that has made every human a potential disease vector?

Answer: Cut out human operators, perhaps?

Caterpillar’s autonomous driving technology, which can be bolted on to existing machines, is helping the U.S. heavy equipment maker mitigate the heavy impact of the coronavirus crisis on sales of its traditional workhorses.

With both small and large customers looking to protect their operations from future disruptions, demand has surged for machines that don’t require human operators on board.

Sales of Caterpillar’s autonomous technology for mining operations have been growing at a double-digit percentage clip this year compared with 2019, according to previously unreported internal company data shared with Reuters.

By contrast, sales of its yellow bulldozers, mining trucks and other equipment have been falling for the past nine months, a trend that’s also hit its main rivals including Japan’s Komatsu Ltd and American player Deere & Co.

Fred Rio, worldwide product manager at Caterpillar’s construction digital & technology division, told Reuters that a remote-control technology, which allows users to operate machines from several miles away, would be available for construction sites in January.

The company is also working with space agencies to use satellite technology to allow an operator sitting in the United States to remotely communicate with machines on job sites in, say, Africa or elsewhere in the world, he said.

Caterpillar’s automation strategy was not born during the COVID-19 era, though. The company stepped up investments in such technologies as it emerged in 2017 from the longest downturn in its history, as part of a plan to increase recurring revenue from lucrative sales of services.

But it’s early days, and such tech remains a niche part of Caterpillar’s operations. Though it does not break out the revenue from technology sales, the rising demand is unlikely to make a major impact anytime soon on the group’s revenue, which stood at about $54 billion last year.

It is also a costly endeavor with the company pumping billions into R&D as a whole. Yet it is not clear if demand for autonomous and remote tech will hold up in a post-pandemic world while, in the longer term, there is the risk that a technology-driven improvement in productivity could drive down sales of new equipment.

‘IT HAS GOT CRAZIER’

Nonetheless, autonomous technology is helping Caterpillar win equipment deals from customers that were previously not buying a lot of its machines.

Last year, Rio Tinto signed up the company to supply self-driving trucks, autonomous blast drills, loaders and other machines for the construction of the Koodaideri iron ore mine in Australia, which is expected to be operational next year.

Rio Tinto declined to comment on the equipment deal.

The mining industry has already adopted some technologies for self-driving trucks and remote operation of load-haul-dump machines. However the suspension in activities worldwide following government-mandated lockdowns at the peak of COVID-19, as well as recent outbreaks of infections at coal mines in Poland, have accelerated the deployment of those technologies.

Anthony Cook, general manager for autonomous haulage systems at Caterpillar’s rival Komatsu, said a lot of customers had brought forward their spending plans following the pandemic in a bid to take drivers out of mining trucks.

He said the COVID-19 crisis had not hit the fortunes of his autonomous business: “If anything, it has got crazier.”

CATERPILLAR’S IN SPACE

Caterpillar and Komatsu hold the lion’s share of the global autonomous haulage system market worldwide.

But Illinois-based Caterpillar has a competitive advantage, according to some analysts, as its technology can be retrofitted onto competitors’ equipment, making it a better fit for mixed fleets. Komatsu’s technology currently only works with its own machines.

Komatsu’s Cook said that while retrofitting offered a short-term solution, his company was developing technology to allow different brands of equipment to operate together “safely and efficiently”, which he added would offer long-term benefits.

But Jim Hawkins, general manager at Caterpillar’s resource industries division, said the ability to retrofit had helped drive up sales, because mining companies can buy the hardware and software to make machines operate autonomously without paying the much larger cost of overhauling their whole fleet.

That is a selling point at a time when miners are grappling with the virus-induced business uncertainty.

Caterpillar sells autonomous operation technology separately from its machines. While retrofitting existing fleets has been the biggest driver for growth until now, Hawkins says an increasing number of customers are now ordering autonomous-ready mining trucks.

The company charges mining customers a hardware fee, a software fee and recurring licensing fee. In all, the technology could cost from $50 million to hundreds of millions of dollars, depending upon the size of the fleet and the duration of the contract, Hawkins said.

All these applications are part of the company’s endeavor to increases services revenue, which tends to be more resilient and profitable than equipment sales. It aims to increase services sales to $28 billion by 2026 from $18 billion in 2019.

Rob Wertheimer, machinery analyst at Melius Research, said the need for mining companies to replace an aging mining fleet and their growing demand for autonomous upgrades should help Caterpillar, with its tech giving it a “differential” advantage over rivals.

“Strategically, they are in a better place,” he added.

(Reporting by Rajesh Kumar Singh; Editing by Joe White and Pravin Char)

Trump resumes campaign with Florida rally 10 days after COVID-19 disclosure

By John Whitesides

WASHINGTON (Reuters) – President Donald Trump will try to put his bout with COVID-19 behind him when he returns to the campaign trail on Monday, beginning a three-week sprint to the Nov. 3 U.S. election with a rally in the battleground state of Florida.

The event at an airport in Sanford, Florida, will be Trump’s first campaign rally since he disclosed on Oct. 2 that he tested positive for COVID-19. Trump, who spent three nights in the hospital for treatment, said on Sunday he had fully recovered and was no longer infectious, but did not say directly whether he had tested negative for the coronavirus.

For months, Trump had worked furiously to shift public attention away from the virus and his handling of the pandemic, which has infected nearly 7.7 million people in the United States, killed more than 214,000 and put millions out of work.

His own illness has put the spotlight squarely on his coronavirus response during the closing stretch of the race.

Trump’s rally in Florida, and planned rallies in Pennsylvania on Tuesday, Iowa on Wednesday and North Carolina on Thursday, will be watched closely to see whether the president has reshaped his campaign approach since contracting the virus.

Critics fault him for failing to encourage supporters at campaign events, and even White House staff, to wear protective masks and abide by social-distancing guidelines. At least 11 close Trump aides have tested positive for the coronavirus.

Standing alone on a White House balcony on Saturday, a maskless Trump urged hundreds of largely Black and Latino supporters to help get out the vote. Most in the crowd wore masks but ignored social-distancing guidelines.

Biden, who has said it is irresponsible for any candidate to hold events where attendees are not wearing masks or engaging in social distancing, lashed out at the president’s approach.

“President Trump comes to Sanford today bringing nothing but reckless behavior, divisive rhetoric, and fear mongering,” Biden, the Democratic former vice president said in a statement.

FLORIDA UP FOR GRABS

Trump told Fox News in an interview on Sunday that he felt good and pointed to his physician’s memo from Saturday saying he had taken a test showing he was no longer infectious.

“I passed the highest test, the highest standards, and I’m in great shape,” Trump told “Sunday Morning Futures.”

Trump also said, without producing evidence, that he was now immune, an assertion that drew a flag from Twitter for violating the social media platform’s rules about misleading information related to COVID-19.

The scientific research has been inconclusive on how long people who have recovered from COVID-19 have antibodies and are protected from a second infection.

Most recent polls in Florida, where a Trump loss would dramatically narrow his path to re-election, show Biden with a small lead. Trump won Florida over Democratic presidential nominee Hillary Clinton in 2016 by just 1.2 percentage points, which helped propel him to the White House.

On his visit to Ohio, Biden will deliver a speech in Toledo meant to undermine what polls show is Trump’s last greatest strength, the view among some voters that the former real estate entrepreneur is better on handling the economy.

Biden also will attend a get-out-the-vote event in Cincinnati, his campaign said.

Trump has pulled back his advertising in Ohio in recent days, while Biden has increased his, another sign of the opportunity he and his fellow Democrats see to make more states competitive than they initially imagined.

(Reporting by John Whitesides; Additional reporting by Trevor Hunnicutt and Jarrett Renshaw; Writing by John Whitesides and Paul Simao; Editing by Soyoung Kim, Peter Cooney and Howard Goller)

U.S. CDC reports 210,232 deaths from coronavirus

(Reuters) – The U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) on Wednesday reported 7,475,262 cases of the new coronavirus, an increase of 38,984 from its previous count, and said that the number of deaths had risen by 672 to 210,232.

The CDC reported its tally of cases of the respiratory illness known as COVID-19, caused by a new coronavirus, as of 4 pm ET on Oct. 6 versus its previous report a day earlier.