Tag Archives: COVID-19

U.S. postal chaos prompts Democrats to reassess mail-ballot plan

By Jarrett Renshaw and Andy Sullivan

(Reuters) – Turmoil at the U.S. Postal Service (USPS) is causing some Democrats and local election officials to rethink their vote-by-mail strategies for November’s presidential election, shifting emphasis to drop boxes and early voting that bypass the post office.

The 2020 contest promises to be the nation’s largest test of voting by mail. But U.S. President Donald Trump’s relentless, unsubstantiated attacks on mail balloting, along with cost-cutting that has delayed mail service nationwide, have sown worry and confusion among many voters.

Democratic officials who just weeks ago were touting their dominance in mail balloting during a recent rash of primaries are now cautioning supporters of presidential challenger Joe Biden to be wary. Operatives in battleground states, including Pennsylvania, are particularly concerned about ballots arriving too late to count for the Nov. 3 election.

“We are considering telling voters that if they haven’t mailed out their complete ballot by Oct. 15, don’t bother. Instead, vote in person or drop off the ballot” at an elections office, said Joe Foster, the chairman of the Democratic Party in Montgomery County, the most populous of Philadelphia’s suburban counties. “We want to make sure every vote counts.”

Other local Democratic leaders, from states like Florida and North Carolina, told Reuters they also are weighing urging voters to submit mail ballots weeks ahead of the election or else vote in person.

On Tuesday, Postmaster General Louis DeJoy announced he was suspending cost-cutting measures he had put in place in recent weeks that had led to widespread service disruptions. Those changes included limits on employee overtime, orders for trucks to depart on schedule even if there was mail still to be loaded, and the removal of some mail sorting machines.

“The Postal Service is ready today to handle whatever volume of election mail it receives this fall,” DeJoy said in a statement. He also promised to deploy “standby resources” beginning Oct. 1 to satisfy any unforeseen demand.

But some Democrats said the damage is already done. Many don’t trust DeJoy – who was a major Trump campaign donor before becoming postal chief – to restore service at the independent government agency amid a presidential race that polls say Biden is leading.

“Return the mailboxes you removed,” Rep. David Cicilline of Rhode Island said on Twitter. “Return the sorting machines you took out. Restore the regular hours of post offices you cut short. Return postal vehicles you took. The list goes on.”

A USPS spokesman declined to comment. DeJoy is expected to provide more detail on his plans in testimony before the Senate on Friday and the House of Representatives on Monday.

White House Chief of Staff Mark Meadows said Tuesday that Trump never told the Postal Service to change its operations.

Democrats asked for $25 billion to shore up the balance sheet of the USPS in a massive virus aid package that passed the House of Representatives in May. Republicans have balked at that figure, and Trump last week said he opposed that funding because it might be used to encourage mail voting. But administration officials in recent days have said they are open to additional funding as public outrage over the USPS drama has grown.

Local Democratic officials, operatives and campaign workers said they are not waiting for a Washington solution.

In the competitive state of Michigan, Democratic voter outreach volunteer Karen McJimpson, 64, is phoning voters to encourage them to hand-deliver their absentee ballots directly to specified drop boxes or elections offices in light of concerns about mail delivery. She said Tuesday’s news about restored service gave her no comfort.“I don’t trust it,” said McJimpson, who volunteers with a nonprofit called Michigan United. “There has been too much noise around this, and someone is clearly pulling the strings. We are going to proceed as planned: drop the ballots off.”

Upheaval at the USPS has reshuffled some Democrats’ plans for other types of election mail as well.

Brad Crone, a Democratic strategist in North Carolina, plans to send up to two million mailers between now and Election Day supporting various state and congressional candidates. The campaign flyers are mailed directly from his printer, who last week sent him a notice: If Crone wants to mail anything beyond Oct. 19, he must sign a waiver acknowledging that it might not get there before Election Day.

Crone said he will now stop his mailings by Oct. 4, three weeks earlier than he had originally planned.

“It’s alarming,” Crone said. “Americans are witnessing major system breakdowns, whether it’s the postal system, COVID testing or their local schools. The average voter is seeing this and is just floored.”

DROP BOX BATTLE

Mail voting has grown steadily since the turn of the century. In the 2016 presidential election, mail ballots accounted for 23.6% of all ballots cast, up from 19.2% in 2008, according to the U.S. Election Assistance Commission.

Interest has exploded this year as voters have sought to avoid crowded polling places due to the coronavirus pandemic. Mail ballots accounted for 80% of all votes cast in 16 state primaries this year, including Wisconsin, Nevada and Pennsylvania, according to an estimate by Charles Stewart III, a professor at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. Some states, such as New York, have struggled to handle the crush.

The surge has sparked a slew of litigation. Republicans in Texas, for example, fended off a recent Democratic effort to make it easier for its citizens to vote by mail in the pandemic. The vast majority of Texans will be required to vote in person in November.

Democrats have prevailed elsewhere. In South Carolina, officials have agreed to provide prepaid postage for absentee ballots, easing a barrier for those who otherwise would have to provide their own stamps. In Minnesota, the state agreed to suspend a requirement that absentee voters get a witness to sign their ballots and to count ballots that are postmarked by Election Day.

The Democratic Party currently has ongoing litigation on mail voting in 14 states, according to Marc Elias, the lawyer overseeing the effort.

Trump has spent the last few weeks making unsupported allegations that mail voting is vulnerable to tampering and would result in Democrats stealing the election. He has sought to distinguish between states that provide mail ballots only to voters who request them – including Florida, where Trump himself votes absentee – and those that are moving to conduct their elections entirely by mail, which he claims could lead to widespread cheating.

Election experts say mail voting is as secure as any other method.

Trump’s attacks have forced state and local Republicans to engage in some damage control. Many of their most reliable supporters, particularly elderly voters, have long used mail balloting. Some Republicans fear the president’s broadsides will depress turnout.

A Wall Street Journal/NBC poll released on Monday found that nearly half of Biden supporters plan to vote by mail in November, while just 11% of Trump supporters plan to do so.

The latest front in the voting battle is the dedicated election drop box, a sealed, sturdily built receptacle that has been a popular option for voters who prefer mail ballots but don’t want to return them via the USPS. Election officials collect those ballots and take them to polling locations for counting.

Election officials in South Carolina, Florida, Virginia, Pennsylvania and elsewhere are seeking to expand drop-off locations or ease requirements such as those mandating that voters show identification to use them.

Those changes have met resistance from Republicans over concerns about fraud. On Monday, Trump turned his fire on drop boxes.

“Some states use ‘drop boxes’ for the collection of Universal Mail-In Ballots. So who is going to ‘collect’ the Ballots, and what might be done to them prior to tabulation?” he wrote on Twitter. “A Rigged Election? So bad for our Country.”

Rob Daniel, chairman of the Charleston County Democratic Party in South Carolina, said there is just one election drop box in the county of roughly 400,0000 people. He said some voters must drive 45 minutes to reach it because of the county’s odd shape.

Daniel said the county board of elections is seeking permission from the state to add more boxes, but that is no certainty. As a backup, the party is urging voters to request their mail ballots early and return them via the USPS as soon as possible.

“Even Trump can’t screw up the Postal Service so much that it can’t deliver mail across town in 30 days,” Daniel said.

Still, Democrats see a bigger worry: Trump has already raised the possibility that he might not accept the results of an election whose outcome could take days to decide because of the quantity of mail ballots that will need to be counted.

“That is absolutely our biggest threat,” Michigan’s Lieutenant Governor Garlin Gilchrist said.

(Reporting By Jarrett Renshaw in Pennsylvania and Andy Sullivan in Washington; Additional reporting by Michael Martina in Detroit and David Shepardson in Washington; Editing by Marla Dickerson)

U.S. CDC reports 169,870 deaths from coronavirus

(Reuters) – The U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) on Tuesday said the number of deaths due to the new coronavirus had risen by 520 to 169,870 and reported 5,422,242 cases, an increase of 40,117 cases from its previous count.

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 Aug. 17 compared with 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 Vinay Dwivedi)

Pelosi: Democrats willing to cut COVID-19 bill in half to get a deal

WASHINGTON (Reuters) – U.S. House of Representatives Speaker Nancy Pelosi said on Tuesday that Democrats in Congress are willing to cut their coronavirus relief bill in half to get an agreement on new legislation with the White House and Republicans.

“We have to try to come to that agreement now,” Pelosi said in an online interview with Politico. “We’re willing to cut our bill in half to meet the needs right now. We’ll take it up again in January. We’ll see them again in January. But for now, we can cut the bill in half.”

But her remarks did not signal a new position for Democrats, according to a senior aide.

The Democratic-led House passed legislation with over $3 trillion in relief in May. This month, Democrats offered to reduce that sum by $1 trillion, but the White House rejected it.

The two sides remain about $2 trillion apart, with wide gaps on funding for schools, aid to state and local governments, and enhanced unemployment benefits.

(Reporting by David Morgan; Editing by Chris Reese and Chizu Nomiyama)

U.S. activists complain that virtual shareholder meetings let companies silence them

By Jessica DiNapoli and Ross Kerber

NEW YORK/BOSTON (Reuters) – Justin Danhof has used annual shareholder meetings to question companies on social issues for the last nine years.

His conservative think tank, the National Center for Public Policy Research, owns just a few shares in each of about 150 companies and takes advantage of its shareholder status to grill executives on issues ranging from gay rights to boardroom diversity.

This year, Danhof often found himself ignored, as companies held their shareholder meetings remotely during the COVID-19 pandemic, and asked investors to submit their questions online. Danhof said his questions on topics such as companies’ dealings with China or restrictions on financing gun makers were answered in only 13 of the 27 virtual shareholder meetings he and his representatives attended.

“Companies used the crisis to set up question-and-answer sessions that are a joke,” Danhof said. His success rate was much higher when he could sit near a microphone or in a CEO’s line of sight during in-person gatherings, he added.

Danhof is not alone. Investors faced obstacles, such as not being able to ask questions or not having their inquiries addressed, about 55% of the time in a sample of 88 virtual shareholder meetings held this year and reviewed in a Hebrew University of Jerusalem study published this month.

The researchers did not provide such figures for in-person shareholder gatherings in previous years but estimated that this year’s virtual meetings had significantly increased the number of dodged questions.

To be sure, virtual shareholder meetings have been welcomed by many mom-and-pop investors, who would have otherwise had to travel to a company’s headquarters to attend amid the pandemic.

Broadridge Financial Solutions Inc, the top technology vendor to companies for these events, said it helped run 1,494 virtual shareholder meetings this year, up from 326 last year, preserving a key ritual in the corporate calendar.

Yet many activists focused on environmental, social and corporate governance issues say the digital format can make it hard for them to hold companies accountable, given that Wall Street’s big institutional investors get access to top executives all year long.

“Companies should not use the pandemic as a cover for silencing their investors,” New York State Comptroller Thomas DiNapoli, who administers the state’s roughly $194 billion pension fund, said in a statement to Reuters. He said he wanted companies to use virtual meetings as a supplement to in-person shareholder gatherings, not a replacement.

Questions avoided this year ranged from online auctioneer eBay Inc declining to name directors who did not attend its online meeting to drug maker AbbVie Inc avoiding an inquiry on whether it would raise the cost of drugs during the pandemic.

“As long-term investors, we were disappointed our question wasn’t answered by AbbVie,” said Kate Monahan, shareholder engagement manager at the Friends Fiduciary Corporation, which invests roughly $480 million based on religious Quaker values.

She said she also posted her question on social media to attract attention but has yet to receive an answer from AbbVie.

Abbvie did not respond to a request for comment. An eBay spokeswoman said the company’s shareholder meeting was well attended by its board, and that it focused on questions more relevant to its business “out of fairness to other shareholders.”

Shareholder advocacy groups, including the Council of Institutional Investors (CII), last month asked the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) to look into the issue, including companies avoiding questions or not allowing shareholders to speak during virtual meetings.

An SEC spokesman declined to comment. The securities regulator issued guidance in April instructing companies to be clear about how shareholders “can remotely access, participate in, and vote” in online meetings.

The New York State Common Retirement Fund, overseen by DiNapoli, voted against the re-election of directors sitting on the governance committees of AT&T Inc and Berkshire Hathaway Inc’s boards this year for restricting investor participation at their virtual meetings.

Berkshire Hathaway did not respond to requests for comment. An AT&T spokeswoman said via e-mail that its decision this year to tweak the format of its shareholder meeting, allowing the company to read comments on proxy proponents’ behalf, “lets us efficiently address the matters to be voted and then move on to additional content.”

A spokesman for the fund said it will vote against directors of companies that do not meet CII’s standards for virtual shareholder meetings.

Proxy advisory firm Glass, Lewis & Co, which many funds turn to for advice on how to cast their shareholder votes, is considering recommending against directors at companies that ran this year’s virtual meetings poorly, its head of research and engagement Aaron Bertinetti said.

TECHNICAL GLITCHES

The snubbing of the activists has not always been intentional. As the pandemic spread in the spring, some companies had to switch to virtual meetings with little notice, resulting in technical glitches.

“The technology is just catching up with the need to make virtual meetings the best in class,” said Lawrence Elbaum, a partner at law firm Vinson & Elkins LLP, who often works with companies challenged by activists. He added that investors can also contact companies through investor relations and by writing letters any day of the year.

Some activists argued, however, that public pressure on companies at shareholder meetings is more successful in triggering change. They pointed to oil major ExxonMobil Corp’s move in 2018 to provide investors with a report on the impact of climate change after shareholders won a high-profile vote at its annual meeting the previous year.

“Virtual meetings provide another tool for companies who don’t like dissent to shut it down,” said Doug Chia, the president of corporate governance consulting firm Soundboard Governance LLC.

(Reporting by Jessica DiNapoli in New York and Ross Kerber in Boston; Additional reporting by Svea Herbst-Bayliss in Boston; Editing by Greg Roumeliotis and Cynthia Osterman)

Boeing to offer second layoff plan, CEO Calhoun sees smaller market ahead

By Bhargav Acharya

(Reuters) – Boeing Co. said on Monday it would offer employees a voluntary layoff package with pay and benefits for the second time this year, as the plane maker battles a coronavirus-induced slowdown in global air travel.

It will be offered to employees in the commercial airplanes and services businesses as well as corporate functions, Chief Executive Officer Dave Calhoun wrote in a note to employees, a copy of which was seen by Reuters.

“Unfortunately, layoffs are a hard but necessary step to align to our new reality, preserve liquidity and position ourselves for the eventual return to growth,” Calhoun said in the note.

“We anticipate seeing a significantly smaller marketplace over the next three years.”

The health crisis, which has hammered plane makers, airlines and suppliers, has added to the woes of Boeing that has been grappling with a production freeze and year-long grounding of the 737 MAX following two fatal crashes.

The company doesn’t have a set target at this time and was encouraging all eligible employees interested in the voluntary layoff package to apply, Boeing said in a statement.

The move to extend the overall workforce reductions beyond the initial 10% target is in response to employee feedback, Calhoun said.

The plane maker had said in April it would cut its 160,000-person workforce by about 10%, many of which was to be completed by the end of this year at its commercial aircraft division.

More details will be made available to the employees beginning Aug. 24, according to the CEO’s note.

(Reporting by Bhargav Acharya in Bengaluru; Editing by Arun Koyyur)

Brazil approves human trials for potential Johnson & Johnson COVID-19 vaccine

BRASILIA (Reuters) – Brazil’s health regulator Anvisa on Tuesday said it had approved human clinical trials for a potential COVID-19 vaccine developed by Johnson & Johnson’s pharmaceutical subsidiary Janssen.

Brazil is the second-worst hit country for coronavirus cases and deaths after the United States, leading many vaccine developers to seek out clinical trials here.

Brazil had registered 3.4 million cases of the disease and more than 108,000 related deaths as of Monday.

The Johnson & Johnson vaccine candidate is the fourth to be approved for human trials in Brazil, Anvisa said in its statement.

Brazil has already approved phase 3 human trials of potential vaccines developed by AstraZeneca in partnership with the University of Oxford, China’s Sinovac Biotech and Pfizer in partnership with BioNTech.

China’s Sinopharm also aims to carry out trials for a possible vaccine in Brazil in a deal with the southern state of Parana pending regulatory approval.

(Reporting by Ricardo Brito; writing by Jake Spring; editing by Alex Richardson and Jason Neely)

Lockdown, leftovers and how food frugality is a climate boon

By Christopher Walljasper and Nigel Hunt

CHICAGO/LONDON (Reuters) – Clint Parry ransacked every kitchen cupboard and scoured all corners of his fridge during lockdown in Detroit, hunting for lost ingredients and leftovers to whip up meals.

The 33-year-old is one of many people across the world to have embraced thriftiness and cut down on food waste during the COVID-19 pandemic, according to experts. They say the new habits, if maintained, will provide a major boost in tackling another global crisis: climate change.

“We are using virtually all of our leftovers, where we used to waste food because we would forget to pack it and just pick up fast food on a lunch break,” said Parry, who is married and works as a master model builder at Legoland in Michigan.

The U.N. Food and Agriculture Organization estimates that a third of the world’s food is wasted every year. Forests are cleared, fuel is burnt and packaging in produced just to provide food which is thrown away. Meanwhile, rotting food in landfills releases more greenhouse gases into the atmosphere.

As a result, food waste is responsible for around 8% of global greenhouse gas emissions, a similar amount to road transportation.

“The next crisis will be the climate crisis and the best thing you can do as a consumer is reduce food waste,” said Toine Timmermans, program manager for sustainable food chains at Wageningen University in the Netherlands.

Household food waste in Britain, to take one country, fell significantly in the early phase of the lockdown in April with just 14% of four key items – bread, chicken, milk and potatoes – thrown away, according to research by environmental group WRAP, which conducted thousands of interviews.

Pre-lockdown, an average of 24% had been wasted.

Waste had begun to rebound by June, with a second WRAP survey putting waste of those products at 18%, but remained significantly below pre-lockdown levels.

“Although people are reporting wasting more food as restrictions lift … the positive news is that 70% of people want to maintain their new-found food management behaviors in the long term,” said Richard Swannell, director at WRAP Global which works with governments to reduce food waste.

“This is an encouraging sign that people are taking this opportunity to adopt less wasteful habits in life after lockdown.”

PLAN MORE, COOK MORE

Food security has been a major concern during the pandemic as consumers panic-bought basic goods, migrant workers struggled to get to the fields, meat-packing plants shut, and farm goods produced for shuttered restaurants rotted.

But the lower household food waste has been one bright spot.

Out of necessity, consumers have become more organized in planning menus, developed new cooking skills, checked their cupboards and fridges more before they shop and found better ways to use up leftovers, according to food waste experts.

“What people have been forced to do during the pandemic is plan ahead because they’re now shopping less frequently,” said Dana Gunders, executive director at ReFED, a nonprofit dedicated to reducing wasted food across the United States.

“They’re being forced to cook more and build those cooking skills.”

Laura Brooks, a stay-at-home mother of five in Weymouth, Massachusetts, said she had developed useful habits during the lockdown that she would keep.

“I think as things go back to normal, I may continue with less frequent shopping trips. When I go more often, I find that the new produce pushes the old produce out of sight and things get wasted more easily,” she added.

Increased frugality could prove a valuable habit in the economic and unemployment crisis caused by the pandemic; Gunders said a family of four in the United States was estimated to throw out food worth about $1,800 a year.

TOO GOOD FOR THE BIN

A survey from Germany’s Food and Agriculture Ministry also showed consumers had started to show more concern about wasting food during the coronavirus crisis.

The government had launched an anti-food waste campaign called “Too good for the bin” before the crisis, urging the public not to automatically throw food away after the sell-by date but to smell and taste it to see if it was still in good condition.

The ministry’s survey, undertaken during the pandemic, found that 91% of German consumers questioned were now checking food after its sell-by date and not automatically throwing it away.

This compared to only 76% in a similar survey in 2016.

Food waste is not restricted to the home but it is the biggest source in many countries.

The European Union has published a study estimating that 53% of food waste was in households and 11% in production, with the balance in areas such as processing and retailing.

China’s President Xi Jingping said this month that the amount of food wasted in China was “shocking”, prompting many local governments to launch related campaigns.

For Parry in Detroit, and many others, thrift is here to stay.

“Our food costs have definitely gone way down, since we are not buying out when we have perfectly consumable leftovers in the fridge at home,” he said.

(Reporting by Christopher Walljasper and Nigel Hunt; Editing by Veronica Brown and Pravin Char)

Coronavirus pandemic now driven by younger adults: WHO

By Karen Lema and Neil Jerome Morales

MANILA (Reuters) – The World Health Organization (WHO) said on Tuesday it was concerned that the novel coronavirus spread was being driven by people in their 20’s, 30’s and 40’s, many of whom were unaware they were infected, posing a danger to vulnerable groups.

WHO officials said this month the proportion of younger people among those infected had risen globally, putting at risk vulnerable sectors of the population worldwide, including the elderly and sick people in densely populated areas with weak health services.

“The epidemic is changing,” WHO Western Pacific regional director, Takeshi Kasai, told a virtual briefing. “People in their 20’s, 30’s and 40’s are increasingly driving the spread. Many are unaware they are infected.”

“This increases the risk of spillovers to the more vulnerable,” he added.

A surge in new cases has prompted some countries to re-impose curbs as companies race to find a vaccine for a virus that has battered economies, killed more than 770,000 people and infected nearly 22 million, according to a Reuters tally.

Countries putting their own interests ahead of others in trying to ensure supplies of a possible vaccine are making the pandemic worse, WHO chief Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus said in Geneva on Tuesday.

“(Acting) strategically and globally is actually in each country’s national interest – no one is safe until everyone is safe,” he told a virtual briefing calling for an end to “vaccine nationalism”.

Surges in infections have been reported in countries that had appeared to have the virus under control, including Vietnam, which until recently went three months without domestic transmission due to its aggressive mitigation efforts.

“What we are observing is not simply a resurgence. We believe it’s a signal that we have entered a new phase of pandemic in the Asia-Pacific,” Kasai said.

He said countries were better able to reduce disruption to lives and economies by combining early detection and response to manage infections.

While mutations had been observed, the WHO still saw the virus as “relatively stable,” Kasai said.

WHO also reminded drugmakers to follow all necessary research and development steps when creating a vaccine.

Socorro Escalante, its technical officer and medicines policy adviser, said the WHO was coordinating with Russia, which this month became the first country to grant regulatory approval for a COVID-19 vaccine.

“We hope to get the response in terms of the evidence of this new vaccine,” Escalante said.

(Reporting by Ed Davies, Karen Lema, Stephanie Nebehay, Michael Shields and John Miller; Writing by Nick Macfie; Editing by Martin Petty and Ed Osmond)

New York Governor Cuomo says gyms can open as soon as August 24 with restrictions

(Reuters) – New York Governor Andrew Cuomo on Monday said that the state’s gyms could open as soon as Aug 24 at 33% capacity as long as they enforce strict health measures, including mask-wearing, to prevent the spread of COVID-19.

Localities must inspect every gym before it opens or within two weeks of it opening to ensure compliance with health guidelines, Cuomo told a news conference.

As part of the state’s reopening plan for gyms, air ventilation systems must meet certain guidelines and people must sign in and out so that the gym maintains a ready contact-tracing list, Cuomo said.

“Localities can also determine whether or not the gym has classes inside it,” he said.

The planned reopening of gyms, indoor businesses where health experts say there is a greater risk of viral spread, comes as New York’s COVID-19 infection rate continues to decline below 1%. The state’s infection rate dropped to 0.71% on Sunday, the lowest since the start of the pandemic, Cuomo said.

Last week, the governor said that museums and cultural institutions in New York City could begin reopening at the end of the month at limited capacity.

(Reporting by Gabriella Borter; Editing by Chizu Nomiyama)

Novavax begins mid-stage study of COVID-19 vaccine in South Africa

(Reuters) – U.S. drug developer Novavax Inc said on Monday it started a mid-stage study of its experimental COVID-19 vaccine in South Africa, as the country experiences a surge in coronavirus cases.

South Africa is the fifth worst affected country with 583,653 coronavirus cases and 11,677 deaths, according to a Reuters tally.

“Because South Africa is experiencing a winter surge of COVID-19 disease, this important Phase 2b clinical trial has the potential to provide an early indication of efficacy,” Novavax research chief Gregory Glenn said.

The trial of Novavax’s NVX-CoV2373, backed by a $15 million grant from Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation, was being conducted in two separate groups, one comprising 2,665 healthy volunteers and the other, 240 HIV-positive adults.

Novavax expects its vaccine, once approved, would be supplied to South Africa through a deal signed earlier this year with the Serum Institute of India to develop and commercialize NVX-CoV2373.

The vaccine candidate is one of nearly 30 globally being tested in human clinical trials.

Early-stage data from a small clinical trial of the vaccine has shown that it produced high levels of virus-fighting antibodies, and the company aims to begin larger studies to obtain regulatory approvals as early as December.

Novavax intends to begin Phase 2 of the small clinical trial in the United States and Australia in the near future and said it would include about 1,500 candidates. It also aims to begin Phase III as soon as late September.

The U.S. government in July awarded Novavax $1.6 billion to cover testing its potential coronavirus vaccine in the United States and manufacturing with the aim of delivering a 100 million doses by January.

(Reporting by Sabahatjahan Contractor and Manas Mishra in Bengaluru; Editing by Amy Caren Daniel and Shinjini Ganguli)