Tag Archives: Health Crisis

Fed sees little to no growth in much of U.S. as stress mounts

By Howard Schneider and Ann Saphir

WASHINGTON (Reuters) – Federal Reserve officials saw “little or no growth” in four of their 12 regional districts and only modest growth in the others in recent weeks as a rapidly spreading health crisis and ongoing recession continued to devastate some U.S. businesses and families even as many others thrive.

In the U.S. central bank’s latest “Beige Book” compendium of anecdotes from businesses across the country, Fed officials seemed to signal that the winter slowdown they’ve feared would follow a new coronavirus outbreak is taking root.

Earlier on Wednesday, Fed Chair Jerome Powell repeated his plea for Congress to provide more aid to “get us through the winter” and support businesses and households until a vaccine allows for a broader resumption of commerce. Initial inoculations may begin in the United States this month.

Meanwhile, the pandemic is spreading at a rate of a million new cases a week and around 1,500 deaths a day.

In some places that has led officials to impose new restrictions on businesses and social gatherings. In others, households have pulled back on their own.

But overall it has left little capacity to fix problems that have plagued the economy since the onset of the pandemic last spring, with women sidelined from the workforce due to childcare concerns, leisure and hospitality firms semi-shuttered, and banks concerned their loans books may come under stress soon.

“This is one of the most troubling Beige Books we have seen in a long time,” Jefferies LLC economist Thomas Simon said.

The possibility of growing loan bank stress added a newly worrisome note: The comparative lack of loan defaults so far has prevented the recession from spawning a separate financial crisis.

But “banking contacts in numerous Districts reported some deterioration of loan portfolios, particularly for commercial lending into the retail and leisure and hospitality sectors,” Fed officials reported. “An increase in delinquencies in 2021 is more widely anticipated.”

Commercial real estate – especially in the office and retail sectors – was a weak spot across most districts. The Boston Fed reported that contacts there “estimated daytime office occupancy rates at around 20 percent – bad news for the shops and restaurants that relied on office workers’ business.”

The regional bank also said office tenants nearing the end of leases were renewing only for the short term and that some respondents noted an increase in available subleased space, signaling more trouble ahead in the sector.

Similarly, firms had become tentative about hiring because of the uncertain path of the pandemic.

LABOR MARKET WORRIES

Nearly all districts reported that employment was growing more slowly and that the recovery “remained incomplete.”

Businesses said it was harder to retain workers, especially women, because of challenges finding child care and dealing with school closures caused by the virus. Firms in several districts said they feared “employment levels would fall over the winter” before improving.

In Boston, “a supplier to commercial aviation announced major layoffs over the summer and has not had any reason to revise those plans either up or down,” local Fed officials noted.

Still the latest collection of Fed field reports, compiled on or before Nov. 20, included stories of other firms where managers struggled to find workers to help meet a boom in goods sales.

That divide, among regions and sectors that are doing well and those that are not, has become a hallmark of the current recession and presents the Fed with a difficult decision as it debates whether to provide more support for the economy at its Dec. 15-16 policy meeting.

The economy continues to recover from the deep blow it suffered at the start of the pandemic, and the prospect of a coming COVID-19 vaccine means the recovery could gain steam next year.

In the meantime, the country is 10 million jobs short of where it was in February. Job numbers for November will be released on Friday and are expected to show the pace of improvement is slowing, with some analysts now predicting an outright job loss.

(Reporting by Howard Schneider; Editing by Chizu Nomiyama and Paul Simao)

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)

Trump urges U.S. to halt most social activity in virus fight, warns of recession

By Jeff Mason and Steve Holland

WASHINGTON (Reuters) – President Donald Trump urged Americans on Monday to halt most social activities for 15 days and not congregate in groups larger than 10 people in a newly aggressive effort to reduce the spread of the coronavirus in the United States.

Announcing new guidelines from his coronavirus task force, the president said people should avoid discretionary travel and not go to bars, restaurants, food courts or gyms.

As stocks tumbled, Trump warned that a recession was possible, a development that could affect his chances of re-election in November. The Republican president said he was focused on addressing the health crisis and that the economy would get better once that was in line.

The task force implored young people to follow the new guidelines even though they were at lesser risk of suffering if they contract the virus. Older people, especially those with underlying health problems, are at the greatest risk if they develop the respiratory disease.

“We’ve made the decision to further toughen the guidelines and blunt the infection now,” Trump told reporters at the White House. “We’d much rather be ahead of the curve than behind it.”

Reporters staggered their seating, sitting in every other seat in the White House briefing room, to follow social distancing measures.

Trump said the worst of the virus could be over by July, August or later. He called it an invisible enemy.

“With several weeks of focused action, we can turn the corner and turn it quickly,” he said.

The president has taken criticism for playing down the seriousness of the virus in the early days of its U.S. spread. On Monday, when asked, he gave himself a good grade for his response.

Trump said a nationwide curfew was not under consideration at this point.

Normally a cheerleader for the U.S. economy, he acknowledged the possibility of a recession while brushing off another dramatic decline on stock markets as investors worried about the virus.

“The market will take care of itself,” Trump said, adding it would be very strong once the virus was handled. The president has long considered soaring stock markets to be a sign of his administration’s success.

Trump said the administration had talked regularly about domestic travel restrictions but hoped not to have to put such measures in place.

He said he thought it would still be possible for G7 leaders to meet at the Camp David retreat in Maryland in June. Trump upset European countries, which make up a large part of the G7, by instituting travel restrictions from European countries without consulting with them first.

(Reporting by Jeff Mason and Steve Holland; Additional reporting by Timothy Ahmann, Lisa Lambert and Makini Brice; Editing by Peter Cooney)

Foxconn, Chinese firms refit production lines to make masks amid virus outbreak

By Josh Horwitz and Brenda Goh

SHANGHAI (Reuters) – A number of Chinese manufacturers including a subsidiary of Apple Inc partner Foxconn have refitted production lines to make masks and medical clothing, as a deadly coronavirus spreads across China.

The move highlights how private companies are pitching in to alleviate a nationwide shortage of medical gear amid the health crisis, at times expanding beyond their core lines of business.

In a social media post on Thursday, Foxconn – formally Hon Hai Precision Industry Co Ltd – said it has begun trial production of surgical masks at its Longhua Park plant in Shenzhen, and expects to produce 2 million masks daily by the end of the month.

The Taiwanese company said the masks would initially be produced for internal use by its hundreds of thousands of employees, the majority of whom work in factories in mainland China.

SAIC-GM-Wuling Automobile Co Ltd, a joint venture automaker formed by General Motors Co <GM.N> and two Chinese partners, also announced on Thursday via social media that it will set up 14 production lines with the goal of making 1.7 million masks daily.

On Tuesday, Hongdou Group Co Ltd [HONGD.UL], a clothing manufacturer founded in the 1950s, wrote on social media it had refitted a factory to make disposable medical suits.

The company said it intends to produce about 60,000 protective suits a month and will send them to the government for allocation and distribution. Hongdou employs 30,000 people, its website showed.

Apparel peers Zhejiang Giuseppe Garment Co Ltd and Jihua Group Corp Ltd  have launched similar initiatives, state media outlets reported this week.

Factories inside and outside of China have worked around the clock to keep up with demand since the outbreak of the virus at the end of last year in the eastern Chinese city of Wuhan in Hubei province. High street pharmacies have posted signs telling customers masks are not in stock.

One Czech mask manufacturer told Reuters in late January that orders had increased 57,000% with in four days.

To cope with the shortage, localities in China have set up rationing systems.

In Shanghai, individuals wanting to obtain masks must provide a neighborhood committee with their ID and phone number, after which they are contacted when they can retrieve a set of masks.

(Reporting by Josh Horwitz and Brenda Goh; Additional reporting by the Shanghai newsroom; Editing by Christopher Cushing)

China virus cases surpass SARS as big economic hit looms

By Lusha Zhang and Cate Cadell

BEIJING (Reuters) – Infection from China’s coronavirus spread to more than 8,100 people globally on Thursday, surpassing the total from the 2002-2003 SARS epidemic in a fast-spreading health crisis forecast to deal a heavy blow to the world’s second-largest economy.

The vast majority of infections are in China where the virus originated in an illegal wildlife market in the city of Wuhan and has also claimed 170 lives, latest official data showed.

More than 100 cases have emerged in other countries, from Japan to the United States.

The World Health Organization (WHO), which has so far held off declaring the flu-like coronavirus a global emergency, began another meeting in Geneva to reconsider.

Such a declaration would trigger tighter containment and information-sharing guidelines, but may disappoint Beijing, which had expressed confidence in defeating the “devil” virus.

It could also further spook markets, already shuddering at the ripple effects of damage to China’s economy.

“The fear is that they (the WHO) might raise the alarm bells … so people are taking money off the table,” said Chris Weston, head of research at Melbourne brokerage Pepperstone.

The Severe Acute Respiratory Syndrome also came from China, killing about 800 people and costing the global economy an estimated $33 billion, or 0.1% of world GDP, in 2003.

Economists fear the impact on global growth could be bigger this time as China now accounts for a larger share of the world economy. One Chinese economist has forecast the crisis would lop a percentage point off China’s first-quarter growth.

Global stocks tumbled on Thursday, while the yuan hit its lowest this year, oil prices slid again and safe haven assets like gold gained.

The main stock index in Taiwan, 40% of whose exports go to neighboring China, closed down 5.75% on the first day of trade after the Lunar New Year holiday.

LOCKDOWN IN WUHAN

Almost all the deaths have been in Hubei province – of which Wuhan is the capital – where 60 million people are now living under virtual lockdown, only venturing outside with masks.

“Most of the shops are closed. We cannot go out and buy food,” Si Thu Tun, one of 60 students from Myanmar trapped in Wuhan, told online news outlet the Democratic Voice of Burma.

“Honestly, I have one big potato and three packs of instant noodles and some rice,” he said. Myanmar plans a special flight to get the students out within three days.

Australia, South Korea, Singapore, New Zealand and Indonesia were quarantining evacuees for at least two weeks, though the United States and Japan planned shorter, voluntary isolation.

Three Japanese, from 206 evacuated on Wednesday, were infected, and worryingly two of them had not shown symptoms, Tokyo said. A second Japanese flight included nine people showing fever or coughing symptoms, broadcaster NHK said.

India was the latest nation to report a case, a student of Wuhan University. And South Koreans protested at facilities earmarked as quarantine centers, throwing eggs at a minister.

“The weapons that will protect us from the new coronavirus are not fear and aversion, but trust and cooperation,” said South Korean President Moon Jae-in as Seoul prepared to evacuate the first of about 700 citizens from Wuhan.

An Italian cruise ship’s 6,000 passengers were kept on board while tests were held on two Chinese travelers.

The crisis has stoked a wave of anti-China sentiment around the globe, from shops barring tourists to online mockery.

‘WHEN CHINA SLOWS, WE FEEL IT’

In the corporate world, Alphabet Inc’s Google and Sweden’s IKEA were the latest big names to close China operations. South Korea’s Samsung Electronics extended holiday closure for some Chinese production facilities.

Airlines to suspend flights to mainland China include Lufthansa, Air Canada, American Airlines and British Airways. Air France cabin crew unions were demanding the same, sources said, though the company has already allowed pilots and crew to opt out of China flights.

Fuelling concern over damage to productivity, thousands of Chinese factory workers on Lunar New Year holidays may struggle to get back to work next week, due to travel restrictions.

Policymakers are anxious, with China dominating U.S. Federal Reserve Chair Jerome Powell’s news conference on Wednesday. “China’s economy is very important in the global economy now, and when China’s economy slows down we do feel that,” he said.

Streets in many Chinese cities were largely deserted and tourist attractions shut. Starbucks coffee shops were requiring temperature checks and masks.

Cases of human-to-human transmission outside China are of particular concern to medics, but it is too early to determine how lethal the coronavirus is, as there are likely to be many cases of milder infections going undetected.

It has an incubation time of between one and 14 days.

With local officials facing a backlash from China’s public, especially over their early response, the health chief of Huanggang city – also in Hubei province, with a population of 7.5 million – was dismissed, authorities said.

No explanation was given.

(Reporting by Pei Li, Gabriel Crossley, Cate Cadell, Kevin Yao and Muyu Xu in Beijing; Samuel Shen and David Stanway in Shanghai; Josh Smith, Sangmi Cha and Joyce Lee in Seoul, Chang-Ran Kim in Tokyo and Se Young Lee; Stephanie Nebehay in Geneva; Kate Kelland in London; Crispian Balmer in Rome; Thu Thu Aung in Yangon; Ben Blanchard in Taipei; Writing by Andrew Cawthorne; Editing by Clarence Fernandez and Nick Macfie)

Greece moves to ease overcrowding in Lesbos migrant camp

FILE PHOTO: Refugees and migrants line up for food distribution at the Moria migrant camp on the island of Lesbos, Greece October 6, 2016. REUTERS/Alkis Konstantinidis/File Photo

ATHENS (Reuters) – Greece said on Tuesday it would move 2,000 asylum-seekers from the island of Lesbos to the mainland by the end of the month as pressure mounted on the government to ease overcrowding.

Human rights groups and local authorities have criticized Greece for the poor conditions at the country’s biggest migrant camp, Moria, currently operating at almost three times its capacity.

About 9,000 migrants and refugees are holed up in the camp, a collection of tents and shipping containers in a former military base, according to the latest government data.

A local governor threatened to shut it down within 30 days unless authorities clean up uncontrollable amounts of waste.

“The situation in Moria really is difficult,” government spokesman Dimitris Tzanakopoulos told a briefing. “It really is borderline.”

Some 3,000 people were transferred from Moria to the mainland over the summer and another 700 people were moved last week, Tzanakopoulos said. A further 2,000 would be moved by the end of September, he said.

Europe’s top migration official, Dimitris Avramopoulos, is expected to visit Athens this week for talks with Prime Minister Alexis Tsipras.

Last week, over a dozen human rights groups urged Greece to take action to render its camps fit for human habitation.

Medical charity Medecins Sans Frontieres (MSF) said on Monday it had witnessed an unprecedented health crisis in Moria, where it found many teenagers had attempted to commit suicide or were harming themselves on a weekly basis.

(Reporting by Karolina Tagaris; Editing by Richard Balmforth)

Venezuela doctors in protest urge stronger WHO stance on health crisis

People hold letters which read "Hunger" during a protest outside the World Health Organization (WHO) office in Caracas, Venezuela September 25, 2017. REUTERS/Ricardo Moraes

By Alexandra Ulmer

CARACAS (Reuters) – Venezuela’s doctors, fed up with what they called the World Health Organization’s passive attitude toward the country’s deep medical crisis, protested at the agency’s Caracas office on Monday to demand more pressure on the government and additional assistance.

Venezuela is suffering from a roughly 85 percent shortage of medicines, decrepit hospital infrastructure, and an exodus of doctors during a brutal recession.

Once-controlled diseases like diphtheria and measles have returned due in part to insufficient vaccines and antibiotics, while Venezuelans suffering chronic illnesses like cancer or diabetes often have to forgo treatment.

Malnutrition is also rising, doctors say.

Rare government data published in May showed maternal mortality shot up 65 percent while malaria cases jumped 76 percent. The former health minister was fired shortly after the bulletin’s publication, and it has not been issued since.

In the latest protest by an umbrella group of health associations, dozens of doctors and activists gathered at the Pan American Health Organization (PAHO), the WHO’s regional office, urging the agency step up pressure on Nicolas Maduro’s leftist government and provide more aid during its 29th Pan American Sanitary Conference this week.

“There’s been a complicit attitude because they haven’t denounced things,” Dr. Rafael Muci said during the rally.

“This is an unlivable country, and no one is paying attention,” he said, adding he earns about $8 a month at a state hospital.

In a statement on Monday, PAHO stressed its main role was to provide “technical cooperation” and highlighted recent help in providing vaccines.

The Venezuelan government, which accuses activists of whipping up panic and the business elite of hiding medicines, did not respond to a request for comment.

Venezuelans seeking certain drugs often have to scour pharmacies, seek foreign donations or turn to social media.

Sociologist Maria Angelica Casanova, 51, has struggled to find psychiatric medicines for a year. “Sometimes they come, sometimes they don’t. It’s serious,” she said, as passers-by shouted “Down with Maduro!”

Measles, which were controlled after a mass immunization in the 1990s, has returned to Venezuela’s jungle state of Bolivar, PAHO data show.

As the crisis stokes emigration, Venezuela’s health problems could be exported, doctors warned.

“We don’t know how many people who are emigrating could have some of these pathogens in incubation period,” said Andres Barreto, an epidemiologist who had participated in the measles vaccination drive.

(Reporting by Alexandra Ulmer; Additional reporting by Johnny Carvajal; Editing by Richard Chang)

Venezuelan girl’s diphtheria death highlights country’s health crisis

a mother who lost her child in Venezuela due to disease and health crisis

By Alexandra Ulmer and Maria Ramirez

PARIAGUAN, Venezuela (Reuters) – Eliannys Vivas, 9, started to get a sore throat on a Friday last month in this languid Venezuelan town where papaya trees shade poor cinder-block homes.

Five days later, Eliannys was dead, likely a victim of diphtheria, a serious bacterial infection that is fatal in 5 to 10 percent of cases and particularly lethal for children.

Her death and a wider Venezuelan outbreak of diphtheria, once a major global cause of child death but increasingly rare due to immunizations, shows how vulnerable the country is to health risks amid a major economic crisis that has sparked shortages of basic medicines and vaccines.

Eliannys’ story is also one of misdiagnoses and missed signals worsened by government secrecy around the disease. Her family had never heard of diphtheria and local doctors did not immediately suspect it, despite the infection having affected hundreds of people just a few hours away in Bolivar.

After Eliannys was taken to a local hospital, doctors, thinking the disease was asthma, used a sort of inhaler on her.

But the usually chatty girl – “a little parrot,” in the words of her day-laborer father — kept weakening, so doctors transferred her to a larger government hospital once an ambulance became available hours later.

At El Tigre hospital, all the devices to examine throats had broken three years ago, so no one checked her properly, according to a nursing assistant.

“They said it was asthma, asthma, asthma,” said her mother, Jennifer Vivas. But as Eliannys struggled to speak, she was rushed to a third and then a fourth hospital in neighboring Bolivar state.

There, doctors discovered with horror Eliannys suffered from grossly inflamed throat membranes – the classic symptom of diphtheria.

But even the fourth hospital lacked adequate treatment for the infection, so she received only a half dose of antitoxins and no penicillin at all, according to a medical professional who treated her there.

As Eliannys’ airwaves blocked up, she suffered two successive heart failures and died on Jan. 18.

“If the diphtheria diagnosis had been made earlier and she had gotten antitoxins, she would have had a chance of surviving,” the source who treated her said, asking to remain anonymous because the government has banned health professionals from speaking to the media.

DIPHTHERIA RETURNS

Venezuela controlled diphtheria in the 1990s, but it reappeared in the vast jungle state of Bolivar in mid-2016.

At least two dozen children died last year, doctors say, and cases are now thought to have spread to a half-dozen other states.

Shortages of basic drugs and vaccines, emigration of underpaid doctors, and crumbling infrastructure have made it easier for diseases to spread, medical associations said.

Many poor and middle-class Venezuelans also have weakened immune systems because they are no longer able to eat three meals a day or bathe regularly due to product scarcity, reduced water supply and raging inflation.

Government secrecy has compounded the problem.

“The fact people don’t know (about diphtheria) helps the bacteria spread,” said Caracas-based epidemiologist Julio Castro, who has been tracking the diphtheria outbreak and who showed photos sent to him of patients with thick white membranes coating their throat.

The unpopular leftist government of President Nicolas Maduro said in October there were no proven cases of diphtheria and admonished those seeking to spread “panic.”

It has since informed the World Health Organization of 20 confirmed diphtheria cases and five deaths, and emphasized there is a major vaccination drive under way, but has yet to provide a full national picture of the disease’s effects amid a generalized clampdown on data.

The Information and Health Ministries, as well as the Venezuelan Social Security Institute, which is in charge of some drug distribution and hospitals, did not respond to multiple requests for comment about Eliannys’ case and diphtheria more generally.

The only other country in the region with a significant number of confirmed diphtheria cases last year was Haiti with 33, the WHO said in December.

MORE ILLNESS AHEAD?

Doctors think diphtheria first spread from the rough-and-tumble illegal gold mines in Bolivar state, which is attracting poor Venezuelans as the minimum monthly wage languishes around $30.

After Eliannys’ family was forced to start skipping dinner in December, her father, Tulio Medina, decided to work in Bolivar’s yucca and yams plantation where he made more money but might have brought the infection home.

The disease has already spread to capital Caracas, where doctors say a 32-year-old mother died last year, and could yet affect more states.

With the Venezuelan pharmaceutical association estimating that roughly 85 percent of drugs are unavailable at any given time and in light of the short supply of vaccines, doctors are bracing for further increases in illnesses like malaria, pneumonia and tuberculosis.

Venezuela’s rate of immunization with the pentavalent vaccine, which protects children from five major infections including diphtheria, had slipped to 78 percent between January and November 2016, according to Health Ministry figures leaked to former Health Minister José Felix Oletta and seen by Reuters.

“At this rate, we’re going to see more illnesses, more deaths, more doctors leaving the country,” said pediatrician Hugo Lezama, the head of Bolivar’s doctors association, who himself earns only a handful of dollars a month.

“Those of us who stay are going hysterical trying to perform miracles so our patients don’t die.”

(Writing by Alexandra Ulmer; Editing by Christian Plumb and Matthew Lewis)