The coronavirus pandemic has turned markets upside down.
Sectors like financials, energy, and consumer discretionary have been hit hard as consumers have spent more time at home, and so-called "stay-at-home" stocks like Zoom Video CommunicationsandPeloton have soared along with e-commerce, benefiting from the shift in consumer behavior.
Image source: Getty Images.
No one knows when a COVID-19 vaccine will eventually come out, but when it does, it's a good bet that traditional consumer behavior will return. While some business leaders believe there will be a permanent shift to remote work and e-commerce, there will also be pent-up demand for pre-COVID ways of living, like socializing in large groups and, for many, returning to the office and the traditional way of life.
Keep reading to see whyDisney(NYSE:DIS),Planet Fitness(NYSE:PLNT), andLyft(NASDAQ:LYFT) all look like stocks poised to soar when a vaccine is released.
Image source: Disney.
Few large companies have been impacted by the pandemic as much as Disney. Nearly every component of its business, including its theme parks and resorts, movie releases, and live sports, has been upended by the crisis. Six months after the pandemic began, the company is still operating its parks at reduced capacity, and it just delayed a slate of blockbuster movies set to debut this year. Many of the challenges it's facing will endure until a vaccine is discovered and distributed.
Despite those headwinds, Disney actually managed to deliver a slight operating profit in its most recent quarter, a period that included the bulk of the lockdowns in the U.S. and Europe. Though it lost nearly $5 billion on a generally accepted accounting principles (GAAP) basis, the entirety of the loss was owed to restructuring and impairment charges as the company wrote down the value of assets like its international Disney Channels. The company posted an adjusted profit in part because of costs saved due to sports cancellations, but the results show the business is more resilient than investors thought.
There is one component of Disney's business that has shined during the pandemic: streaming, and in particular Disney+. The namesake service that the company launched last November has already racked up more than 60 million subscribers, and should help reinforce the strength of the brand at at time when other Disney experiences are unavailable.
Once a COVID-19 vaccine is fully deployed, Disney is likely to benefit from both the increased subscriber base in its streaming business, which also includes Hulu and ESPN+, and a surge of pent-up demand for its theme parks, as tourists and fans are likely to come flooding back. While that may not happen until 2022, when it does, it will almost certainly be Disney's best year ever, likely giving the stock a jolt.
Image source: Planet Fitness.
There's no question that the pandemic has been a disaster for the gyms and the fitness industry in general. Gyms have been closed in many states as part of restrictions aimed at slowing the spread of the coronavirus, and even when they've reopened, many gym-goers are reluctant or fearful of contracting the virus. They'd rather work out in their own homes, where they don't have to wear a mask or follow other safety protocols.
Planet Fitness saw revenue decline 78% in the second quarter and posted a loss of $29.2 million, and though most of its fitness centers have now reopened, the company faces stiff headwinds as many people simply don't feel comfortable exercising in a gym. Still, Planet Fitness is in a much stronger financial position than many of its competitors, including independent gyms and exercise studios, and chains that have declared bankruptcy like Gold's Gym and 24-Hour Fitness. Planet Fitness finished the second quarter with $423 million in cash, giving it a sufficient safety net to survive the crisis.
Once a vaccine comes on the market, people are likely to return to gyms and fitness classes, eager to resume their old workout routines. Additionally, the return of social events will be another incentive for many people to get back in shape. Workout options like Peloton have thrived during the pandemic, but Planet Fitness competes for a much different customer, offering memberships at just $10/month compared to an exercise bike that costs about $2,000. Many of its customers have no other good, similarly priced option for accessing the kind of gym equipment available at Planet Fitness because they don't have space in their homes to install a home gym, and workout classes or something like Peloton is too expensive. That should help drive Planet Fitness' comeback when it's safe to return.
Image source: Lyft.
Ridesharing companies like Lyft are in a difficult position these days, as nearly all of the major use cases for such transportation, including commuting, going home after a night out, and traveling to the airport, have significantly declined. However, the company has cut costs sharply and kept its adjusted EBITDA loss to $280.3 million in the second quarter, better than the company's expectations, as revenue tumbled 61% to $339.3 million. Lyft also laid off 17% of its workforce at the end of April, which should help streamline the business once it returns to full health.
While the company's results will continue to be ugly during the pandemic, Lyft has enough cash on its balance sheet to make it through the crisis with nearly $3 billion in cash and short-term investments, and just $623 million in debt.
The company was previously targeting profitability on an adjusted EBITDA basis by the end of next year, and is still on track, provided a vaccine comes out between now and then. In its August earnings call, the company said it had achieved $300 million in annual savings, which would allow it to be profitable with 20% to 25% fewer rides, or annual revenue of around $5 billion. By comparison, the company had $3.6 billion in revenue last year.
Unlike most of the stocks that have suffered during the pandemic, Lyft was delivering high growth in pre-COVID days. Revenue jumped 68% in 2019, and the company was calling for 27% to 29% growth in 2020. Once a COVID-19 vaccine is available, Lyft rides should surge as Americans return to old habits, and pent-up demand for social events and travel should drive the company's revenue back to all-time highs.
Lyft shares are now down 37% year to date, giving significant upside to a recovery.
The coming months are going to be crucial for vaccine development and decisions around how we distribute COVID-19 vaccines equitably, who gets them first and how to gain the publics trust.
These were some of the challenges discussed in two sessions at the World Economic Forum's Sustainable Development Impact Summit.
With 42 vaccine candidates in clinical trials on humans, scientists are working hard to fast-track the development of a safe and effective vaccine that would typically take decades work.
We are at the beginning of the beginning, said Sai Prasad, President of the Developing Countries Vaccine Manufacturers Network.
We are just at the end of the first year, and we have a few candidates that are moving forward. None of them are successful yet. Time will tell the next three to four months as to which one of these candidates will be successful.
Thats the end of the beginning, because once you know whats successful, you have to manufacture that at scale. The devil is in the detail. After you manufacture, you have to get these products approved and then distribute them.
How close is the world to finding a coronavirus vaccine?
Image: Statista
In the first six months of the pandemic, more than 700 products for treatment or prevention of COVID-19 went into the pipeline, which is unprecedented, said Julie Gerberding, Executive Vice-President of pharmaceuticals company Merck.
She compared the response speed with that of the AIDS epidemic: It was several years before there was even a test and it was 15 years before a highly active antiviral remedy. Were living in an era where the science has brought possibilities.
Antivirals, which Merck is also working on, will help. If we can take mortality down, it buys us time... I dont think we should put all our eggs in the vaccine basket, but clearly its a huge component of securing global protection and we have to prioritize it.
Once a vaccine is successful, how can world leaders ensure against vaccine nationalism and make sure its distributed fairly across the globe?
Gavi, The Vaccine Alliance, along with the World Health Organization and the Coalition for Epidemic Preparedness Innovations (CEPI), have created the COVAX Facility, a global initiative that brings together governments and manufacturers to ensure eventual COVID-19 vaccines reach those in greatest need.
So far, a total of 156 economies, representing nearly two-thirds of the global population, are now committed to or eligible to receive vaccines through the Facility.
Responding to the COVID-19 pandemic requires global cooperation among governments, international organizations and the business community, which is at the centre of the World Economic Forums mission as the International Organization for Public-Private Cooperation.
Since its launch on 11 March, the Forums COVID Action Platform has brought together 1,667 stakeholders from 1,106 businesses and organizations to mitigate the risk and impact of the unprecedented global health emergency that is COVID-19.
The platform is created with the support of the World Health Organization and is open to all businesses and industry groups, as well as other stakeholders, aiming to integrate and inform joint action.
As an organization, the Forum has a track record of supporting efforts to contain epidemics. In 2017, at our Annual Meeting, the Coalition for Epidemic Preparedness Innovations (CEPI) was launched bringing together experts from government, business, health, academia and civil society to accelerate the development of vaccines. CEPI is currently supporting the race to develop a vaccine against this strand of the coronavirus.
"A vaccine is the way we're going to get out of this pandemic that is the best way we have to go back towards normal, said Seth Berkley, Chief Executive Officer of Gavi.
Our belief in a fast-moving pandemic is youre not safe unless everyone is safe. What the COVAX Facility is trying to do is to get a vaccine out to all countries, rich and poor, at the same time.
Initially, he said, this would be frontline health workers and those most at risk and then the broader population.
Gavi is working with the pharmaceutical industry to scale up production and it is looking to have 2 billion doses available by the end of 2021.
Before COVAX, countries didnt have the option of working together, said Richard Hatchett, Chief Executive Officer of CEPI.
They were behaving in their own rational self-interest, which would have been inequitable and resulted in a perpetuation of the pandemic.
We have had to devise institutional arrangements in real time to develop and create a space for international collaboration in development, procurement and delivery. Designing a system to solve all those at one time is a huge challenge.
He said its encouraging to see emerging momentum around global solidarity and collaboration and willingness to work with us.
Global coverage, local plans
Companies need to look at the issues of the developing world during product development, said Prasad of the Developing Countries Vaccine Manufacturers Network, particularly around vaccine storage temperature, transportation and biomedical waste disposal.
Many companies are doing that. But if they only have a US focus, they might not see the needs of the middle-income and low-income countries.
Gavi's Berkley said each country would need a bespoke plan for who to vaccinate first.
In the US, it might be [people in] prisons or meat-packing plants, the elderly, but in developing countries, you might not have a high elderly population, but you might have urban slums and displaced people, so you really have to understand the local situation even though we can have global guidelines.
Johnson & Johnson's candidate is the latest to go into Phase 3 clinical trials and will now be studied as a single-dose vaccine on 60,000 people.
The pharmaceutical company says its on track to meet its goal of providing 1 billion doses of an affordable vaccine each year. It anticipates the first batches to be available in early 2021, if proven to be safe and effective.
Paul Stoffels, Johnson & Johnson's Chief Scientific Officer, said the first vaccines would be ready early next year and explained the trial size was determined by transmission rate.
"To reach a statistically significant end point, we need to have significant numbers, so there's a lot of data science to see where we have to target people most at risk."
He said the company has learned from developing vaccines for the Ebola virus that single-shot vaccines are efficacious, but they will be testing booster shots at a later date.
All eyes are on the pharmaceutical companies during the development process, and once a vaccine is ready to be distributed, will the global public want to take it?
In a recent World Economic Forum-Ipsos survey of nearly 20,000 adults from 27 countries, 74% said they would get a vaccine for COVID-19.
This majority might still fall short of the number required to beat COVID-19, with just 37% strongly agreeing they would be willing.
Pascal Soriot, the CEO of AstraZeneca, said companies working on COVID-19 vaccines are looking at how to provide greater transparency without impacting on vaccine trials.
AstraZeneca, which is developing a vaccine with the University of Oxford, paused its Phase 3 trial earlier this month, after a patient became sick. The trial has now restarted in the UK, but in the US, it's waiting on the go-ahead from the FDA.
"Stopping a trial in a vaccine programme is not uncommon and if you place safety at the centre of what you do, you're going to have to stop and look at events.
"Typically, the clinical guidelines recommend you don't disclose patient-level information or much information at all because you could compromise the study.
"We're looking at how much transparency we can provide... as an industry without compromising patient privacy or the trial itself."
"At the end of the day, people have to accept that they have to trust someone... So many regulators will look at this data and these results with different eyes... Medicine shouldn't be practiced by the media, it should be practiced by experts."
Trust is everything, said Gerberding. We need to involve opinion leaders and trusted doctors at the local level to communicate the actual facts and stand strong.
Its an understandable concern that in our race to get additional population protection, safety shortcuts will occur. That is not the case. The major vaccine manufacturers recently signed a pledge promising that they would adhere to safety requirements of the regulatory agents and not jump ahead of the curve in an effort to win the race.
We are self-policing and making sure we dont overstep that confidence barrier.
Preparing for the next one
We cant afford to be short-termist while were focusing on COVID-19, Gerberding and Berkley also warned.
It is evolutionarily certain we will have more outbreaks, said Berkley. The way to build back better is to have routine systems and continued investment. The cost [of COVID-19] has been between $9 and $12 trillion. A little bit of investment in peacetime is exactly the right thing to do.
Gerberding added: "We have to make sure that while we're fighting this pandemic, we're preparing for the next, because I do believe it's only a matter of time before we face another of these situations or potentially something worse."
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Ms. Franklins case of Covid-19 was more moderate than her sisters. But she still deteriorated quickly, to the point where she could no longer reach the bathroom without assistance. I was so weak, I couldnt balance myself, she said.
Her physical symptoms havent been the only hardship. Ms. Franklin, who is overweight, said she had been irritated by incessant messaging in news reports blaming illnesses like hers on excess fat.
The way they were saying it is that because youre obese and didnt take care of yourself, youll get this disease, Ms. Franklin said. I feel like that was unfair.
Even medical professionals show bias when caring for patients with excess weight, said Dr. Benjamin Singer, a pulmonologist at the University of Michigan and an author on a recent review of obesitys influence on immunity. Studies have shown that doctors tend to be more dismissive of patients with obesity and may brush off worrisome symptoms as irrelevant side effects of their weight. Drug dosages and diagnostic machines are also often incompatible with patients carrying excess weight, making it difficult to tailor treatments. Such interactions can be a powerful disincentive to some of the people who most need care.
These are not easy conversations, said Dr. Kanakadurga Singer, a pediatric endocrinologist at the University of Michigan. (She and Dr. Benjamin Singer are married.) Not everyone who weighs more than average is unwell, she said. Its more than just the numbers, and its not just the weight we should focus on.
In St. Louis County, Ms. McCloud and Ms. Franklin have recovered well, though both sisters still grapple with lingering symptoms. Ms. McCloud has occasional fatigue and an intermittent cough. I cant talk like I did before, she said. Ms. Franklins headaches never disappeared, and her mind now feels constantly clouded by a fog.
Both women have worried about their sons, who also developed Covid-19. Chris McCloud, a teacher, was like his mother put on a ventilator, and spent several weeks in the hospital shortly before Ms. McCloud fell ill. He was overweight as well.
Positive coronavirus tests could reveal a persons infectiousness, too.
By Robert F. ServiceSep. 29, 2020 , 3:15 PM
Sciences COVID-19 reporting is supported by the Pulitzer Center and the Heising-Simons Foundation.
Ever since the coronavirus pandemic began, battles have raged over testing: Which tests should be given, to whom, and how often? Now, epidemiologists and public health experts are opening a new debate. They say testing centers should report not just whether a person is positive, but also a number known as the cycle threshold (CT) value, which indicates how much virus an infected person harbors.
Advocates point to new research indicating that CT values could help doctors flag patients at high risk for serious disease. Recent findings also suggest the numbers could help officials determine who is infectious and should therefore be isolated and have their contacts tracked down. CT value is an imperfect measure, advocates concede. But whether to add it to test results is one of the most pressing questions out there, says Michael Mina, a physician and epidemiologist at Harvard Universitys T.H. Chan School of Public Health
Standard tests identify SARS-CoV-2 infections by isolating and amplifying viral RNA using a procedure known as the polymerase chain reaction (PCR), which relies on multiple cycles of amplification to produce a detectable amount of RNA. The CT value is the number of cycles necessary to spot the virus; PCR machines stop running at that point. If a positive signal isnt seen after 37 to 40 cycles, the test is negative. But samples that turn out positive can start out with vastly different amounts of virus, for which the CT value provides an inverse measure. A test that registers a positive result after 12 rounds, for a CT value of 12, starts out with more than 10 million times as much viral genetic material as a sample with a CT value of 35.
But the same sample can give different CT values on different testing machines, and different swabs from the same person can give different results. The CT value isnt an absolute scale, says Marta Gaglia, a virologist at Tufts University. That makes many clinicians wary, Mina says. Clinicians are cautious by nature, Mina says. They say, If we cant rely on it, its not reliable. In an August letter in Clinical Infectious Diseases, members of the College of American Pathologists urged caution in interpreting CT values.
Nevertheless, Mina, Gaglia, and others argue that knowing whether CT values are high or low can be highly informative. Even with all the imperfections, knowing the viral load can be extremely powerful, Mina says.
Early studies showed that patients in the first days of infection have CT values below 30, and often below 20, indicating a high level of virus; as the body clears the coronavirus, CT values rise gradually. More recent studies have shown that a higher viral load can profoundly impact a persons contagiousness and reflect the severity of disease.
In a study published this week in Clinical Infectious Diseases, researchers led by Bernard La Scola, an infectious diseases expert at IHU-Mditerrane Infection, examined 3790 positive samples with known CT values to see whether they harbored viable virus, indicating the patients were likely infectious. La Scola and his colleagues found that 70% of samples with CT values of 25 or below could be cultured, compared with less than 3% of the cases with CT values above 35. Its fair to say that having a higher viral load is associated with being more infectious, says Monica Gandhi, an infectious diseases specialist at the University of California, San Francisco.
Conversely, people often test positive for weeks or even months after they recover but have high CT values, suggesting the PCR has identified genetic material from noninfectious viral debris. Current guidelines from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention and World Health Organization, which call for patients to isolate themselves for 10 days after onset of symptoms, recognize they are not likely to be infectious after that period. But Mina and others say the recent findings also suggest that a patient who has undergone multiple tests with high CT values is likely at the tail end of their infection and need not isolate themselves. He adds that contact tracers should triage their efforts based on CT values. If 100 files land on my desk [as a contact tracer], I will prioritize the highest viral loads first, because they are the most infectious, Mina says.
Broad access to CT values could also help epidemiologists track outbreaks, Mina says. If researchers see many low CT values, they could conclude an outbreak is expanding. But if nearly all CT values are high, an outbreak is likely waning. We have to stop thinking of people as positive or negative, and ask how positive? Mina says.
CT values could also help clinicians flag patients most at risk for severe disease and death. A report in June from researchers at Weill Cornell Medicine found that among 678 hospitalized patients, 35% of those with a CT value of 25 or less died, compared with 17.6% with a CT value of 25 to 30 and 6.2% with a CT value above 30. In August, researchers in Brazil found that among 875 patients, those with a CT value of 25 or below were more likely to have severe disease or die.
Gandhi agrees that having access to CT values could help clinicians identify people at high risk for developing symptoms. Nevertheless, she and others note that a high viral load doesnt necessarily lead to disease; some 40% of people who contract SARS-CoV-2 stay healthy even though they have a similar amount of virus to patients who fall ill. As a physician, having the CT value is not the only thing I will use to diagnose and track patients, says Chanu Rhee, a hospital epidemiologist at Brigham and Womens Hospital. But I do still find it helpful.
Heres what you need to know:Staff members at the Westminster-Canterbury senior living community waiting in line for a rapid test in Virginia Beach, Va.. A shortage in testing supplies has forced the facility to rely on an outside lab that charges $100 per test.Credit...Julia Rendleman for The New York Times
After months of enduring a dearth of protective medical gear and staggering death tolls from the coronavirus pandemic, nursing home operators and employees across the United States experienced something close to elation as rapid-result test machines paid for by the federal government began arriving last month at 14,000 residential facilities that serve the elderly.
The hand-held testing devices, which spit out results in as little as 15 minutes, were intended to quickly diagnose and isolate patients, and alter the deadly calculus of a contagion that has taken the lives of 77,000 nursing home residents and workers, more than 40 percent of the nations fatalities from Covid-19.
But the initial sense of relief has been overtaken by frustration as nursing homes have discovered that they must pay for test kits on their own, and that the machines are markedly less accurate than lab-based diagnostics.
Because the devices come with a modest starter-set of test supplies that only last a few weeks, facilities, many of them buffeted by financial losses from the pandemic, must pay roughly $32 for each additional test. In communities with high rates of infection, a typical nursing home can churn through hundreds of tests a week.
Many nursing home operators also say they have been overwhelmed by new federal reporting rules, fines and financial incentives that are associated with the program. Facilities can be fined up to $10,000 for failing to meet daily reporting rules that sometimes conflict with those from state or local health agencies, raising questions about the free machines, which cost about $300.
My initial happiness over the machines has quickly turned to disillusionment, said Ben Unkle, the chief executive of Westminster-Canterbury on Chesapeake Bay, which operates a skilled nursing center in coastal Virginia. At the moment were in testing hell.
Shortages in testing supplies have forced Mr. Unkle to rely on an outside lab that charges $100 a test, an expense that he estimates will add $875,000 to the $1 million in pandemic-related losses that the nonprofit provider expects this year. Rather than the 15-minute turnaround, the lab results take up to four days to arrive, complicating efforts at infection control.
As far as Im concerned, this is an unfunded mandate that is not giving us the data we need fast enough to improve either care or protection, Mr. Unkle said.
New York City officials announced on Tuesday a significant uptick in the citywide daily rate of positive coronavirus tests, which was in part attributable to a rise in cases in nine ZIP codes in Brooklyn and Queens some in predominantly Orthodox Jewish communities that have largely ignored public health guidance, like wearing masks.
In a news conference, Mr. de Blasio announced a daily rate of 3.25 percent, the highest it had been since June. It was a relatively low number compared with other parts of the country, but cause for real concern, the mayor said. On Monday, he reported that the daily rate was 1.93 percent; for weeks it had generally held between 1 and 2 percent on most days.
The uptick in the city comes at a particularly crucial moment, as the city tries to fully reopen public schools this week for in-person learning to hundreds of thousands of students and to resume indoor dining.
The mayor has said that he will automatically shut down classrooms which are all slated to be open by Thursday if the test positivity rate exceeds 3 percent over a seven-day rolling average. On Tuesday, Mr. de Blasio said the seven-day average was 1.38 percent and that he would not seek to change those guidelines to target specific areas that had seen an uptick. The city had not seen an increase in cases in schools in the nine ZIP codes in question.
According to the citys health officials, if schools are forced to close, it could take weeks for them to reopen. The president of the citys teachers union said that if the rates do not drop this week, the city should move to close as many as 80 public schools in ZIP codes where the virus is surging. Random student testing is set to begin Thursday, which could also drive down the rate.
The goal is to be under 3 percent in a way that is consistent, Mr. de Blasio said, cautioning that the city was not yet near that point. Public health experts have said cases in schools are inevitable and not necessarily cause for alarm if they are detected quickly.
Over the past two weeks, the cases in the nine ZIP codes account for 25.6 percent of the citys cases, despite the fact that the population in those areas make up only 7.4 percent of the citys population, according to information provided by the citys Health Department.
As part of new enforcement measures in those areas, the city will move to fine anybody who refuses to wear a mask, said Mr. de Blasio, a Democrat. Members of the citys test and trace program, the Sheriffs Office and the New York Police Department, among others, will help with enforcement, he said.
If city officials didnt see improvement in numbers by the end of the day, the city was weighing possible additional options, Mr. de Blasio said, including business closures in certain areas, and a wide-scale closure of institutions like yeshivas and child care, and limits on gatherings.
Community leaders have faulted the city for a lack of engagement with the Orthodox, and particularly Hasidic, communities, which have a longstanding distrust of secular authorities and a particular dislike for Mr. de Blasio. City officials said on Tuesday that they had made extensive outreach efforts recently in the affected communities, which included distributing masks to synagogues, speaking to area leaders and passing out literature about the dangers of the virus.
Indoor dining would begin on Wednesday, the mayor said, but added that officials would watch and see if the move resulted in a further increase in cases.
If anything looks problematic, well talk to the state and decide together if any adjustments need to be made, he said.
Shortly afterward, Gov. Andrew M. Cuomo, a Democrat, said that city officials would have to get approval from the state in order to enact any major restrictions. He also said that clusters identified by the state in Brooklyn, as well as Rockland and Orange counties in the Hudson Valley region, required movement to stamp out the embers right away.
A cluster problem is caused by a lack of compliance, Mr. Cuomo said on Tuesday. Why was there a lack of compliance? Because the local government failed to do its compliance job.
He called on local governments to take stronger action to enforce social-distancing rules. But in response to a question about the status of indoor dining, he said I dont believe were at the point of rolling back anything.
The governor did warn that without local officials and communities taking more steps, the clusters could quickly turn into a wider outbreak. A cluster today can be community spread tomorrow, he said.
Mr. Cuomo has previously said that reaching a 2 percent positivity rate would make him nervous, and that surpassing a 3 percent rate would cause the alarm bells to go off.
All the clusters, he said on Tuesday, had an overlap with large Orthodox Jewish communities and that he would meet with religious leaders to discuss better compliance to mask-wearing and public health guidelines.
Mr. Cuomo also said Tuesday that travelers from Colorado are now required to quarantine for 14 days upon arrival, joining a long list of other states and territories. Arizona and Virginia were removed in the weekly update.
Travelers to Connecticut and New Jersey are also now subject to a 14-day quarantine if they are coming from those same places, though compliance is voluntary in New Jersey and there is a testing alternative in Connecticut.
The day after Florida surpassed 700,000 coronavirus cases, Dr. Anthony S. Fauci, the nations top infectious disease expert, called the recent move by the governor to lift state restrictions on bars and restaurants very concerning.
Nows the time, actually, to double down at bit, Dr. Fauci said Monday on ABCs Good Morning America. And I dont mean close. When I say that, people get concerned that were talking about shutting down. Were not talking about shutting anything down. Were talking about common-sense type of public health measures.
He also expressed reservations about the lack of mask usage, saying Florida and other states were asking for trouble by allowing people to congregate without masks. Gov. Ron DeSantis of Florida, a Republican and Trump ally, refused on Friday to mandate mask usage in the state, insisting that such a decision should be left up to local governments.
At a news conference on Tuesday, Mayor Carlos Gimenez of Miami-Dade County discussed a weekly call he had earlier in the day with Dr. Fauci and Dr. Deborah L. Birx. Mr. Gimenez said that on the call, Dr. Birx, too, appeared to be deeply concerned with the governors decision.
He added that Dr. Birx noted that the virus positivity rate in Miami-Dade remains higher than it was in May. As of Tuesday, the average 14-day positivity rate in the county was 4.44 percent.
She was heartened by the steps that we took, but she was somewhat concerned about the loosening of the rules, he said.
In the last week, the state has been experiencing a relatively low number of new cases a day, on average about one-fifth the seven-day average number of new cases a day it reported at its peak on July 17.
As of Monday, Florida was meeting 36 percent of a testing target developed by Harvard Global Health Institute researchers that measures the minimum amount of testing necessary to mitigate the disease. The state had a positivity rate of 11 percent for the total number of tests processed over the two-week period ending Monday, according to data analyzed by The New York Times. Positive rates should be at or below 5 percent for at least 14 days before a state or country can safely reopen, according to the World Health Organization.
On Friday, Mr. DeSantis removed state restrictions for restaurants and many other businesses. He has also pushed the states largest school district, in Miami-Dade County, to open classrooms to in-person learning, despite concerns from parents and teachers.
Over the weekend, Tallahassee police broke up a large party near Florida State Universitys campus where about 700 cars were parked and blocking travel lanes, and more than 1,000 people gathered outside. The university has been trying to contain the spread of the virus on campus, where 1,448 students and 31 employees have tested positive since Aug. 2, including 51 people last week. Over a seven-day period ending Monday, Leon County, which includes Tallahassee, has reported 501 new cases, according to a Times database.
While other universities have suspended and expelled students for attending parties against campus policies, Mr. DeSantis last week called those measures dramatically draconian and called for creating a bill of rights for college students. The return of students to campus and the parties that come with them have been blamed for some of the recent outbreaks across the country.
On Good Morning America, Dr. Fauci was asked whether he agreed with W.H.O. projections that global deaths, which surpassed one million this week, might double before vaccines could bring the virus under control.
Ive got to be careful, he replied, noting that such predictions, imprecise by nature, might inappropriately ring alarms. But youve got to take it very seriously, he said of a possible doubling in worldwide deaths. The numbers globally are very serious.
SPORTS ROUNDUP
After an auspicious beginning to the N.F.L. regular season played during a pandemic, the league got news of its first coronavirus outbreak after Week 3s games. The Tennessee Titans suspended all in-person activities Tuesday after three players and five members of the teams personnel tested positive, the first such outbreak to hit a team since training camps began in late July. The Minnesota Vikings, who hosted the Titans on Sunday, also shut down in-person activities. Both clubs are working closely with the N.F.L. and the N.F.L.P.A., including our infectious disease experts, to evaluate close contacts, perform additional testing and monitor developments, the league said in a joint statement with the players union. All decisions will be made with health and safety as our primary consideration. We will continue to share updates as more information becomes available.
After weeks of indecision and discussion, FIFA is planning to order soccer clubs to release players who have been called up for World Cup qualification games next week, a move that is very likely to lead to a furious backlash from teams, leagues and player unions fearful of the risks of international travel during the pandemic. The FIFA demand will come after weeks of unsuccessful talks to find a compromise that addresses concerns about committing players to intercontinental travel amid a global rise in cases, and will apply most notably to South American national teams eager to recall their overseas-based players for the first round of qualifying matches for the 2022 World Cup.
A new scientific report confirms that cats and dogs can be infected by the novel coronavirus, and that neither animal is likely to get sick. Cats, however, do develop a strong, protective immune response.
There is still no evidence to suggest that pets have passed the virus to humans, although cats do shed the virus and infect other cats.
Infected dogs in the study didnt produce the virus in their upper respiratory tracts and didnt shed it at all, although some other studies have found different results. Neither the cats nor the dogs in the study showed any illness.
Scientists say that while millions of humans have been infected with the virus worldwide and 1 million have died, there are only a handful of reports of pets that have become infected naturally.
So why havent cats infected humans if they shed the virus? It might be because the number of humans who have contracted the virus is so large, and they are the ones giving it to cats, said Angela M. Bosco-Lauth, one of the authors of the study. Another possible reason is that infection in everyday life is very different from infection in the lab, where scientists inserted pipettes in the nasal cavities of cats and dogs to give them the virus.
Or, Dr. Bosco-Lauth said, cat infection with the virus could be relatively common without humans noticing, because of a lack of symptoms.
Researchers advise keeping cats indoors, particularly if a human in a household has become infected, because they could spread it to other cats.
Long before the coronavirus, the Indian Health Service, the U.S. government program that provides health care to the 2.2 million members of tribal communities, was plagued by shortages of funding and supplies.
Now the pandemic has exposed those weaknesses as never before, contributing to the disproportionally high infection and death rates among Native Americans and fueling new anger about what critics say has been decades of neglect from Congress and successive administrations in Washington.
Hospitals waited months for protective equipment, some of which ended up being expired, and had far too few beds and ventilators to handle the flood of Covid-19 patients. The agency failed to tailor health guidance to the reality of life on poverty-wracked reservations.
The virus has killed more than 500 people in the Navajo Nation in the southwestern United States, giving it a death rate higher than New York, Florida and Texas. It has infected more than 10 percent of the small Choctaw tribe of Mississippi.
A New York Times analysis found that the coronavirus positivity rate for Indian Health Service patients in Navajo Nation and the Phoenix area was nearly 20 percent from the start of the pandemic through July, compared with 7 percent nationally during the same period. It is now down to about 14 percent in both areas, nearly three times higher than the current nationwide rate.
Almost alone in the Western world, Sweden refused to impose a coronavirus lockdown last spring, as the countrys leading health officials argued that limited restrictions were sufficient and would better protect against economic collapse.
It was an approach that transformed the country into an unlikely ideological lightning rod. Many scientists blamed it for a spike in deaths, even as many libertarians critical of lockdowns portrayed Sweden as a model.
For their part, the Swedes admit to making some mistakes, particularly in nursing homes, where the death toll was staggering. Now, though, the question is whether the countrys current low caseload compared with sharp increases elsewhere shows that it has found a sustainable balance, or whether the recent numbers are just a temporary aberration.
With a population of 10.1 million, Sweden averaged just over 200 new cases a day for several weeks, though in recent days that number has jumped to about 380, and critics say the country should test more. The per capita rate is far lower than nearby Denmark or the Netherlands (if higher than the negligible rates in Norway and Finland). Sweden is also doing far better, for the moment, than Spain, with 10,000 cases a day, and France, with 12,000.
In response to the recent outbreaks, many European countries are imposing new restrictions, but avoiding total lockdowns. In essence, some experts say, they are quietly adopting the Swedish approach.
Today, all of the European countries are more or less following the Swedish model, combined with the testing, tracing and quarantine procedures the Germans have introduced, but none will admit it, said Antoine Flahault, director of the Institute of Global Health, in Geneva. Instead, they made a caricature out of the Swedish strategy. Almost everyone has called it inhumane and a failure.
The president of the University of Notre Dame, the Rev. John I. Jenkins, has issued a public apology after coming under criticism for not wearing a mask or adhering to social distancing guidelines during the Supreme Court nomination ceremony over the weekend at the White House for Judge Amy Coney Barrett.
I failed to lead by example, Father Jenkins, who is also a philosopher trained in theology and a member of Notre Dames philosophy department, said in a letter on Monday to the Notre Dame community. I especially regret my mistake in light of the sacrifices made on a daily basis by many, particularly our students, in adjusting their lives to observe our health protocols.
The move by Father Jenkins points to the challenges some public figures face as they promote virus-mitigation efforts. He has repeatedly urged students and staff to hew to social-distancing guidelines but was seen in videos and photographs shaking hands with others and not wearing a mask at the Rose Garden event on Saturday for Judge Barrett, who is a professor at Notre Dame.
In his written apology, Father Jenkins said he was given a rapid coronavirus test upon arriving at the White House. He said he and others were told after receiving negative results that it would be safe to remove their masks. Still, he said following that guidance was a mistake.
In August, Notre Dame became one of the first major universities to resume in-person classes, but had to shift to virtual learning for two weeks this month in response to a spike in coronavirus cases. While Notre Dame has switched again to in-person classes, Father Jenkins said he had decided to quarantine in an abundance of caution after returning to the campus from the White House.
In other news around the United States:
In the six months since Covid-19 brought the United States to a standstill, the opioid epidemic has taken a sharp turn for the worse. Last year, after aggressive efforts to expand access to treatment, Vermont saw its first decrease in opioid-related deaths since 2014; that year, the governor devoted his entire State of the State Message to what he called a full-blown heroin crisis gripping Vermont. But the state saw 82 opioid overdoses through July of this year, up from 60 during the same period last year.
In New York City, a principal prepared for the first day of school at Brooklyns Public School 9, where Sandra Santos-Vizcaino the first New York City public-school teacher to die of the coronavirus was once a beloved third-grade teacher. Nearly half of families across the city have opted their children out of in-person classes altogether through at least the end of November, a statistic that reflects both the pervasive fear felt by many city parents and skepticism of the citys reopening plan.
After months of keeping tens of thousands of theme park workers on furlough with full health-care benefits in hopes that a light at the end of the pandemic tunnel would appear, Disney announced it would eliminate 28,000 theme park jobs in the United States, or about 25 percent of its domestic resort work force. The job cuts will come from Disneys theme parks in California and Florida.
Katina Brenn, the school superintendent in Colby, Kan., knows what is supposed to be done when students are exposed to the virus: Quarantine them at home for 14 days.
But what if its a quarter of the school?
Colby is a small town in western Kansas, with fewer than 300 students in its close-knit high school. When a girl on the volleyball team tested positive recently, the whole team was sent home to quarantine. Then a football player was exposed, raising concerns about the rest of the squad. Soon, the school was facing having to quarantine as many as 75 students.
The town pushed back. The parents were upset, Ms. Brenn said. They want their kids to get an education.
She said she heard from parents who were worried that the way things were going, their children would have to be quarantined again and again when someone they knew was potentially exposed and in Colby, everybody knows everybody.
The pandemic, once mainly an urban problem, has surged across the Great Plains and Upper Midwest in recent weeks, reaching previously unscathed small towns and rural areas. North Dakota, South Dakota and Wisconsin now lead the nation in new cases per capita, and the figures for states like Kansas are as bad as they have ever been.
No one has yet died of Covid-19 in Thomas County, which includes Colby, but there have been 163 coronavirus cases so far among the population of 7,700, and one-third of those cases are new and considered currently active. And the hub of the community is Colby High.
Ms. Brenn said having the schools open for in-person learning was vital, so parents could go to work and keep the town running.
At a recent county meeting, officials agreed to roll back restrictions and allow students who were not directly exposed to a known case and who had no symptoms to return to school.
Parents really want their children to be at school, Ms. Brenn said, adding that the school system had taken precautions like hula hoops laid out on gym floors to enforce spacing between students during physical education classes. Were really trying to keep our kids safe, she said. We think that their schools are their safe place.
An independent association of health workers in Venezuela reported this week that at least 200 doctors, nurses and health care technicians across the country have died after contracting the coronavirus.
The count by Mdicos Unidos Venezuela involves a rare effort to provide greater visibility into how the virus is evolving in Venezuela. Officially, Venezuelas government says the virus has killed only 12 health workers.
In what critics contend is also a gross undercount, Venezuela officially had 73,528 cases and only 614 deaths as of Monday, far lower than any other large country in Latin America either on a per capita or absolute basis. Neighboring Colombia has reported 818,203 cases and 25,641 deaths.
Public health experts say the Venezuelan governments repressive measures in response to the pandemic are hampering efforts to accurately assess its impact. Security forces have detained at least 12 doctors and nurses in Venezuela for speaking publicly about the virus, according to medical unions.
Venezuelas health ministry did not immediately respond to a request for comment.
Dr. Jaime Lorenzo, the director of Mdicos Unidos, said the exodus of thousands of health workers from Venezuela in recent years had also constrained efforts to mitigate the spread of the virus in the country.
The personnel we have left are getting sick as they deal with fatigue and a lack of protective equipment, Dr. Lorenzo said.
Health care workers have been hit hard by the virus around the world. In a survey of countries in the Western Hemisphere, including the United States, the Pan American Health Organization found that the virus had killed more than 2,500 health workers, the group said this month.
Global roundup
Israels second national lockdown is likely to last at least a month and perhaps much longer, Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu said on Tuesday, as the countrys soaring infection rate of around 8,000 confirmed new cases a day remained among the highest in the world.
In my opinion, it wont be less than a month, and it could take much more time, Mr. Netanyahu said during a Facebook Live video session.
The lockdown came into effect in mid-September, on the eve of the Jewish New Year holiday, and was tightened on Friday after Mr. Netanyahu warned that without immediate measures, Israel would reach the edge of the abyss. Israelis must remain within 1,000 meters of their homes unless they are going to authorized places of work or seeking essential supplies or services, and outdoor gatherings are limited to 20 people.
But synagogues were allowed to hold indoor prayers for limited numbers of worshipers during Yom Kippur, the holiest day in the Jewish calendar, which fell on Sunday night and Monday, and large gatherings of ultra-Orthodox worshipers were captured on video in several locations.
The number of seriously ill virus patients has surpassed 800, a number that government and health officials had long cited as the maximum that Israels hospitals could cope with in their current capacity.
Israel reported 234 virus deaths over the last week, which works out to 2.6 per 100,000 people, exceeding the per capita death rate for that period in the United States.
In other developments around the world:
The authorities in Germany announced a number of new rules to try to halt rising cases while keeping the economy, schools and day care centers open. Group gatherings will be capped at 50 in bars and rented spaces, with a recommendation that private parties be capped at 25. Bars, restaurants, hairdressers and others will be fined a minimum of about $58 if patrons dont leave required contact data.
Ontario, the most populous province in Canada, on Monday reported 700 new infections, its highest one-day total. Premier Doug Ford said the province was beginning a second wave that would be worse than the first, but he resisted calls by experts for more stringent health measures. In the neighboring province of Quebec, which has also experienced a surge in infections, Premier Franois Legault said on Monday that Montreal, Quebec City and the administrative region of Chaudire-Appalaches would be designated as red zones for four weeks starting on Thursday. Home visits will be mostly banned and movie theaters, libraries, museums, bars and casinos will be closed. Restaurants will be limited to takeout service, but schools will remain open.
By Joel Goldberg, Annalise PasztorSep. 29, 2020 , 12:00 PM
As India is becoming the epicenter of the COVID-19 pandemic, anxiety about the disease has at times descended into violence against the sick, and even health care workers. The problem isnt limited to Indiapeople in countries from Nepal to Mexico to Italy have stigmatized individuals connected to COVID-19, making it harder for them to go about their daily lives and get much-needed care. And such ostracism isnt new: Societies have spurned people with leprosy for ages, as far back as ancient Hindu texts, which proscribed marriage into families that had a member with the disease. In a new story in Science, journalist Vaishnavi Chandrashekhar discusses the history of disease stigmafrom leprosy, to plague, to HIV/AIDSand how its vitriol and isolation can create a vicious cycle of disease.
Relatives at a mass burial of pandemic victims at the Parque Taruma cemetery in Manaus, Brazil, mourn a family member. Andre Coelho/Getty Images hide caption
Relatives at a mass burial of pandemic victims at the Parque Taruma cemetery in Manaus, Brazil, mourn a family member.
The coronavirus pandemic has now killed at least 1 million people worldwide. That's according to a tally maintained by Johns Hopkins University. This sobering milestone was reached just nine months after the first reported fatality in China last January. And public health experts believe the actual toll the recorded deaths plus the unrecorded deaths is much higher. What's more, in the five worst-off countries, the trend line remains worrisome. Here's how they line up and why Argentina could soon join their ranks.
1. United States
Take the United States, which currently leads the world in terms of both total number of dead and total number of infected over the course of the pandemic. While several Northeastern states that were clobbered by the virus early on managed to use social distancing and masking to push down their new cases by early spring, states in other regions then quickly moved to reopen. This fueled an even bigger wave of deaths across wide swaths of the U.S. throughout the summer. Since then many states have managed to bring down their numbers as well as the overall U.S. daily death count. Yet it remains far higher than it was in July. Also, most recently, daily deaths have actually begun rising again largely driven by increasing transmission in various states in the Great Plains and the South.
2. Brazil
Brazil, the second-biggest driver of the worldwide death toll, is also trouble once again. Led by a president who repeatedly downplayed the threat from the coronavirus, Brazil's initial response was chaotic at best, enabling a surge in deaths all through July and August. About a month ago, the daily death count began dropping. But more recently that progress seems to have stalled.
3. India
The trajectory has been even more unremittingly terrible in India, which has the third-highest death toll. Since May, when the government largely lifted a strict lockdown, infections and deaths have been on a virtually uninterrupted upward spiral. One caveat is that when these cases are measured as a share of India's population, India actually ranks fairly low. That's in marked contrast with both Brazil and the United States. Also, over the past several weeks India's daily death count appears to have hit something of a plateau. Still, the total number of people dying there remains extremely high with an average of about 1,100 deaths each day over the past week.
4. Mexico
Mexico, too, is struggling. It doesn't just follow the U.S., Brazil and India when it comes to highest total deaths over the entirety of the pandemic. Over the past two weeks, all four countries have also had the highest number of average daily deaths.
5. United Kingdom
The United Kingdom ranked fifth when it comes to total death toll is faring only slightly better. New infections have risen to their highest level there since early May. And while the death toll remains much lower, it has begun creeping up again. More alarming, however, is the situation in European neighbors Spain and France, where both daily new cases and daily new deaths have recently increased markedly, putting both countries in the top 10 on those measures over the past two weeks.
Could Argentina be far behind?
Meanwhile, countries such as Argentina offer a reminder that the full contours of the pandemic's impact won't be clear until it's over. Three months ago Argentina seemed to be doing comparatively well. That's one reason it still doesn't quite rank among the top 10 countries in terms of total deaths over the entirety of the pandemic. But since June, Argentina has seen a steady increase in infections and fatalities. And over the past two weeks its daily new death count has ranked fifth-highest in the world with little sign of slowing down.
Operation Warp Speed leaders Moncef Slaoui (second from right) and Gen. Gustave Perna (second from left) speak with Cincinnati physicians Carl Fichtenbaum (far right) and Odell Moreno Owens (far left) during a visit to one of the sites for the efficacy trial of Modernas COVID-19 vaccine candidate.
By Jon CohenSep. 29, 2020 , 3:45 PM
Sciences COVID-19 reporting is supported by the Pulitzer Center and the Heising-Simons Foundation.
CINCINNATIA hospital at the University of Cincinnati (UC) sits on a street named after Albert Sabin, who famously developed a vaccine against polio that has helped rid most of the world of this once widely feared disease. A unit at the hospital now has a similarly ambitious goal as it participates in the U.S. effort to find a vaccine against COVID-19. Last week, on 25 September, the leaders of Operation Warp Speedthe Trump administration program that has committed $10 billion to this visionflew in from Washington, D.C., for a tour. After learning that the hospital had in about 3 weeks enrolled 130 participants in the multisite phase III efficacy trial of one experimental vaccine, the first question Warp Speeds scientific director, Moncef Slaoui, asked was, Do you have a good representation of diverse populations?
This was one several recent visits to trial sites and vaccine manufacturing plants by Slaoui and his Warp Speed co-leader, Gen. Gustave Perna. The four-star general had on his camouflaged Army uniform and combat boots, but Slaoui, who formerly headed the vaccine division of GlaxoSmithKline (GSK), wore casual slacks, an open-collared shirt, and penny loafers without socks. He aimed to put people at ease on the tour, encouraging them to discuss uncomfortable, even taboo, topicsrace, politics, regulations, and risks. Perna made small talk with the clinical staff, but largely kept to himself.
The nationwide efficacy trial, which compares a COVID-19 vaccine made by Moderna with a placebo, struggled at first to enroll Black and Latino participants, in part because the contract research organizations that make up three-fourths of the nearly 100 trial sites had few contacts with those communities. But the UC site and others at academic centers, which are part of the COVID-19 Prevention Trials Network (CoVPN) organized by the U.S. National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases (NIAID), have a long history of working with minority communities to recruit participants for clinical trials. And the clinicians running this UC site explained to Slaoui that about half of their enrolled participants in the Moderna trial are either Black or Latino, a close match to the citys breakdown. (According to the U.S. Census Bureau, Cincinnatis 300,000 residents are 50% white, 43% African American/Black, and nearly 4% Hispanic/Latino.)
Moderna tracksand makes publicthe demographics of the enrolled participants week by week. During the week before UC started its enrollment for the 30,000-person trial, participants recruited by the other sites were 67% white and only 9% Black/African American and 17% Latino/Hispanic. Carl Fichtenbaum, a coprincipal investigator at the UC site, at a 1 September conference call with fellow CoVPN investigators, NIAID Director Anthony Fauci, and Surgeon General Jerome Adams suggested sites put a cap on the number of white participants they could recruit. I asked the question, What is more important, getting to 30,000 as fast as we can or ensuring the trial is representative of our country and the pandemic? Fichtenbaum recalls. The cap was instituted, and for the week of 21 September, enrollees at all Moderna trial sites were 42% Latino/Hispanic, 30% African American/Black, and 7% white. Cumulatively, as of the day of the Warp Speed leaders visit to UC, 31% of 27,232 participants in the Moderna trial were from diverse communities.
The UC team says its recipe for successful minority participation includes relying on trial recruiters from diverse communities, ads that reach out to those groups specifically, and Spanish speakers who are on the clinical team. We understand the history of Cincinnatiand the history of the problems of our city and the lack of inclusion, Fichtenbaum says. The hospital, he stresses, not only has long treated the underserved, but has embedded roots.
Margaret Powers-Fletcher, coprincipal investigator at the UC vaccine site, noted that many misunderstandings circle around the Moderna vaccine. On one extreme, Powers-Fletcher was asked whether the vaccine was bankrolled by Bill Gates as an attempt to microchip the population. But, more commonly, people want to know about Modernas unusual vaccine technology. The vaccine contains messenger RNA (mRNA), which codes for the surface protein of the virus that causes COVID-19. Explaining this opens the door for a deeper conversation, she says. It gives us the opportunity to not only talk about what mRNA is, but to dispel other myths associated with vaccine.
Slaoui adds that having diversity in the trials will build engagement and trust that translates into wider use of a COVID-19 vaccine that ultimately gets approved. The vaccine that stays on the shelf, if people are not accepting it, is of no use, he says.
Odell Moreno Owens, a Black clinician who heads the Cincinnati-based nonprofit Interact for Health, joined the tour and raised several provocative concerns. One is that Warp Speed now supports efficacy trials of four different COVID-19 vaccines, and the public sometimes has difficulty separating them. A few weeks ago, an international trial of a COVID-19 vaccine candidate made by AstraZeneca and the University of Oxford was put on hold after a serious side effect occurred in a recipient. (Regulators in the United Kingdom and Brazil determined this wasnt connected to the vaccine and allowed the trials there to resume, but the United States has yet to follow suit.) The ripple effect in the community was, I told you so, I told you so, Owens says. Thats going to be a big issue.
It is a real challenge to be able to communicate about these vaccines and their safety and engaging people to use them. Its exacerbated by all the lights that are on this, Slaoui replies. Unfortunately, the world we live in, this period of time and all the politics around it exacerbates the anxiety that exists.
Jaasiel Chapman, the trials community liaison for the Black community and a native of the city, says theres no escaping the divisiveness. People feel like this pandemic has become so politicized and that people want to win elections, rather than save our livesthats definitely one thing that we have gotten out in the community, he says. They feel the government has never cared about us before, so now theyre just trying to rush through a vaccine to kill us. So thats been difficult. There are a lot of doubts in the community.
Much as Slaoui would like to sidestep the politics, they have cast a shadow over him, too. On 25 September, the day of the UC tour, he issued a video that lambasted Senator Elizabeth Warren (DMA) for suggesting at a Senate hearing that he had conflicts of interest because of his investments in companies making COVID-19 vaccines. You dont know me personally and you are publicly accusing me of being greedy, of being corrupt, and of doing this to enrich myself, seethed Slaoui, who was unusually named to co-lead Warp Speed as a government contractor, not as a federal employee. Sitting at a desk with a Warp Speed logo behind him, Slaoui stressed that he had gone to great lengths to separate his finances from the vaccine effort, only holding on to GSK stock because they are his nest egg for retirement. I cannot make any benefit from taking this role and my commitment is to helping the American people fight this epidemic. It is mathematically impossible for me to enrich myself, he said. I didnt hesitate to join the role even though Im a registered Democrat because this pandemic is bigger than any one of us. Its bigger than me and its bigger than you. Please stop distracting me and Operation Warp Speed.
Warp Speeds main vaccine concern, as Slaoui repeatedly stressed during the UC visit, was safety. Cincinnati physician James Powell, who heads a project for the National Medical Associationwhich represents Black physicians and patientsto increase minority awareness about participating in clinical trials shared this worry. He told Slaoui hes particularly concerned about safety when a vaccine moves from a 30,000-person trial to millions of people in the real world.
Slaoui says that to best balance potential benefits versus risks the vaccines will at first go into people at the highest risk of severe disease. He also endorsed a push by the U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA)which the Trump administration is reportedly challengingto add a safety measure to vaccine approvals that could slow down the process. Independent boards that monitor the vaccine trials take scheduled looks at the data, and if they see an efficacy signal or dangerous side effects, they can recommend stopping a trial early. An early sign of efficacy, in turn, could lead manufacturers to seek whats known as an emergency use authorization (EUA).
There is widespread concern that politics might influence the issuance of a vaccine EUA, because critics says President Donald Trump and his allies pushed too aggressively for similar authorizations for two unproven COVID-19 treatments, hydroxychloroquine and convalescent plasma. Although Slaoui and other scientific advisers to the administration have said its highly unlikely a vaccine candidate will prove safe and effective in October, before the 3 November presidential election, Trump has repeatedly floated this idea. FDA officials have insisted that politics will not influence their decisions, and they recently proposed a regulation that would not consider an EUA until at least 2 months after the last participant in a trial is fully vaccinated.
Near the end of the visit, Powell asks how many Black investigators are taking part in the Warp Speed trials and how many sites are at historically black colleges and universities (HBCUs).
The answer is, Not enough, Slaoui says. (Two HBCU presidents recently joined COVID-19 vaccine trails and called for their students and faculty to participate, too, but the request also produced some backlash.)
As he says his goodbyes, Slaoui praises the people who participate in the COVID-19 vaccine trials. Its a very generous act. And he laments what he called the unintended consequence of the communication thats happening on the political side of things, which he says was making people afraid of vaccines.
The only way to counter that is to be transparent and explain, Slaoui says. And we need everybodys help. So thank you very much for being here.
TheWest Virginia Department of Health and Human Resources (DHHR) reportsas of 10:00 a.m., September 29, 2020, there have been 557,869 total confirmatory laboratory results receivedfor COVID-19, with 15,692 total cases and 345 deaths.
DHHR has confirmed the deaths of a 70-year old male from LoganCounty, a 70-year old male from Putnam County, a 79-year old female fromWyoming County, a 73-year old male from Berkeley County, an 81-year old femalefrom Putnam County, an 84-year old female from Putnam County, a 73-year oldmale from Monroe County, and a 78-year old female from Taylor County.
"We must remember that each ofthese West Virginians have families and friends who are left to grieve theirloss, said Bill J. Crouch, DHHR Cabinet Secretary. We join with them in sharingtheir grief.
CASESPER COUNTY: Barbour(78), Berkeley (1,009), Boone (227), Braxton (13), Brooke (114), Cabell (843),Calhoun (25), Clay (36), Doddridge (26), Fayette (629), Gilmer (48), Grant(161), Greenbrier (127), Hampshire (108), Hancock (150), Hardy (91), Harrison(382), Jackson (270), Jefferson (436), Kanawha (2,704), Lewis (38), Lincoln(171), Logan (620), Marion (284), Marshall (179), Mason (143), McDowell (87),Mercer (425), Mineral (174), Mingo (377), Monongalia (2,035), Monroe (151),Morgan (55), Nicholas (105), Ohio (374), Pendleton (53), Pleasants (18),Pocahontas (59), Preston (157), Putnam (576), Raleigh (526), Randolph (252),Ritchie (13), Roane (52), Summers (55), Taylor (127), Tucker (34), Tyler (16),Upshur (84), Wayne (403), Webster (8), Wetzel (56), Wirt (12), Wood (374),Wyoming (118).
Pleasenote that delays may be experienced with the reporting of information from thelocal health department to DHHR. As case surveillance continues at the localhealth department level, it may reveal that those tested in a certain countymay not be a resident of that county, or even the state as an individual inquestion may have crossed the state border to be tested.Suchis the case of Mineral County in this report.
Pleasevisit the dashboard located at www.coronavirus.wv.gov for more information.
Free COVID-19 testinglocations are available today in Barbour, Fayette, Kanawha, and Putnam counties,and Wednesday in Fayette, Kanawha, Logan, Monongalia, Putnam, and Waynecounties:
Barbour County, September29, 10:00 AM 2:00 PM, Barbour County Fairgrounds, 115 Fairgrounds Way, Belington,WV
Fayette County, September29, 10:00 AM 2:00 PM, J.W. and Hazel Ruby WV Welcome Center, 55 Hazel RubyLane, Mt. Hope, WV
Kanawha County, September29, 3:00 PM 7:00 PM, George Washington High School, 1522 Tennis Club Road, Charleston,WV
Putnam County, September29, 9:00 AM 1:00 PM, Teays Valley Church of God, 185 Connection Point, ScottDepot, WV
Fayette County, September30, 4:00 PM 7:00 PM, Gateway Center, 2 Greyhound Lane, Smithers, WV
Kanawha County, September30, 3:00 PM 7:00 PM, George Washington High School, 1522 Tennis Club Road, Charleston,WV
Logan County, September30, 10:00 AM 2:00 PM, Old 84 Lumber Building, 100 Recovery Road, Peach Creek,WV
Monongalia County, September30, 9:00 AM 4:00 PM, West Virginia University, Student Recreation Center,2001 Rec Center Drive, Morgantown, WV
Putnam County, September30, 1:00 PM 5:00 PM, Old Buffalo High School, 81 High School Road, Buffalo,WV
Wayne County, September30, 9:00 AM 1:00 PM, Wayne County Health Department, 217 Kenova Ave, Wayne,WV 25570
Testing is available to everyone,including asymptomatic individuals. For upcoming testing locations, pleasevisit https://dhhr.wv.gov/COVID-19/pages/testing.aspx.
