The coronavirus outbreak has altered life in the United States in many ways, but in key respects it has affected black and Hispanic Americans more than others.
The financial shocks of the outbreak have hit Hispanic and black Americans especially hard. When it comes to public health, black Americans appear to account for a larger share of COVID-19 hospitalizations nationally than their share of the population. And in New York City, death rates per 100,000 people are highest among blacks and Hispanics.
As the coronavirus sweeps through the country, Pew Research Center has been surveying Americans to explore its impact on their lives. The surveys have revealed notable racial and ethnic differences in experiences with the illness or death of loved ones, as well as job losses and pay cuts. There is also new evidence of long-standing differences among racial and ethnic groups, in some cases tied to underlying economic, geographic and health circumstances.
Here are some key findings about race, ethnicity and the COVID-19 outbreak, drawn from surveys conducted during the first months of the crisis.
This post is based on findings from two Pew Research Center surveys. The Center surveyed 11,537 U.S. adults from March 19 to 24, 2020, about economic, health and other worries as the coronavirus began to spread in the U.S. The Center then surveyed 4,917 U.S. adults from April 7 to 12, 2020, about economic issues and health concerns during the outbreak.
Everyone who took part in both surveys is a member of Pew Research Centers American Trends Panel (ATP), an online survey panel that is recruited through national, random sampling of residential addresses. This way nearly all U.S. adults have a chance of selection. The surveys are weighted to be representative of the U.S. adult population by gender, race, ethnicity, partisan affiliation, education and other categories. Read more about the ATPs methodology.
1Job and wage losses due to COVID-19 have hit Hispanic adults the hardest. Some 61% of Hispanic Americans and 44% of black Americans said in April that they or someone in their household had experienced a job or wage loss due to the coronavirus outbreak, compared with 38% of white adults. These shares were up from a March survey, when 49% of Hispanics, 36% of blacks and 29% of whites said their household had experienced a job or wage loss.
2Most black and Hispanic Americans do not have financial reserves to cover expenses in case of an emergency. In the April survey, nearly three-quarters of black (73%) and Hispanic adults (70%) said they did not have emergency funds to cover three months of expenses; around half of white adults (47%) said the same. The vast majority of black and Hispanic adults without financial reserves also said they would not be able to cover their expenses for three months by borrowing money, using savings or selling assets.
In the same survey, 57% of black adults and 51% of Hispanic adults said the federal aid package passed in response to COVID-19 would help their household at least a fair amount. Some 43% of white adults said the same.
3The COVID-19 economic downturn has made it harder for some Americans to pay their monthly bills. Black (48%) and Hispanic adults (44%) were more likely than white adults (26%) to say they cannot pay some bills or can only make partial payments on some of them this month, according to the April survey. For Hispanics, this was a considerably greater share than the 28% who said they have trouble paying their bills in a typical month.
These concerns extended to paying cellphone and home broadband bills. Hispanic and black adults who use these technologies were more likely than white users to say they worry a lot or some about paying bills for these services.
4There are sharp racial and ethnic differences in personal experiences with COVID-19 and in concerns about spreading or catching the virus. In the April survey, about one-in-four black adults (27%) said they personally knew someone who had been hospitalized or died as a result of having COVID-19, roughly double the shares who said this among Hispanic or white adults (13% each). At the same time, Hispanic Americans expressed greater concern than other groups about contracting COVID-19 and requiring hospitalization. Hispanics were also more likely than blacks or whites to be worried that they might unknowingly spread COVID-19 to others; about two-thirds of all adults said they were at least somewhat concerned about doing this.
5Hispanic and black Americans are more likely than white adults to say cellphone tracking is acceptable in efforts to fight the virus. Two-thirds (66%) of Hispanic adults and 56% of black adults said in April that it is at least somewhat acceptable for the government to use peoples cellphones to track the location of those who have tested positive for the coronavirus; about half of white Americans (47%) said the same. Hispanic (55%) and black adults (45%) were also more likely than white adults (31%) to say it is very or somewhat acceptable for the government to track the location of peoples cellphones to ensure people are complying with experts advice on limiting social contact during the outbreak. The findings come as some governments have considered employing technology to help with monitoring and tracking the spread of the virus.
Despite their greater support for cellphone tracking in this context, 62% of blacks and 47% of Hispanics still said in April that cellphone tracking will not make much of a difference in limiting the spread of COVID-19.
SIOUX CITY (KTIV) -- Seaboard Triumph Foods has confirmed a total of 34 of its employees have tested positive for the COVID-19 coronavirus.
In an official release sent out on Tuesday, the company said two of those employees have recovered from the virus. The company said they have been released by their doctor or local health department and have been cleared to come back to work.
Seaboard Triumph Foods said when they are notified of a positive case in their Sioux City plant, they identify where that person was assigned to and immediately notify anyone who may have been in contact with that positive case.
The company said they continue to encourage employees to stay home if they feel sick.
Some of the measures the company has put in place to help combat the spread of the virus are:
Separate studies in Israel and the Netherlands claim to have created antibodies that can block the coronavirus infection, a potential future treatment touted as a game-changer until a vaccine becomes available.
A Dutch-led team of scientists said they had managed to halt infection in a lab setting. At the same time, the Israeli defence minister announced a state-run research centre had developed an antibody that he claimed could neutralise [the coronavirus] inside carriers bodies. The Guardian understands the antibody has not yet been trialled on humans, however.
Both efforts, which are in their initial stages, hope to eventually treat or prevent the development of the Covid-19 respiratory disease caused by coronavirus and stall the spread of the pandemic.
Such a neutralising antibody has potential to alter the course of infection in the infected host, support virus clearance or protect an uninfected individual that is exposed to the virus, said Berend-Jan Bosch from Utrecht University in the Netherlands.
The research, published in the Nature Communications journal on Monday, looked at antibodies developed to combat the 2002-04 Sars outbreak, also caused by a coronavirus. It said it identified one antibody that was also effective against the current virus, officially called Sars-CoV-2.
Scientists at Utrecht University, Erasmus Medical Center and the global biopharmaceutical company, Harbour BioMed (HBM), described it as an initial step towards developing a fully human antibody to treat or prevent Covid-19.
This is groundbreaking research, said Jingsong Wang, the CEO of HBM. But he added: Much more work is needed to assess whether this antibody can protect or reduce the severity of disease in humans.
The study was welcomed with cautious optimism by several experts.
Jane Osbourn, the chair of the UK BioIndustry Association (BIA) who received an OBE last year for her antibody research, said the study could be a valuable part of the future arsenal of options for development.
Contact tracing is one of the most basic planks of public health responses to a pandemiclike the coronavirus. It means literally tracking down anyone that somebody with an infection may have had contact with in the days before they became ill. It was and always will be central to the fight against Ebola, for instance. In west Africa in 2014/15, there were large teams of people who would trace relatives and knock on the doors of neighbours and friends to find anyone who might have become infected by touching the sick person.
Most people who get Covid-19 will be infected by their friends, neighbours, family or work colleagues, so they will be first on the list. It is not likely anyone will get infected by someone they do not know, passing on the street.
It is still assumed there has to be reasonable exposure originally experts said people would need to be together for 15 minutes, less than 2 metres apart. So a contact tracer will want to know who the person testing positive met and talked to over the two or three days before they developed symptoms and went into isolation.
South Korea has large teams of contact tracers and notably chased down all the contacts of a religious group, many of whose members fell ill. That outbreak was efficiently stamped out by contact tracing and quarantine.
Singapore and Hong Kong have also espoused testing and contact tracing and so has Germany. All those countries have had relatively low death rates so far. TheWorld Health Organizationsays it should be the backbone of the response in every country.
Sarah BoseleyHealth editor
James Gill, honorary clinical lecturer at Warwick Medical School, said it revealed a potential game-changing discovery with regard to Covid-19. However, he warned it was still too early to declare victory.
Simply because we have found an antibody which neutralises a virus in a group of cells in a lab Petri dish doesnt mean that we can expect the same response in patients, nor expect to see a positive change in a patients clinical condition, he said. But this is certainly a very promising discovery, coming from a robust scientific approach, and should be viewed as a reason for optimism.
In Israel, the defence minister, Naftali Bennett, claimed researchers had made a significant breakthrough.
The state-run Israel Institute for Biological Research (IIBR) had created antibodies that could defeat the coronavirus inside humans, he said in a statement.
Researchers were already moving to patent the antibodies, and the IIBR was looking to mass-produce it, the statement said.
The defence ministry later said in a separate statement that scientists that the IIBR believed the normal process of tests and regulatory approvals could be shortened to several months.
Both the Israeli and Dutch studies use monoclonal antibodies, which are lab-created proteins that resemble naturally occurring antibodies that make up the immune system. Antibodies work by binding with the virus, identifying it to be destroyed.
Roughly 100 other research groups around the world are also pursuing vaccines, which would provide immunity from infection.
More than 260 COVID-19 patients in South Korea tested positive for the coronavirus after having recovered, raising alarm that the virus might be capable of "reactivating" or infecting people more than once. But infectious disease experts now say both are unlikely.
Rather, the method used to detect the coronavirus, called polymerase chain reaction (PCR), cannot distinguish between genetic material (RNA or DNA) from infectious virus and the "dead" virus fragments that can linger in the body long after a person recovers, Dr. Oh Myoung-don, a Seoul National University Hospital doctor, said at a news briefing Thursday (April 30), according to The Korea Herald.
These tests "are very simple," said Carol Shoshkes Reiss, a professor of Biology and Neural Science at New York University, who was not involved in the testing. "Although somebody can recover and no longer be infectious, they may still have these little fragments of [inactive] viral RNA which turn out positive on those tests."
Related: 13 coronavirus myths busted by science
That's because once the virus has been vanquished, there is "all this garbage of broken-down cells that needs to be cleaned up," Reiss told Live Science, referring to the cellular corpses that were killed by the virus. Within that garbage are the fragmented remains of now non-infectious viral particles.
To determine whether or not someone is harboring infectious virus or has been reinfected with the virus, a completely different type of test would be needed, one that is not typically performed, Reiss said. Instead of testing the virus as it is, lab technicians would have to culture it, or place that virus in a lab dish under ideal conditions and see if it was capable of growing.
Patients in South Korea who re-tested positive had very little to no ability to spread the virus, according to the Korea Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, the Korea Herald reported.
Reports of patients testing positive twice aren't limited to South Korea; they have also poured in from other countries, including China and Japan. But the general consensus in the scientific community with all the information available to date on the new coronavirus is that people aren't being reinfected, but rather falsely testing positive, Reiss said.
What's more, "the process in which COVID-19 produces a new virus takes place only in host cells and does not infiltrate the nucleus," or the very core of the cell, Oh said during the briefing, the Herald reported. Here's why: Some viruses, such as the human immunodeficiency virus (HIV) and the chickenpox virus, can integrate themselves into the host genome by making their way into the nucleus of human cells, where they can stay latent for years and then "reactivate." But the coronavirus is not one of those viruses and instead it stays outside of the host cell's nucleus, before quickly bursting out and infiltrating the next cell, Reiss said.
"This means it does not cause chronic infection or recurrence," Oh said. In other words, it's highly unlikely that the coronavirus would reactivate in the body soon after infection, Reiss said.
But reinfection at some point is a theoretical possibility. "We don't know what's going to happen a year from now, nobody has that kind of crystal ball," Reiss said.
Reassuringly, the virus is currently undergoing very small genetic changes that are "too tiny" to evade the immune systems of people who have already been infected. The genetic changes would have to be substantial enough that a person's existing antibodies to SARS-CoV-2 would no longer work against a new strain. So far, that seems unlikely.
"If this virus remains as it is [with] really tiny changes then it's highly unlikely" that a person would be reinfected next year, Reiss added.
In the best-case scenario, which Reiss thinks is likely, the virus will behave like the virus that causes chickenpox, "imprinting" on the host immune memory. Then, even if antibody levels drop over time, people will retain a population of memory cells that can rapidly boost production of more antibodies if they are exposed to the virus again, Reiss said. Of course, this is still an "assumption," and it will be some time before we can fully understand the strength of the army the immune system creates against this virus and whether that army's protection is long-lasting.
Editor's Note: This article was updated on May 2 to clarify the names of those quoted.
Originally published on Live Science.
The Food and Drug Administration has authorized a new coronavirus antibody test, making it the first to receive independent validation from the federal government.
According to federal officials, the test can tell if people have been infected with the virus and recovered from it.
The FDA, Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, and the National Institutes of Health evaluated its effectiveness.
Other tests are currently available, but public health officials say they are not accurate.
Many experts believe accurate antibody testing is the key to fighting the pandemic.
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Levi Sucre Romero remembers hearing the news back in January about a novel coronavirus infecting people in China. I honestly didnt believe it would make it this far, he said. I felt like it was really far away.
A member and leader of the Bribri, one of Costa Ricas largest indigenous groups, Romero lives in Talamanca, a remote, mountainous region in the south of the country full of meandering rivers, dense jungle canopies and a near-constant drizzle of warm rain. Though the thatched-roof wooden homes of Talamanca Bribri, the groups territory, are far removed from the countrys popular tourist hubs, Romero soon realised that it was only a matter of time until the virus reached them.
Romero also realised something else: the virus, he believes, was unleashed by human greed and ill treatment of the planet. Were unbalancing the habitat of species, were cutting down trees, were planting monocultures, were filling the world with cities and asphalt and were using too many chemicals, Romero said. Its a cocktail of bad practices.
Like Sars and Mers, two other recent, deadly coronaviruses, Covid-19 is a zoonotic disease that came from an animal. Evidence points to its likely origin in a bat, followed by a potential crossover into an intermediary species possibly a pangolin before transmission into humans at a wet market in Wuhan, China. While Covid-19s exact origins have yet to be pinpointed, overwhelming research shows that deforestation and commercial wildlife trade heighten the risk of zoonotic diseases that can potentially cause pandemics. And according to Romero, both are human activities that entail the destruction of nature.
My people have cultural knowledge that says when Sib, our God, created Earth, he locked up some bad spirits, Romero said. These spirits come out when were not respecting nature and living together.
Romero coordinates the Mesoamerican Alliance of People and Forests, one of the most important land-rights platforms for indigenous communities in Central America and Mexico, which represents more than 50,000 people who live in the most densely forested lands in the region. He knows for a fact that there is another, more sustainable and respectful way to live in relation to the Earth because the Bribri and many other indigenous groups around the world practice it.
I do not believe this will be the last pandemic of this type
For years, Romero and other indigenous leaders have been urging the rest of the world to adopt a more indigenous-inspired way of coexisting with nature, including leaving habitats intact, harvesting plants and animals at sustainable levels and acknowledging and respecting the connection between human and planetary health. Now, they are reiterating that message in light of the coronavirus.
At a March panel sponsored by the global journalism initiative Covering Climate Now in New York City, held days before the city shut down and later became the global epicentre of the worldwide pandemic, Romero and other indigenous leaders from Brazil and Indonesia emphasised the role that traditional knowledge, practices and land stewardship can play in protecting the planet. These protections, they said, extend not just to lessening climate change and biodiversity loss, but to reducing the risk of future pandemics.
We are convinced that this pandemic is the result of a wrong use of natural resources and a wrong way of living together with these resources, Romero said. I do not believe this will be the last pandemic of this type.
A wealth of research supports the link between novel disease emergence and environmental destruction. Many viruses naturally occur in animal species, and deforestation increases the odds of people coming into contact with an animal carrying a virus that is new to humanity, potentially resulting in a spill-over event. A 2017 Nature Communications paper revealed that emerging zoonotic disease risk is highest in tropical forests that are experiencing land-use changes, including from logging, mining, dam building and road development. As the authors report, such activities carry an intrinsic risk of disease emergence because they disrupt ecological dynamics and increase contact between humans, livestock and wildlife.
Its a stochastic process, said Erin Mordecai, a biologist at Stanford University. Its driven by chance encounters between particular people and particular animals, and what pathogens theyre carrying at that time.
Deforestation can also spread existing diseases. In October, Mordecai and co-author Andrew MacDonald reported in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences that an increase in deforestation in Brazil tends to increase the rate of malaria transmission, with about six-and-a-half new cases occurring per square kilometre of cut-down forest. The reason, they believe, is that cutting trees creates more forest edge the favourite breeding habitat for Brazils malaria-transmitting mosquitoes. Development in frontier regions also brings more people closer to the forest and draws pioneers in from other parts of the country who have never been exposed to malaria and thus have no resistance.
Deforestation tends to lead to these opportunities in which species that dont normally come into contact are coming into contact
While every disease is different, the general pattern, Mordecai told me, is that deforestation disrupts ecosystems and creates edge habitats hovering between domesticated and wild, in which the human and natural world overlap. Deforestation tends to lead to these opportunities in which species that dont normally come into contact are coming into contact, she said. That creates opportunities for pathogens to spill over.
Studies reveal that the both legal and illegal commercial wildlife trade also increase the risk of new diseases emerging by subjecting wild animals to stressful, unhygienic conditions. Still-living species are often mixed together, allowing them to exchange viruses. Trade also often takes place in urban centres, where many people may come into contact with the animals and with each other further encouraging a new diseases spread.
The wildlife trade itself is also linked to deforestation. Hunters and poachers tend to access wilderness areas through roads. As formerly remote areas are opened up by new transportation corridors, wildlife trade tends to follow.
Medical experts and conservationists have been warning of the health risks posed by both deforestation and wildlife trade for decades, but to no avail. In 2003, for example, China briefly banned wildlife trade in response to Sars, but business resumed within a year and has only grown since.
As land stewards, many indigenous groups help to guard against these threats. By protecting indigenous landscapes, youre protecting not only those people and their way of life, but also preventing really rapid transformation of landscapes, Mordecai said. That rapid transformation has huge-scale cultural and environmental consequences, but also disease-transmission consequences.
How travellers can help protect indigenous land
Indigenous tourism directly engages indigenous people to let them share their culture and land on their own terms. According to the United Nations World Tourism Organization, indigenous tourism can spur cultural interaction and revival, bolster employment, alleviate poverty, curb rural flight migration, empower women and youth, encourage product diversification, and nurture a sense of pride among indigenous people.
To ensure that your travel will directly benefit the people whose culture and land you experience, the World Indigenous Tourism Alliance recommends booking indigenous-owned-and-operated tours. Fortunately, indigenous-led travel experiences have recently surged in places like Australia, Canada and the US. In the last few years, the Bribri launched Costa Ricas first indigenous-operated tour agency, which teaches visitors about the groups worldview and spiritual connection to the land, with all funds going back to the community.
A large number of indigenous groups live in tropical forests precisely the landscapes with the highest risk for new disease emergence, and also the places facing the highest rates of deforestation. Tropical deforestation is accelerating and accounts for about 90% of total deforestation worldwide. A 2020 study reported that at least 36% of the worlds remaining intact forests half of which are located in the tropics fall within indigenous lands.
Of course, indigenous people are extremely diverse. Some live in cities, others in forests; some extract resources for profit, others use nature only for subsistence. In general, though, indigenous groups are much more effective at protecting the forest and environment on their lands than most other users, said Mary Menton, a research fellow in environmental justice at the University of Sussex. In certain parts of Brazil, for example, indigenous protection is visible in satellite images from space.
You can see exactly where the lines of indigenous territories are, Menton said. Deforestation eats into forests around where indigenous areas are, and those areas really act as an effective barrier for expansion.
Indigenous peoples lands, by and large, tend to be much better protected than other areas of the forest
This is also supported by scientific evidence. A 2012 study comparing 40 protected areas and 33 community-managed forests revealed that the community-managed areas suffered less deforestation. If we look across the tropics, indigenous peoples lands, by and large, tend to be much better protected than other areas of the forest, even comparing community and indigenous lands to protected areas, Menton said.
Practically speaking, this is partly because indigenous people tend to live on large areas of land with relatively small populations. But even groups that live in smaller tracts of forest in north-east Brazil, for example, live more sustainably than much of the rest of humanity. Its not just that they have lots of forest, its the way they treat and see the forest, and interact with it, Menton said.
Many groups have been living in forested areas for generations and view the landscape as part of their community. Some also believe that their ancestors are part of the forest. Protecting nature, therefore, isnt just about ecology and biodiversity, Menton says, but also about preserving lives, history and culture.
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Indigenous people accomplish this through a variety of means that largely boil down to having a respect and awareness of the effect they have on the forest, Menton said. The Bribri, for example, divide their land into family and community areas, each of which have internal rules designed to promote sustainability. For example, members of the community can cut as many leaves as they want from local suita palms used to make everything from houses to brooms so long as they leave at least five leaves on each harvested plant so it can produce more leaves.
We need to rethink the model of development thats based on accumulating wealth while destroying resources
Many indigenous people also do not treat the forest as a means or impediment to getting rich. Romero, for his part, thinks that hyper-globalisation and consumerism are at the heart of many of the worlds ills. We need to rethink the model of development thats based on accumulating wealth while destroying resources, Romero said. I see an economic model that is predatory to resources and to nature, that causes a lack of balance in the world.
However, profit-driven companies, governments and individuals often view indigenous people as standing in the way of economic growth. Around the world, indigenous land rights are under attack by agriculture, mining and other extractive industries. Between 2002 and 2017, Menton found that more than 1,500 environmental defenders were murdered in 50 countries, and that indigenous peoples died in higher numbers than any other group on the list. In 2015 and 2016, for example, indigenous people represented 40% of all murdered environmental defenders. A report published in April 2020 by the Pastoral Land Commission, a non-profit organisation in Brazil, likewise revealed that one-third of all families who faced land conflicts in rural Brazil in 2019 were indigenous.
Menton adds that indigenous people face additional threats because of racism and perceptions that theyre second-class citizens. Often, this is a problem promoted from the top down. Brazils president, Jair Bolsonaro, recently said, for example, that Indians are evolving to become increasingly human, like us. Indigenous people, in other words, are facing threats both in terms of actual physical conflicts over land, but also cultural threats and attacks over their right to exist, Menton said.
Attacks on indigenous rights are not just attacks on individual cultures, Romero says, but on the health of the planet as a whole. When we have rights over our forests and our lands, that means survival for us, for our families, he said. But it also means we have a better probability of avoiding pandemics.
The Bribri, like much of the world, are now on lockdown. The rhythm of our lives has been cut short, he said. Visits with elders are no longer permitted, sales of produce to the national market have dropped by around 90%, and the groups cultural and ecological tourism efforts including guided trips to mountains and rivers, traditional food tours and home stays on family ranches have stopped as well. I could go on and on. Theres a lot of impacts, Romero said.
Once the world does emerge from Covid-19, Romero hopes that there will be a silver lining to all of the suffering, loss and hardship that it has caused. He hopes that people will be more receptive to the knowledge that he and other indigenous leaders have to offer, and that humanity will begin to re-evaluate its relationship with nature.
I think we have a long way to go, but after the coronavirus, I have faith that this will open up some space with governments, Romero said. After this pandemic, governments should listen more.
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The statewide cumulative case count reached 621 on Monday, with the addition of one new infection confirmed by the Department of Health on Hawaii island.
Statewide, four new recoveries were reported. A total of 548 people have recovered enough to be released from isolation about 88% of those diagnosed to date.
Hawaii Countys cumulative infection count reached 75 on Monday, but 63 of the people with confirmed infections are now in recovery. One person is hospitalized on the Big Island, and 63 people have recovered to date, according to the health department.
The Big Island has documented 75 COVID-19 infections to date.
Flickr: Matt McGee
Kauai Countys cumulative case count has remained at 21 for a couple of weeks. Only one case is still actively monitored by DOH and the person is hospitalized. The 20 others have recovered.
Oahus cumulative case count remained at 400, including 374 recoveries documented by the health department. Fifty-three people have required hospitalization on Oahu to date, and another 11 people have died.
Maui Countys cumulative case count remained at 116 on Monday, including one Lanai resident who was exposed on Maui and has not returned to Lanai since.
On Sunday, Mauis sixth death related to the coronavirus was confirmed. The woman who died was older than 60 and had been hospitalized for other medical issues since February at Maui Memorial Medical Center. Her COVID-19 infection occurred in mid-April. The hospital is the site of a cluster of cases affecting both staff and patients.
The state health departments epidemiologists have found that most cases confirmed in April were community-related, and new infections have dwindled.
Department of Health
Across the islands, 73 people have been hospitalized to date, including some Hawaii residents hospitalized out of state. Patients who do not require hospitalization recuperate at home in isolation and only qualify to be released when at least 14 days of quarantine have passed and their symptoms have subsided.
The state has registered 17 deaths in relation to COVID-19 since March.
Hawaii is still under a stay-at-home order through the end of May but some restrictions have been lifted.
Those who are not under mandatory quarantine are allowed to exercise on beaches and at some public parks if they abide by six-foot social distancing guidelines. Florists are back open for business. Gov. David Ige said Monday that other kinds of low-contact retail operations will soon be given approval to reopen.
Honolulu Mayor Kirk Caldwell isallowing people to exercisein parks, although he doesnt want them to congregate, play team sports or use any playground equipment.The city alsoopened its botanical gardens.
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The World Health Organization says the United States government has not given any evidence to support Trump administration officials speculative claim that Covid-19 originated in a Wuhan lab, as China dismissed the theory as insane.
Donald Trump has repeatedly said that he has proof the virus originated in a laboratory in Wuhan whereas scientists believe it jumped from animals to humans at a wet market in the city last year.
The US secretary of state, Mike Pompeo, said on Sunday that the US had enormous evidence to back the theory. But the administration had not produced it publicly or provided it to the WHO, said its emergencies director, Dr Michael Ryan. So from our perspective, this remains speculative.
Like any evidence-based organisation, we would be very willing to receive any information that purports to the origin of the virus, Ryan said, stressing that this was a very important piece of public health information for future control.
If that data and evidence is available, then it will be for the United States government to decide whether and when it can be shared, but it is difficult for the WHO to operate in an information vacuum in that regard.
Ryan said it was important for the WHO to learn from Chinese scientists data and exchange knowledge to find the answers together, but cautioned against politicising the issue. If this is projected as aggressive investigation of wrongdoing, that is much more difficult to deal with. Thats a political issue, he said.
Chinese state media attacked the US claims, with the state broadcaster CCTV labelling them insane and evasive in a Monday opinion piece entitled Evil Pompeo is wantonly spewing poison and spreading lies. The state-backed Global Times also published an editorial accusing Pompeo and Trump of bluffing, and said if the US had evidence it should present it.
If Washington has solid evidence, then it should let research institutes and scientists examine and verify it, the editorial said. The Global Times editor, Hu Xijin, tweeted that demands to investigate the Wuhan lab were an attempt to fool the American people.
Last week Sky News reported the WHO had been denied any involvement in Chinas investigations into the origins of the virus.
Intelligence sources have told the Guardian there is no current evidence to suggest coronavirus leaked from a Chinese research laboratory. Reports in Australia suggested its intelligence officials believed a dossier touted by the Trump administration to support the laboratory theory was compiled from news reports rather than actual material from the Five Eyes spy network of Australia, the US, New Zealand, Canada and the UK.
The USs senior infectious disease expert, Dr Anthony Fauci, has said the available evidence was very, very strongly leaning toward this [virus] could not have been artificially or deliberately manipulated.
The WHOs technical lead on Covid-19, Dr Maria Van Kerkhove, stressed during Mondays briefing that there were some 15,000 full genome sequences of the novel coronavirus available, and from all of the evidence that we have seen ... this virus is of natural origin.
While coronaviruses generally originate in bats, both Van Kerkhove and Ryan stressed the importance of discovering how the virus that causes Covid-19 crossed over to humans, and what animal served as an intermediary host along the way.
Several nations, including Australia and the UK, have called for an independent investigation into the outbreak, angering China.
Scott Morrison, the prime minister of key US ally, Australia, said on Tuesday it was most likely that the virus originated in a wildlife wet market. Australia is a member of the Five Eyes intelligence network, that includes the US. Morrison reiterated his call for an independent investigation into the viruss origins and said he had written to G20 leaders asking for support for a proper review.
Citing an internal Chinese government report on Tuesday, the Reuters news agency reported international anti-China sentiment was at its highest since the 1989 Tiananmen Square massacre.
According to the report, which Reuters said was presented in early March to top Beijing leaders including the president, Xi Jinping, the global hostility could tip US-China relations into confrontation once the pandemic was over.
On Monday the US deputy national security adviser, Matthew Pottinger, sounded a warning to Beijing and asked in a speech delivered in Mandarin whether China today would benefit from a little less nationalism and a little more populism.
Around the world infection numbers and fatalities have continued to rise. The death toll has passed a quarter of a million globally, and the USs daily toll is projected to double by June to 3,000 according to the New York Times, which cited internal document containing projections based on modelling by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention and pulled together in chart form by the Federal Emergency Management Agency.
By Tuesday morning the United Kingdom was approaching the death toll of Italy with 28,734 fatalities recorded. So far at least 29,079 people in Italy have died of Covid-19 the second most globally after the US although it is believed by experts that the true death toll is higher. In other developments:
Australia and New Zealand have discussed the prospect of a trans-Tasman bubble allowing travel which has been anticipated by both countries leaders at a meeting of Australias national cabinet meeting, which was joined by Jacinda Ardern.
New Zealand has had a second straight day of no new cases of Covid-19 , as the government considered whether to further relax the countrys lockdown restrictions, due to expire on Monday.
In the UK workers may refuse to turn up or stage walk-outs unless the government helps guarantee their safety, trade unions have warned amid anger over guidance designed to ease the lockdown.
The WHO hailed the billions of euros raised on Monday during a teleconference of world leaders to boost development of a coronavirus vaccine as a strong show of global solidarity.
Some California retailers will be allowed to reopen their businesses starting on Friday, after a six-week stay-at-home order, the states governor, Gavin Newsom, said Monday.
Carnival Cruise Line has announced plans to resume operations at the beginning of August despite dozens of deaths on cruise ships during the Covid-19 pandemic.
A plane carrying aid supplies has crashed in Somalia. The accident, involving an African Express Airways plane, killed seven people on board, a security official said.
Austrian unemployment is at all-time high, with a year-on-year rise of almost 60%
The Pharr-San Juan-Alamo school district will be the first in Hidalgo County to host testing sites for COVID-19, according to a district news release Tuesday. The decision was made during a school board meeting Monday.
Testing begins Tuesday at PSJA North Early College High School and will continue until Friday, from 1 to 6 p.m., and will be offered in Pharr, San Juan and Alamo on a rotation basis to minimize the risk of spreading COVID-19. The sites will be organized in a drive-thru fashion.
The next few weeks will include locations such as PSJA Early College High School from May 11-15, PSJA Memorial Early College High School from May 18-22 and PSJA Southwest Early College High School from May 25-29.
The drive-thru testing will be offered to anyone regardless of symptoms or other risk factors.
Uninsured community members will be charged $100 per test while in-network insured members will not have to pay a co-pay.
We are grateful to our school board of trustees for allowing us to utilize our school grounds as a testing service in order to do our part to minimize the spread of this disease in our community, PSJA Superintendent Jorge L. Arredondo said in the release.
For information on pre-screening procedures, visit phsrgv.com/covid19/.
If you have news you would like to contribute, you can reach The Monitor at (956) 683-4000.
The monthly jobs reportthe unemployment rate from one survey and the change in employer payrolls from another surveyis one of the most closely watched economic indicators, particularly at a time of an economic crisis like today. Heres a look at how these data are collected and how to interpret them during the COVID-19 pandemic.
The headline unemployment rate measures the percentage of people over age 16 who arent working but are actively looking for work. The unemployment rate was hovering around a 50-year low before the pandemic, rose to 4.4% in March, and is certain to have been much higher in April. The Congressional Budget Office projects that the unemployment rate will rise to 16% this summer.
Data on unemployment are collected every month in the Current Population Survey (CPS), a survey of about 60,000 households, conducted by the Census and the Bureau of Labor Statistics every month, which includes roughly 105,000 people ages 16 and older. The questions about unemployment refer to what people were doing during the week that includes the 12th of the month, known as the reference weekso in the case of the survey to be released on Friday (May 8) the week of April 12. The CPS is also referred to as the household survey, to distinguish it from the establishment survey, which is the source for the official employment numbers released each month.
First, they are asked whether they worked during the week of April 12. People are counted as employed if they did any work at all as a paid employee, if they worked in their own business, or worked without pay for at least 15 hours in a family business. People are also counted as employed if they were temporarily absent from work as a result of sickness, bad weather, vacation, a strike, or personal reasons. Such workers are classified as employed but absent from work. People not counted as employed are then asked if they have both looked for work in the previous four weeks and are available to work. If so, they are counted as unemployed. In addition, people who did not work, but are on temporary layoff from a job with the expectation that they will be recalledwhat many furloughed employees are experiencing todayare counted as unemployed whether they looked for a job or not.
People who are not working and who dont meet the criteria to be counted as unemployed for the headline unemployment rate (known as U-3) are counted as being out of the labor force. This category includes students, retirees, and those who stay home to take care of family members. In addition, people who report wanting a job but have not looked for work in the most recent four weeks are considered out of the labor force, but they are not ignored in the official statistics. The Bureau of Labor Statistics (BLS) reports several measures of the labor market beyond the headline unemployment rate. The U-6, for instance, counts all those who are technically unemployed plus those are who are working part-time but would prefer full time work and those marginally attached to the labor force, that is, people who say they want either a full-time or part-time job, have not looked for work in the most recent four weeks, but have looked for a job sometime in the past 12 months. When adults classified as marginally attached report that they did not recently seek work because they do not believe jobs are available for them, they are classified as discouraged workers.
While the survey will be the same as always, the nature of the COVID-19 economy means that peoples behavior, and hence the data, may not follow the same pattern that we usually see when the economy is turning down. Typically, people who lose jobs in recessions are more likely to transition into unemployment than to transition out of the labor force. However, with stay-at-home orders in place and nonessential businesses closed in many communities, people who leave employment now are much less likely to be seeking work than would typically be the case. In addition, schools are closed in many places, which means that many people who lost their jobs have child-care responsibilities that prevent them from seeking or accepting a new job. These dynamics mean that, relative to a typical downturn, we might expect the headline unemployment rate to rise less and the percent of those out of the labor force to raise more, especially the percent of those who say they want a job but arent looking. Indeed, we saw evidence of this in March, when, relative to the prior trend, an additional 1.2 million people moved from employment to out of the labor force, and the number of people categorized as out of the labor force but wanting a job rose by 500,000. The resulting increase in the labor force participation rate was much higher than would be expected given the rise in the unemployment rate.
When people first file for unemployment insurance (UI), they are counted as an initial claim. So when unemployment increases, initial claims tend to rise. Because initial claims are reported weekly, they are often used as an early indicator of the overall unemployment rate.
The number of people receiving UI and the number counted as unemployed do tend to move in the same direction, but there is no formal link between the two indicators. The only criteria for being counted as unemployed (and hence included in the unemployment rate) are that you are without a job and that you have actively searched for work or are on temporary layoff. You need not be collecting unemployment insurance to be counted as unemployed. And some people are eligible to collect partial unemployment insurance benefits if they are working but have been assigned a schedule that is far below their usual weekly hours.
Many people who become unemployed do not apply for UI benefits, either because they are not eligible or because they choose not to apply. So initial claims typically understate the number of people becoming unemployed in a given week. That said, there are people who file an initial claim and are not counted as unemployed in the CPS. This could happen if a person doesnt meet the CPS criteria for being unemployed, for instance if they file for UI because their work schedule was reduced, or if the person has a very short spell of unemployment which is not captured in the CPS (for example a person who becomes unemployed and finds a job in t between survey reference weeks).
Furthermore, many people who are unemployed and do file an initial claim do not end up receiving unemployment insurance benefits, either because they are not covered by the program, because they have not accumulated enough working hours to be eligible for benefits, or because they dont satisfy the job search requirements. In February, before the pandemic, the number of people unemployed was about 5.8 million while the number of people receiving UI benefits averaged only about 1.7 million.
Not necessarily.
The recently enacted CARES Act increased the pool of people eligible for UI benefits and temporarily increased benefits by $600 a week. These changes will affect the usual relationship between the number of people receiving UI and the number of people counted as unemployed in the direction of increasing the share of the unemployed who receive benefits. Specifically, the CARES Act expanded UI eligibility to include the self-employed, contractors, and gig workers. Moreover, the CARES Act enables individuals to collect UI benefits for additional reasons. For instance, individuals may collect UI benefits if they are quarantined with the expectation of returning to work after the quarantine is over or if they leave employment due to a risk of exposure, due to infection, or to care for a family member (either because the family member is sick or because the typical care arrangement has been disrupted by the virus). Although many states appear to be interpreting these changes very narrowly, taken together they nonetheless imply that a greater share of the unemployed will receive UI benefits.
The CARES Act also allows states to waive the requirement that people must search for work to be eligible for benefits. As of early May, 40 states have waived the search requirements under certain circumstances. As a result, more UI beneficiaries than usual wont be actively looking for work, which suggests that fewer UI recipients than usual will be categorized as being unemployed. However, whether they are counted as unemployed or not will depend on what they tell the government survey-taker about their expectation of being recalled. If they expect to be recalled, the CPS considers them on temporary layoff and counts them as unemployed; if they do not expect to be recalled they are counted as out of the labor force. Note that, while the CPS questions are designed to elicit consist responses across survey participants, identically situated individuals could be classified differently depending on how they view their likelihood of being recalled.
A final consideration: the CARES Act does not require a person impacted by COVID-19 to quit their jobs in order to receive benefits. The CPS counts people as employed if they have a job but are absent temporarily due to a variety of circumstances including illness and childcare problems. In March, the BLS instructed survey interviewers to classify employed persons absent from work due to corona virus-related business closures as unemployed or on temporary layoff. However, the BLS itself noted that there were still an unusually large number of individuals classified as employed and temporarily absent. This outcome suggests that the rule will likely reduce the share of people receiving UI benefits who are counted as unemployed.
The bottom line: The number of people receiving UI benefits during the COVID-19 crisis may rise more sharply than the number of people counted as unemployed.
The payroll (or establishment) survey is a survey of 145,000 businessesemploying about one third of all workers on nonfarm payrollsadministered by the BLS. The payroll survey tends to have difficulty estimating employment growth when the economy is at a turning point, as is the case now. To create the sample to be surveyed, the BLS picks firms from the universe of firms that have unemployment insurance tax accounts. However, new firms do not enter the BLS sample universe right away, and the BLS can have difficulty distinguishing a nonresponse from a firm closure in real time. Since the net contribution of jobs created at new firms and jobs destroyed at closing firms is typically small, the BLS imputes the same trend change in employment as occurred at continuing firms to firms that close (or for those who do not respond). It then uses a model, called the net birth-death model, to forecast the residual between that imputation and the actual data. This model tends to overestimate employment growth when the economy is weakening and underestimate it when the economy is improving. And while the model error is typically small, it can, on occasion, be large.
The way that we know about these forecast errors is because in March of each year, the BLS revises the data based on more complete information. These revisions include benchmarking the level of payroll employment to population employment, primarily using the unemployment insurance tax records (published in the BLS Quarterly Census of Employment and Wages), which represent the near-universe of employment for the payroll survey data. Although there are a few factors that can cause the level of payroll employment to deviate from population employment, the failure to adequately account for net births and deaths is likely the most important. In most years the benchmark is small, with the level of employment revising up or down by less than 0.2 percentage points. However, strikingly, when the establishment survey data for March 2009the depths of the Great Recessionwere benchmarked, the level of payroll employment was revised down by over 900,000 jobs, or 0.7 percentage point, meaning that employers had shed an 75,000 more jobs each month between April 2008 and March 2009 than previously estimated.
If, as a result of the pandemic, an unusually large number of firms are closing and few are opening, it seems possible that the even the dramatic decline in employment that we are likely to see will underestimate the true extent of job loss.
When people become unemployed, they lose an important (and sometimes their only) source of income and are at risk of falling into poverty. Of course, the more generous the unemployment insurance, the less likely it is for someone who loses a job to become poor. But unemployment insurance has typically replaced only about 40 percent of lost wages, on average over the past 20 years, with a lot of variation in generosity across the states.
The CARES Act changed that. It boosted the weekly unemployment insurance benefit by $600 through the end of July. This increase will more than double weekly UI benefits except in the case of laid-off workers who earn high wages. This UI benefit hike will go a long way toward preventing eligible families from falling into poverty.
In addition, the federal government is making direct payments of up to $1,200 per adult and $500 per dependent child under the age of 18, with the payments phasing out for those with higher levels of income. It also has encouraged states to request waivers that would allow them to increase SNAP (or food stamps) benefits and suspend time limits for able-bodied adults without children. That said, given the decline in economic activity, many households will still be facing very difficult economic conditions in coming months.
