WASHINGTON - The antimalarial drug hydroxychloroquine has shown mixed results against the coronavirus in early studies, but a new paper out of New York suggests combining it with the dietary supplement zinc sulfate could create a more effective treatment. The research by the NYU Grossman School of Medicine was posted on a medical preprint site on Monday, meaning it hasn't yet been peer reviewed. Records of about 900 COVID-19 patients were reviewed in the analysis, with roughly half given zinc sulfate along with hydroxychloroquine and the antibiotic azithromycin. The other half only received hydroxychloroquine and azithromycin. Those receiving the triple-drug combination had a 1.5 times greater likelihood of recovering enough to be discharged, and were 44 percent less likely to die, compared to the double-drug combination. It did not, however, change the average time patients spent in hospital (6 days), the time they spent on the ventilator (5 days), or the total amount of oxygen required. Senior investigator and infectious disease specialist Joseph Rahimian told AFP it was the first study to compare the two combinations. But he cautioned that a controlled experiment would be needed to prove the benefits beyond doubt. "The next logical step would be to do a prospective study to see if this holds up in people that you give zinc to, and then you watch and compare," he said. Hydroxychloroquine has been proposed as a treatment against the SARS-CoV-2 virus because it has antiviral properties that have been proven in lab settings, but not in people. It interferes with the virus' ability to enter the cells -- and also seems to block them from replicating once they are already inside. Zinc itself has antiviral properties and past research has suggested it may reduce the time people suffer from common colds. Rahimian said that it may be that when used to treat coronavirus patients, it is the zinc that does the heavy lifting and is the primary substance attacking the pathogen. Hydroxychloroquine, on the other hand, acts as an agent that transports the zinc into cells, increasing its efficacy, he suggested. Agence France-Presse
TAIPEI — The calls come at night, when Taiwan’s vice president, Chen Chien-jen, is usually at home in his pajamas. Scientists seek his advice on the development of antiviral medications. Health officials ask for guidance as they investigate an outbreak of the coronavirus on a navy ship. Like many world leaders, Chen is fighting to keep the coronavirus at bay and to predict the course of the pandemic. He is tracking infections, pushing for vaccines and testing kits, and reminding the public to wash their hands. But unlike most officials, Chen has spent his career preparing for this moment — he is a Johns Hopkins-trained epidemiologist and an expert in viruses. That experience has thrust Chen from behind the scenes to the forefront of Taiwan’s response to the crisis. He has embraced his rare dual role, using his political authority to criticize China for initially trying to conceal the virus even as the scientist in him hunkers down to analyze trends in transmission. Chen is straddling the 2 worlds at a time when science has become increasingly political. Chinese and American officials are regularly trading unsubstantiated theories attacking each other about the origins of the virus. Around the world, public health experts routinely spar with political leaders over how the virus spreads and the costs and benefits of lockdowns. Chen says that as vice president, only facts inform his policies. “Evidence is more important than playing politics,” he said in a recent interview in Taiwan’s capital, Taipei. Now in the final weeks of his term, Chen’s legacy as vice president may be shaped by Taiwan’s success. Chen, 68, with his frizzy gray hair and a toothy smile, is known affectionately in Taiwan as “elder brother,” and many people credit him with helping the island avoid the large-scale infections and deaths from the coronavirus have overwhelmed many countries. As a top health official during the SARS crisis of 2003, he pushed a series of reforms to prepare the island for the next outbreak, including building isolation wards and virus research laboratories. Taiwan’s early preparations put it in a strong position when the virus hit, and the island has earned widespread praise for its response. It has so far reported about 400 confirmed cases and 6 deaths, far fewer than many countries. Chong Ja Ian, an associate professor of political science at the National University of Singapore, said Chen had a mix of “political clout and technical expertise” that was effective in Taiwan, a society where he said there was strong trust in science and respect for medical professionals. Now Chen hopes Taiwan can play a leading role in helping the world recover from the virus and restart economic growth. He is overseeing efforts to develop a vaccine and produce tools like rapid coronavirus testing kits. “Taiwan cannot stand by when other countries are in great danger,” he said. Chen maintains the bookish manner of a research scientist and is largely unaccustomed to the attention. He has made a career out of staying out of political fights, even refusing to join the governing Democratic Progressive Party that is led by President Tsai Ing-wen. “He is a scholar; he actually doesn’t care much about the power game,” said Chen Chi-mai, a deputy prime minister who as a public health student in the 1990s took an epidemiology class from Chen and remains a close friend. “He is popular because he is neutral.” The president has deployed Chen as a leading voice to lobby for greater recognition for Taiwan on the global stage, including pushing for membership in the World Health Organization. Chen is now at the center of a global battle over the narrative about how the virus spread worldwide. He says Taiwan tried to warn the WHO in late December about the potential for the virus to spread from person to person but was ignored. The WHO has rejected the accusation, saying Taiwan merely requested information from the health agency but did not issue any warning. Chen has seized the moment, denouncing China’s efforts to block Taiwan from joining the WHO and calling on countries around the world to study the “Taiwan model” of controlling the outbreak. Chen’s prominence has made him a frequent target of criticism by mainland Chinese commentators, who have accused the government of using the pandemic to seek independence for Taiwan, which China’s government considers part of its territory. “He wears the clothing of professionalism but deviates from the rigorous precision of science and blatantly speaks nonsense and fabricates rumors,” said a recent commentary by Xinhua, China’s official news agency. “The nature of it is particularly vicious.” Chen laughs at the criticism. “China has to be focused more on COVID-19 control rather than politics,” he said.
From a young age, Chen was surrounded by politics. He is the son of a powerful county leader in southern Taiwan and said he quickly developed an appreciation for the art of compromise. “From my father, I learned that politics does not mean people have to fight against each other to the death,” he recalled in an interview in 2016 with Taiwan’s official Central News Agency. “Once people get stranded in such a confrontation, they will constantly find fault with each other.” For much of his career, he made a point of avoiding politics, instead focusing on his first love, the natural sciences. He earned a doctorate in epidemiology and human genetics from Johns Hopkins University in 1982, and became an authority in hepatitis B as well as diseases associated with arsenic exposure. At the height of the SARS outbreak, which infected 671 people and killed 84 people in Taiwan, Chen was tapped to be health minister. At the time, the government faced a crisis of confidence after authorities sealed a contaminated hospital with more than 1,000 people inside. The move triggered panic and some people inside the facility, convinced that they or their loves ones had the virus, tried to kill themselves. “We saw people jumping out of windows,” Chen recalled. “It was really chaotic.” After working to contain SARS, Chen led Taiwan in its efforts to prepare for the next outbreak. The government established a disaster management center, increased production of protective gear and revised the infectious disease law, among other measures. Chen returned to academic life until 2015, when Tsai, then a presidential candidate, tapped him to be her running mate. As vice president, Chen has faced other challenges. He tackled pension reform, prompting protests from civil servants over cuts. A Catholic, he visited the Vatican three times as vice president, angering Beijing, which has urged the Vatican to cut diplomatic ties with Taiwan. He has supported same-sex marriage, which became legal in Taiwan last year, despite criticism from other Christians. Mostly, he kept a low profile. But in late December, amid the first reports of a mysterious pneumonia emerging in the Chinese city of Wuhan, about 600 miles northwest of Taipei, he jumped into action, worried about the possibility of an epidemic. Chen quickly ordered the authorities to screen travelers from mainland China and to isolate people showing symptoms of the virus. By Jan. 21, the first case had arrived in Taiwan, and the government soon began rationing masks. After an outbreak on a navy ship, he urged officials to test more than 700 crew members with the hope of collecting data for a study on asymptomatic patients. On May 20, Chen will step down as vice president. He plans to return to academia and says the coronavirus will be a focus of his research. Every day around 7 a.m., Chen goes to church, where mass has been canceled because of the virus. “I pray to have the courage to change what we can change,” he said, noting the effort to produce better tests, drugs and vaccines. “We have to accept what we cannot change." The New York Times
“Everybody hopes for seasonality” when it comes to the coronavirus pandemic, Peter Juni of the University of Toronto acknowledged. Maybe, just maybe, the summer will diminish the spread of COVID-19. But a new study, by Juni, an epidemiologist, and his colleagues in Canada and Switzerland, offers very little encouragement for warm-weather worshippers. In countries around the world, his research found, variations in heat and humidity had little to no effect on the spread of the pandemic. Differences in how the disease spread were instead strongly associated with public health measures like social distancing and school closures. Several other studies have found or projected modest effects of warmer climates or the increase of sunlight in diminishing the spread of the coronavirus, but all have emphasized the need for public health interventions. One reason is that most of the world’s population has no immunity to the virus. “This means the virus doesn’t need favorable conditions” to spread, Juni said. He and his colleagues did a forward-looking study in which they picked 144 countries or “geopolitical areas” around the world and established the conditions that prevailed from March 7-13 in terms of temperature, humidity and public health measures. Then they followed those countries and how cases of COVID-19 grew during the subsequent period of March 21-27, after a 14-day incubation period for infections during the earlier period to cause disease. The regions varied from Canada to the tropics, but no effect for temperature was found. Humidity had a very weak connection to diminished spread, they found. But by far the most important in associations with a diminished spread of the disease were school closings, social distancing and restrictions on large gatherings. “In our study,” the researchers wrote, “only public health interventions were consistently associated with reduced epidemic growth, and the greater the number of co-occurring public health interventions, the larger the reduction in growth.” The study was published Thursday in the Canadian Medical Association Journal. Other studies have reported mixed results on the effect of the weather and sunlight. One from researchers at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology found that humidity seemed to slow the spread of the virus. Qasim Bukhari, one of the authors of that study, said the new report was interesting although limited by the short time span it covered. He said he and his colleagues “also stressed in our work that public health interventions are very important.” Mark Urban, an ecologist at the University of Connecticut, found summer weather, including ultraviolet light, had some effect on the virus and its spread but said “social interventions have by far the most important effect.” And a short report from the National Academies of Sciences, Engineering and Medicine concluded that summer was not likely to slow the virus significantly. All of the studies acknowledge uncertainty and limitations in their findings. And none diminish the primacy of public health measures. Juni said that given the effectiveness of social restrictions, school-opening strategies should be very carefully planned and tested. “We can’t have schools closed for more than a year and a half,” he said, but it is not yet known how best to reopen schools and what policies should be followed. Mistakes could mean that openings backfire, with devastating consequence for spread of the disease. -James Gorman, The New York Times-
Gold's Gym on Tuesday announced that it has filed for Chapter 11 bankruptcy protection due to the novel coronavirus pandemic, but its president and chief executive Adam Zeitsiff assured that they are "not going anywhere." In a video message, Zeitsiff maintained that Gold's Gym "is not going out of business." "The COVID-19 global pandemic has affected Gold's Gym deeply and in many ways," he admitted. "Our focus from the beginning of this crisis has been on the health and safety of our members, our team members, and the communities we serve." Gold's Gym closed 30 company-owned gyms last month, in an effort to "maintain the strength and growth of the potential of the brand as well as ensure the continued viability of the company for decades to come." "While the COVID-19 pandemic certainly impacted our company-owned gym operations, we expect the filing will have no further impact on current operations," the company said. The company further assured that they will continue to support its system of nearly 700 gyms around the world. There are 26 Gold's Gym branches in the Philippines, all of which have been closed since the enhanced community quarantine was implemented in March. "This pre-negotiated filing will enable us to emerge stronger and ready to grow, and it is our intent to be on the other side of Chapter 11 by August 1, if not sooner," the company said. Gold's Gym was founded in 1965 by bodybuilder Joe Gold in Venice Beach, California. news.abs-cbn.com
Four seconds of high-intensity exertion repeated periodically throughout the day may counteract some of the unhealthy metabolic consequences of sitting for hours, according to a surprising and timely new study of the potentially large benefits of diminutive workouts. The study relied on a specialized type of stationary bicycle that few of us will have available at home, but its implications remain broadly applicable and suggest that even a few minutes — or seconds — of exercise each day could help substantially to bolster our health. For most of us, sitting is our default posture and was, even before the shelter-at-home edicts took effect across the globe. Epidemiological studies indicate that most American adults sit for a least 10 hours a day, a total that is likely to have risen now that many of us are home all day. The health effects of this inactivity can be considerable, with studies linking prolonged sitting to increased risks for heart disease, Type 2 diabetes and other metabolic disruptions. In particular, multiple hours of sitting can contribute to a later rise in the bloodstream of fatty acids, known as triglycerides, probably in part because muscles at rest produce less than contracting muscles do of a substance that breaks up triglycerides. High levels of triglycerides, in turn, are linked to an increased risk of heart disease and other metabolic problems. In theory, exercise should help fight this problem, since it entails muscular contractions. But some experiments hint that one workout may not be enough. In studies conducted at the University of Texas at Austin in recent years, healthy young people who sat all day for the sake of science showed higher-than-normal levels of triglycerides in their blood the next day after a fatty meal. The sitting had left their metabolisms less able to break up and clear away the fat. Even when the young people interrupted another full day of sitting with a 1-hour run, they continued to experience difficulties with fat metabolism the next day. The researchers speculated that the long hours of sitting may have changed the volunteers’ physiologies in ways that rendered them “resistant” to the expected, beneficial metabolic effects of physical activity. Those studies had deployed a single moderately paced workout, however. Recently, the researchers began to wonder whether more-frequent, brief spurts of exercise throughout the day, especially if they were intense, may better stave off the undesirable effects of sitting. So, for the new study, published in April in Medicine & Science in Sports & Exercise, the Texas scientists recruited eight healthy young people and asked them to spend a full day at the lab, rising only to eat or visit the bathroom. The next morning, the volunteers returned or a high-fat breakfast of melted ice cream and half and half, while the scientists monitored their bodies’ metabolic response during the next 6 hours. Then, on a separate day, the volunteers sat again, except for a few seconds each hour, when they sprinted. These sprints took place on an unusual type of stationary bicycle with a heavy flywheel and no resistance that has been used at the physiology lab to test the leg and lung power of professional athletes. In those tests, athletes generated a tsunami of power and achieved all-out exertion within about two seconds of pedaling. The scientists reasoned that if athletes needed two seconds of pedaling to reach maximum exertion, the rest of us probably would require, say, twice as much. So, they asked their volunteers to clamber on the bikes and sprint as hard as possible for four seconds, then stop pedaling, rest for 45 seconds, and sprint again, repeating that sequence 5 times. The volunteers completed these brief interval sessions once every hour for 8 hours, for a total of 160 seconds of actual exercise that day. Otherwise they sat, then returned the next day to down the unctuous breakfast shake. Their metabolic responses differed this time, though, the researchers found. The volunteers arrived at the lab with lower blood levels of triglycerides to start with and burned more fat during the next 6 hours, so their triglycerides remained about 30 percent lower throughout the 6 hours of monitoring than on the morning after nonstop sitting. The results suggest that frequent, intense and extremely abbreviated exercise “can undo” some effects of being sedentary, said Ed Coyle, a professor of kinesiology and health education at the University of Texas, who conducted the study with his graduate student Anthony Wolfe and others. (Coyle has equity in the company that manufactures the bicycles at his lab but said his stake did not influence the design of the study or reporting of results.) This was a small, short-term study, and its results are limited. They do not tell us if the desirable metabolic outcomes after sprinting linger past the next day or whether 4-second intervals represent the right dose of exercise or merely the teensiest. The study also relied on an uncommon type of bicycle. Standard stationary bicycles or spin-class versions would likely require us to sprint for more than four seconds to reach an all-out exertion level, Coyle said. So would racing up and down stairs or jogging in place. But the underlying theory of the study remains achievable, he adds. When you find yourself sitting for most of the day, try to rise frequently and move, preferably intensely, as often as possible and for as many seconds as you can manage. 2020 The New York Times Company
The United States Treasury said Monday it will to borrow a record $2.999 trillion in the April-June period largely to finance spending on relief programs amid the coronavirus pandemic. That amount for the second quarter is five times the most spent in any three month period and far outstrips total debt issued in most years. In the 2019 fiscal year, the government issued just $1.28 trillion in debt, a Treasury official told reporters. The increase is "primarily driven by the impact of the COVID-19 outbreak, including expenditures from new legislation to assist individuals and businesses" and deferred taxes, Treasury said in a statement. Congress rushed out nearly $3 trillion in aid for individuals and businesses as the pandemic forced much of the economy to shut down, including increased unemployment payments and loans to small businesses and major industries to try to keep them afloat and paying their workers. In addition, the annual rite of paying income taxes by April 15 was pushed back three months. The Treasury official said the borrowing assumptions "include only legislation that has been passed to date" and could be adjusted or shifted into later months depending on how quickly the funds are pushed out. For the July-September quarter, Treasury currently estimates the need to borrow $677 billion. Despite the massive amount, the US government should not have any problems finding buyers for the debt, which is seen as a solid investment for domestic and foreign investors alike. Agence France-Presse
The coronavirus has killed so many people in Iran that the country has resorted to mass burials, but in neighboring Iraq, the body count is fewer than 100. The Dominican Republic has reported nearly 7,600 cases of the virus. Just across the border, Haiti has recorded about 85. In Indonesia, thousands are believed to have died of the coronavirus. In nearby Malaysia, a strict lockdown has kept fatalities to about 100. The coronavirus has touched almost every country on earth, but its impact has seemed capricious. Global metropolises like New York, Paris and London have been devastated, while teeming cities like Bangkok, Baghdad, New Delhi and Lagos have, so far, largely been spared. The question of why the virus has overwhelmed some places and left others relatively untouched is a puzzle that has spawned numerous theories and speculations but no definitive answers. That knowledge could have profound implications for how countries respond to the virus, for determining who is at risk and for knowing when it’s safe to go out again. There are already hundreds of studies underway around the world looking into how demographics, preexisting conditions and genetics might affect the wide variation in impact. Many developing nations with hot climates and young populations have escaped the worst, suggesting that temperature and demographics could be factors. But countries like Peru, Indonesia and Brazil, tropical countries in the throes of growing epidemics, throw cold water on that idea. Draconian social distancing and early lockdown measures have clearly been effective, but Myanmar and Cambodia did neither and have reported few cases. One theory that is unproven but impossible to refute: Maybe the virus just hasn’t gotten to those countries yet. Russia and Turkey appeared to be fine until, suddenly, they were not. “We are really early in this disease,” said Dr. Ashish Jha, director of the Harvard Global Health Research Institute. “If this were a baseball game, it would be the second inning, and there’s no reason to think that by the ninth inning the rest of the world that looks now like it hasn’t been affected won’t become like other places.” Interviews with more than two dozen infectious disease experts, health officials, epidemiologists and academics around the globe suggest four main factors that could help explain where the virus thrives and where it doesn’t: demographics, culture, environment and the speed of government responses. Each possible explanation comes with considerable caveats and confounding counter-evidence. If an aging population is the most vulnerable, for instance, Japan should be at the top of the list. It is far from it. Nonetheless, these are the factors that experts find the most persuasive. THE POWER OF YOUTH Many countries that have escaped mass epidemics have relatively younger populations. Young people are more likely to contract mild or asymptomatic cases that are less transmissible to others, said Robert Bollinger, a professor of infectious diseases at the Johns Hopkins School of Medicine. And they are less likely to have certain health problems that can make COVID-19, the disease caused by the coronavirus, particularly deadly, according to the World Health Organization. Africa — with about 45,000 reported cases, a tiny fraction of its 1.3 billion people — is the world’s youngest continent, with more than 60 percent of its population under age 25. In Thailand and Najaf, Iraq, local health officials found that the 20-to-29 age group had the highest rate of infection but often showed few symptoms. By contrast, the national median age in Italy, one of the hardest-hit countries, is more than 45. The average age of those who died of COVID-19 there was around 80. Younger people tend to have stronger immune systems, which can result in milder symptoms, said Josip Car, an expert in population and global health at Nanyang Technological University in Singapore. CULTURAL DISTANCE Cultural factors, like the social distancing that is built into certain societies, may give some countries more protection, epidemiologists said. In Thailand and India, where virus numbers are relatively low, people greet each other at a distance, with palms joined together as in prayer. In Japan and South Korea, people bow, and long before the coronavirus arrived, they tended to wear face masks when feeling unwell. In much of the developing world, the custom of caring for the elderly at home leads to fewer nursing homes, which have been tinder for tragic outbreaks in the West. However, there are notable exceptions to the cultural-distancing theory. In many parts of the Middle East, such as Iraq and the Persian Gulf countries, men often embrace or shake hands on meeting, yet most are not getting sick. HEAT AND LIGHT The geography of the outbreak — which spread rapidly during the winter in temperate-zone countries like Italy and the United States and was virtually unseen in warmer countries such as Chad or Guyana — seemed to suggest that the virus did not take well to heat. Other coronaviruses, such as ones that cause the common cold, are less contagious in warmer, moist climates. But researchers say the idea that hot weather alone can repel the virus is wishful thinking. Some of the worst outbreaks in the developing world have been in places like the Amazonas region of Brazil, as tropical a place as any. “The best guess is that summer conditions will help but are unlikely by themselves to lead to significant slowing of growth or to a decline in cases,” said Marc Lipsitch, director of the Center for Communicable Disease Dynamics at Harvard University. The virus that causes COVID-19 appears to be so contagious as to mitigate any beneficial effect of heat and humidity, said Dr. Raul Rabadan, a computational biologist at Columbia University. But other aspects of warm climates, like people spending more time outside, could help. “People living indoors within enclosed environments may promote virus recirculation, increasing the chance of contracting the disease,” said Car of Nanyang Technological University. The ultraviolet rays of direct sunlight inhibit this coronavirus, according to a study by ecological modelers at the University of Connecticut. So surfaces in sunny places may be less likely to remain contaminated, but transmission usually occurs through contact with an infected person, not by touching a surface. EARLY AND STRICT LOCKDOWNS Countries that locked down early, like Vietnam and Greece, have been able to avoid out-of-control contagions, evidence of the power of strict social distancing and quarantines to contain the virus. In Africa, countries with bitter experience with killers like HIV, drug-resistant tuberculosis and Ebola knew the drill and reacted quickly. Airport staff from Sierra Leone to Uganda were taking temperatures (since found to be a less effective measure) and contact details and wearing masks long before their counterparts in the United States and Europe took such precautions. Senegal and Rwanda closed their borders and announced curfews when they still had very few cases. Health ministries began contact tracing early. Counterintuitively, some countries where authorities reacted late and with spotty enforcement of lockdowns appear to have been spared. Cambodia and Laos both had brief spates of infections when few social distancing measures were in place, but neither has recorded a new case in about three weeks. ROLL OF THE DICE Finally, most experts agree that there may be no single reason for some countries to be hit and others missed. The answer is likely to be some combination of the above factors as well as one other mentioned by researchers: sheer luck. Countries with the same culture and climate could have vastly different outcomes if one infected person attends a crowded social occasion, turning it into what researchers call a superspreader event. And when countries do all the wrong things and still end up seemingly not as battered by the virus as one would expect, go figure. “In Indonesia, we have a health minister who believes you can pray away COVID, and we have too little testing,” said Dr. Pandu Riono, an infectious disease specialist at the University of Indonesia. “But we are lucky we have so many islands in our country that limit travel and maybe infection. “There’s nothing else we’re doing right,” he added.
MOSCOW - Russia on Sunday recorded its highest daily rise in confirmed coronavirus cases with 10,633 new cases, bringing the total to 134,687, with more than half of cases and deaths in Moscow. But the mortality rate has slowed in recent days and remains much lower, in relative terms, than many other countries. Russia has said its lower mortality rate was because the Russian outbreak occurred later than in many other countries which gave the authorities more time to prepare. Russia's nationwide death toll rose to 1,280 on Sunday after 58 people died in the last 24 hours, Russia's coronavirus crisis response center said on its website. Russia has been in partial lockdown since the end of March to curb the spread of the virus. People in Moscow can leave home to visit the nearest food shop or chemist, walk their dog or throw out rubbish but need special passes for other activities. President Vladimir Putin has ordered the nationwide lockdown to remain in place until May 11 inclusive, when Russia finishes celebrating its Labour Day and World War Two Victory Day holidays. Moscow Mayor Sergei Sobyanin urged residents on Saturday to continue to strictly self-isolate over the long holidays. Sobyanin said there had been progress in expanding testing, allowing the authorities to treat those in need more quickly. But he said the number of critically ill patients was rising, albeit not as steeply as worst-case scenario projections. He said he thought 2% of Moscow, with a population of 12.7 million, had been infected, a much higher figure than official statistics show. "It is obvious that the threat is growing," he said on his website. He told Rossiya-1 TV station that the Moscow authorities might cut the number of digital permits issued for travel across the city if the situation worsened. Prime Minister Mikhail Mishustin, Russia's second-most senior official after Putin, told the president on Thursday he had tested positive for coronavirus and was temporarily stepping down to recover. First Deputy Prime Minister Andrei Belousov is now serving as acting prime minister in his absence. On Friday, another Russian cabinet member, Construction Minister Vladimir Yakushev, announced he had been diagnosed with the virus and would be treated in hospital. Dmitry Volkov, one of his deputies, also tested positive, the ministry said. (Additional reporting by Gleb Stoyarov; Editing by Edmund Blair) -reuters-
A man, wearing a face mask, walks his dog in Madrid, Spain on Saturday, during the hours allowed by the government to exercise, for the first time since the beginning of a national lockdown to prevent the spread of COVID-19. After allowing children under 14 to go out since April 26, the government has again eased the conditions of the confinement imposed on March 14, which was one of the strictest in the world. AFP
Protesters rally against Illinois stay-at-home order outside the Thompson Center in downtown Chicago, Friday. The Friday demonstration is the latest in a series of protests around the country against stay-at-home orders designed to slow the spread of the coronavirus. news.abs-cbn.com
Health workers wearing protective face masks react after the last patients were discharged from a temporary hospital set up at IFEMA fairgrounds, before it's closure, amid the coronavirus disease (COVID-19) outbreak in Madrid, Spain on Friday. Spain, which reported 213,425 COVID-19 cases, recorded its lowest number of fatalities on May 1 at 268 since March 20 according to the country’s health ministry. -reuters-
JAKARTA - Burials in Jakarta remained close to record highs in April, official data showed on Friday, indicating there may have been many more deaths from COVID-19 in the city than have been officially recorded. The 4,377 burials, combined with 4,422 burials in March, indicate that 2,500 more people have died in the city in the past two months than the average for the period. The burials data, from the website of the city's parks and cemeteries department, does not identify the cause of death. Jakarta is the epicenter of the coronavirus outbreak in the world's fourth most populous country. According to the central government, there had been 375 COVID-19 deaths in the capital as of Saturday. Overall, Indonesia has had 800 deaths from the disease, Health Ministry official Achmad Yurianto said on Friday. Asked about the Jakarta burial figures, Yurianto told Reuters that official figures for coronavirus deaths included only those who died after testing positive for the disease. Some people who died with COVID-19 symptoms were not tested at all, while others had their samples collected "incorrectly", Yurianto said. He did not elaborate on what the incorrect samples meant. The March burial figure for Jakarta was the highest since such data began being collected a decade ago, nearly one third higher than any month in that period. City Governor Anies Baswedan told Reuters at the time: "I'm struggling to find another reason than unreported COVID-19 deaths." Baswedan could not be immediately reached for comment on Friday. The April burials figure fell only slightly although many people left the city for their home villages in the first three weeks of the month. A spokesman for the Jakarta provincial government declined to answer questions about the burials data and the number of people who had left the city. "We don't have daily data to get a precise trend. However, deducting for out-migration, it's not slowing down yet," said one Jakarta-based epidemiologist, who asked not to be identified. Authorities introduced a soft lockdown on Jakarta in March, closing schools and some businesses. On April 24 travel out of the city was strictly banned in an effort to stop more people leaving for the annual post-Ramadan exodus from Greater Jakarta. Indonesia has had 10,551 confirmed cases of the illness, the Health Ministry's Yurianto said on Friday. A Reuters review of data from 16 of Indonesia's 34 provinces showed this week that more than 2,200 people have died with acute symptoms of COVID-19 but were not recorded as victims of the disease. -reuters-
GENEVA, Switzerland - The World Health Organization said Friday it hoped China would invite it to take part in its investigations into the animal origins of the novel coronavirus. "WHO would be keen to work with international partners and at the invitation of the Chinese government to participate in investigation around the animal origins," WHO spokesman Tarik Jasarevic told AFP in an email. He said the UN health agency understood there were a number of investigations underway in China "to better understand the source of the outbreak", but added that "WHO is not currently involved in the studies in China." Scientists believe the killer virus jumped from animals to humans, emerging in China late last year, possibly from a market in Wuhan selling exotic animals for meat. But US President Donald Trump has fuelled speculation and rumors -- generally rejected by experts -- that the virus may have emerged in a top-secret Chinese lab. WHO has also faced scathing criticism from Trump, who earlier this month suspended Washington's funding after accusing the WHO of downplaying the seriousness of the outbreak and of kowtowing to China. The UN health agency chief Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus did travel with a team to China in late January, where he met with Chinese President Xi Jinping to learn more about the response. This paved the way, Tedros explained earlier this week, for an international team of scientists to travel there in February to investigate the situation, including experts from China, Germany, Japan, the Republic of Korea, Nigeria, the Russian Federation, Singapore and the United States of America. But as investigations into the origins of the virus have picked up pace in China, the WHO has not been involved. The ongoing investigations are believed to be looking at "human cases with symptom onset in and around Wuhan in late 2019, environmental sampling from markets and farms in areas where the first human cases were identified, and detailed records on the source and type of wildlife species and farmed animals sold in these markets," Jasarevic said. He stressed that the results from the virus origin studies were "essential to preventing further zoonotic introductions of the virus that causes COVID-19 into the human population." "WHO continues to collaborate with animal health and human health experts, countries and other partners to identify gaps and research priorities for the control of COVID-19, including the eventual identification of the source of the virus in China," he said. Agence France-Presse
Moderna Inc and Swiss contract drugmaker Lonza Group AG said Friday they would accelerate the manufacturing of the US drug developer's potential coronavirus vaccine. The announcement comes at a time when drugmakers are pausing clinical trials for other disease areas as they focus on testing potential treatments for the coronavirus. The experimental vaccine, mRNA-1273, is being tested in early-stage trial by the US National Institutes of Health, with Moderna expecting to begin mid-stage trial in the second quarter. Under the 10-year collaboration agreement, the companies aim to manufacture up to a billion doses per year as technology transfer is expected to begin in June, and the first batches of the vaccine are expected to be manufactured in Lonza US in July. "Over time, the parties intend to establish additional production suites across Lonza's worldwide facilities, ultimately allowing for the manufacture of material equivalent to up to 1 billion doses of mRNA-1273 per year for use worldwide," the statement added. The disease, which infected more than 3.2 million people worldwide and killed around 232,000, set off a race among drugmakers to find an antidote. Earlier this month, Moderna got a $483 million funding from a US government agency to accelerate its COVID-19 vaccine development. Separately, Basel-based Lonza's pharmaceuticals, biotech and nutrition business has received more than 40 inquiries regarding projects relating to COVID-19, the company said earlier in April. -reuters-
WASHINGTON -- IMF chief Kristalina Georgieva on Thursday lauded Japan's plans to spend about 20 percent of its gross domestic product to respond to the economic challenges of the coronavirus pandemic and help the world's poorest countries, urging others to do their part. Japan, the world's third largest economy behind the United States and China, was the largest contributor to IMF financial resources and the largest contributor to the fund’s concessional lending facilities, Georgieva said in a statement. "While it has the clear intention to support the Japanese economy, Japan will also underpin the stability of the global economy through contributions to the International Monetary Fund’s resources for the provision of debt relief and concessional financing to low-income countries," she said. The IMF this month forecast the global economy will contract by 3 percent due to the pandemic, in what would be the worst economic downturn since the Great Depression of the 1930s. IMF and World Bank officials have repeatedly warned that the world's poorest countries will be particularly hard hit by the pandemic because they lack the resources and infrastructure to respond to the resulting health and economic challenges. "It is therefore crucial that the membership work together to support our poorest and most vulnerable members in this difficult period," Georgieva said in the statement. She said Japan had provided close to 9 billion in Special Drawing Rights (SDR), the IMF's currency, to date to the Poverty Reduction and Growth Trust, which amounted to 23 percent of all PRGT loans, and over SDR 900 million in subsidy grant resources. "I urge other member countries to contribute to both the (Catastrophe Containment and Relief Trust) and PRGT. By working together, we can overcome the global challenge facing us and help restore growth and prosperity,” she said. Funded by grants from members, the CCRT has already provided grants to 29 countries to cover their debt service payments to the IMF for an initial six-month period, according to the IMF. Members can also provide grants and loans to the PRGT, which supports low-income countries. Washington has been noticeably absent from the relief drive. US Treasury Secretary Steven Mnuchin this month told the IMF's steering committee that Washington was exploring contributions to both facilities, but gave no details on the amount or timing of such a contribution. Also contributing to the CCRT are Britain, Germany, the Netherlands, Singapore and China, while Japan, France, Britain, Canada and Australia have all pledged contributions to the PRGT. Japan this month said it aimed to double its contribution to the PRGT from the current SDR 3.6 billion, saying it would make the first SDR 1.8 billion available immediately, with the rest to follow as other member countries upped their contributions. -reuters-
LONDON - British pharmaceuticals group AstraZeneca has partnered with the University of Oxford to develop and distribute a coronavirus vaccine being trialed in the UK, the pair announced Thursday. Human trials of the vaccine developed by the university's Jenner Institute began last week, with hundreds of people volunteering to be part of the study that has received £20 million ($24.7 million, 22.6 million euros) in government funding. "The collaboration aims to bring to patients the potential vaccine known as ChAdOx1 nCoV-19, being developed by the Jenner Institute and Oxford Vaccine Group, at the University of Oxford," said a joint statement. "Under the agreement, AstraZeneca would be responsible for development and worldwide manufacturing and distribution of the vaccine." Data from the first phase trial could be available next month, the statement said. "Advancement to late-stage trials should take place by the middle of this year," it added. The news comes after US scientists hailed the results of a major drug trial. People treated with Remdesivir recovered about 30 percent faster than those on a placebo. Agence France-Presse
AGARTALA, India - An Indian school drop-out has built a motorbike with a 1-meter gap between the rider and the passenger to drive home the importance of social distancing in the coronavirus pandemic. Partha Saha, 39, bought an old bike from a scrap dealer, removed the engine and cut the machine in two before affixing a rod slightly longer than a meter (3.2 feet) to connect the wheels. "Now I can ride with my eight-year-old daughter while maintaining a safe distance," he told AFP from Agartala in the northeastern state of Tripura. Like other countries, the Indian government has imposed a nationwide lockdown and urged citizens to practice social distancing to curb the spread of the virus. As of Thursday, India had reported 33,050 cases of COVID-19, with 1,074 deaths. When the nation extended its lockdown this month until at least May 3, Saha realized the battle against the virus might not be over any time soon. He used up his meager savings to make the vehicle, which he plans to use to ferry his daughter to and from school once the restrictions are lifted. "I didn't want her to take the school bus as it would be crowded," said Saha, who works in a TV repair shop. His new bike runs on battery power and has a top speed of 40 kilometers per hour. It takes three hours to charge the battery, which allows the bike to travel 80 kilometers, Saha said. "The cost of charging it once comes to about 10 rupees (about Php 6.7)," he added. The mechanic has already tried out his invention on the streets, leaving onlookers stunned at the design and drawing praise from Biplab Kumar Deb, Tripura's chief minister. "Necessity is the mother of invention! I congratulate Partha Saha... for making a unique motorcycle to create awareness during COVID-19 pandemic," Deb tweeted. Agence France-Presse
A new test for the coronavirus is so simple and straightforward, almost anyone could do it: Spit a glob of saliva into a cup, close the lid and hand it over. While not as fast to process as the speediest swab tests, saliva tests could transform the diagnosis of COVID-19. If manufactured in enough numbers and processed by enough labs across the country, they could alleviate the diagnostic shortages that have hampered containment of the pandemic and offer a less onerous way for companies to see if workers are infected. The first saliva-based test, already being offered in parts of New Jersey, detects genetic material from the virus, just as the existing tests do, but it avoids a long swab that reaches disturbingly far up a person’s nose. For the saliva-based test, health care workers do not need to wear and discard precious gowns and masks. And early evidence suggests it is just as sensitive, if not more so, than the swabs. Because the saliva test relies on equipment that is widely available, it also offers the hope of a nationwide rollout without encountering the supply problems that have plagued the swabs. Starting about 2 weeks ago, New Jersey has offered the saliva test at a walk-up site in New Brunswick; drive-thru sites in Somerset and Edison; the state’s Department of Corrections; 30 long-term care facilities; and even the American Dream mall. Experts not involved with the test praised it as a welcome solution to diagnostic shortages across the country. “If people are going back to work, and they’re going to be tested presumably on a regular basis, we really do need to have less invasive sampling methods than the swabs,” said Angela Rasmussen, a virologist at Columbia University. “To have to do nasopharyngeal swabs twice a week? No, thanks.” The next step would be an at-home saliva test kit that skirts even the need to go to a walk-in center, said Dr. Amesh Adalja, a senior scholar at the Johns Hopkins University Center for Health Security. Adalja noted that LabCorp, one of the nation’s largest commercial laboratories, now offers an at-home test that people can use to swab their own nose. “If we can do nasal swabs unsupervised, there’s no reason why we can’t do these tests unsupervised as well,” he said. On April 13, the Food and Drug Administration granted an emergency-use authorization, waiving some usual requirements, to a saliva test made by a Rutgers University lab, RUCDR Infinite Biologics. The Rutgers lab has already processed close to 90,000 tests, according to its chief executive, Andrew Brooks, and expects to ramp up eventually to 30,000 tests per day. Results are available within 72 hours, although they could be sped up to just a few hours with enough infrastructure in place. By contrast, some rapid tests that rely on swabs deliver results in minutes. Other states are expressing interest. Working with Rutgers, Oklahoma has begun validating a version of the test, and the Rutgers researchers have fielded questions from the White House’s coronavirus task force, Indiana, Illinois, California and several large companies. In New Jersey, the test is available for between $65 and $100. After a disastrously slow start, the United States is starting to see an increase in testing types and capacity. The National Institutes of Health on Wednesday announced a new $1.5 billion “shark tank” style program aimed at encouraging swift innovation in coronavirus testing, with a goal of new tests by the end of summer. Also Wednesday, testing manufacturer Hologic said that it had a new test that could allow labs to begin running up to 1 million additional tests per week. The nasopharyngeal swabs that have mostly been used to test for the coronavirus are invasive and uncomfortable and may be difficult for severely ill people to tolerate. They also put health care workers at high risk of infection and require them to wear gloves, gowns and masks. The saliva test, by contrast, doesn’t require any interaction with a health care worker. And it’s easy enough that New Jersey has also started using it at developmental centers with residents who have intellectual and developmental disabilities. The saliva is immersed in a liquid that preserves it until it can be analyzed. This will be particularly important for developing tests that people can use at home and mail or drop off at a lab, or when dealing with large numbers of samples. The Rutgers test was validated in people who were severely ill, but the saliva test often yielded a stronger signal than the swab, suggesting that it is more sensitive — yielding fewer false negatives — than the swab. It also generated no false positives in all of the samples tested. False negatives in particular have been a problem with the nasopharyngeal swabs. (A different type of test for antibodies, which can say whether a person was exposed to the virus and has recovered, is riddled with false positives.) In separate research, a Yale University team reported that saliva may be able to detect the virus in people who are only mildly ill, while a nasopharyngeal swab cannot. In their study, the team compared swabs and saliva samples from patients. They needed only a few drops of saliva for their test, an advantage for people who may have trouble producing more. Thinking about a favorite meal can often do the trick, said Anne Wyllie, the Yale team’s leader. The swabs are known to produce false negatives — perhaps in part because of errors by health care workers under stress. The saliva test appeared to be more consistent and accurate over a longer period of time, detecting infections even after the amounts of the virus have waned, than the swab. “The nasopharyngeal swab is subject to so much more variability in how well it’s obtained,” Wyllie said. A saliva test is “definitely more reliable.” In one case, the team found a health care worker who twice tested negative using a nasopharyngeal swab before finally testing positive on a third day. But the worker’s saliva tested positive all three days, Wyllie said. She underlined the risks of asymptomatic health care workers getting a false negative and continuing to care for patients. “You can imagine the implications,” she said. While the Yale team did not compare saliva tests with the shorter swabs used in some tests, Wyllie said she expected that saliva tests would prove superior there as well. Most people with COVID-19 do not have runny noses, which might influence how much virus a short swab can collect, she said. Saliva tests would also be a preferred choice for at-home tests, Adalja added. A saliva test for HIV is the only at-home test approved for an infectious disease, he said, but before the pandemic, the federal Biomedical Advanced Research and Development Authority had funded two companies to develop at-home nasal swab tests for influenza. “It’s not a high bar to repurpose home testing for the coronavirus,” he said. “It’s not something that’s out of reach.” The New York Times
LONDON - Royal Dutch Shell cut its dividend for the first time in 80 years and suspended the next tranche of its share buyback program on Thursday following the collapse in global oil demand due to the coronavirus pandemic. "Given the continued deterioration in the macroeconomic outlook and the significant mid and long-term uncertainty, we are taking further prudent steps to bolster our resilience, underpin the strength of our balance sheet and support the long-term value creation of Shell," Chief Executive Ben van Beurden said in a statement. Starting in the first quarter, Shell will reduce its quarterly dividend to 16 cents per share from 47 cents in the previous quarter. For decades, Shell has taken pride in having never cut its dividend since the Second World War, resisting such a move even during the deep downturns of the 1980s. Shell's first-quarter net income attributable to shareholders based on a current cost of supplies (CCS) and excluding identified items, fell 46 percent from a year earlier to $2.9 billion, above the consensus in an analyst survey provided by the company. Shell's fourth-quarter net income was also $2.9 billion. The company said it cut activity at its refining business by up to 40 percent in response to the demand shock. -reuters-
SAN FRANCISCO — As people turned in droves to video chatting app Zoom in recent weeks, the buzz caught Facebook’s attention. Inside the social network, that immediately set off a scramble. Mark Zuckerberg, Facebook’s chief executive, ordered employees to ramp up and focus on the company’s own video chat projects, especially as use of its products also increased, said three people with knowledge of the plans, who declined to be identified because the details are confidential. On Facebook’s internal message boards, employees openly gawked at public data showing Zoom’s growing popularity, they said. On Friday, Facebook unveiled one of its biggest expansions into videoconferencing with several new video chat features and services. They included video group chats for as many as 50 people on Facebook Messenger, WhatsApp video calls for up to eight people, and video calls in Facebook Dating. Zuckerberg is not the only tech titan with Zoom on his mind. Google this month made its video chat app, Meet, more accessible through Gmail. Cisco recently promoted its Webex teleconferencing service as highly secure compared with Zoom. And Verizon announced last week that it was acquiring BlueJeans Network, a videoconferencing service. Tech and telecommunications giants are mobilizing against Zoom as the Silicon Valley company has become one of the biggest tech beneficiaries of the coronavirus outbreak. Over the past month, downloads of Zoom have increased 740 percent, according to App Annie, an analytics firm. Zoom has said it now has more than 300 million daily participants, up from 10 million before the pandemic. Facebook, Google and others want a piece of that success. Behind the scenes, people with knowledge of the companies said, employees are sore that they have not grabbed more of the same buzz as Zoom, especially because many of the giants have offered their own video chat software — like Google Meet — for years. In targeting Zoom, the tech behemoths are following a playbook of deploying their vast resources to outmuscle a smaller, fast-rising competitor. Last year, Facebook and Google trained their sights on TikTok, the Chinese-made video app, which had become a hit with young audiences. Often, the largest companies have opened up their wallets and snapped up tiny rivals to eliminate them as competition. In an interview, Zuckerberg chafed at comparisons to Zoom and said video chat was just beginning to be a larger phenomenon as people aimed to digitally connect in more intimate ways. “The world was already trending in this direction before COVID-19,” Zuckerberg said while using the new Facebook Messenger video product. “This is the trend in general — the ability to feel more present, even when you’re not physically together.” Zoom’s chief executive, Eric Yuan, said in an interview this month that his company was not thinking about competition and was focused on users and their experience during a “once in a probably 100 years crisis.” Zoom, founded in 2011 by Yuan, a former Cisco executive, was designed to be easy to use and install. Unlike other video chat products, the app also has a popular grid view that lets people see everyone on a call at once, creating a more social atmosphere. The company, based in San Jose, California, went public last year. When the spread of COVID-19 turbocharged the video chat phenomenon, Zoom emerged as a clear front-runner, owing largely to word-of-mouth about its ease and simplicity. It has been the most downloaded app in Apple’s App Store for more than a month. The company is valued at around $47 billion, more than Slack and Pinterest. But its success has been bumpy, with scrutiny falling on Zoom’s lack of security and privacy practices. Zoombombing — intentionally disrupting other people’s Zoom sessions with pornography or other forms of digital harassment — has grown so pervasive that the term has become a part of mainstream discourse. Bigger tech and telecom companies are racing to catch up, even though they were earlier to roll out videoconferencing services. Cisco acquired Webex in 2007 for $3.2 billion. Facebook has long hyped its own video chat offerings. Microsoft bought internet calling service Skype in 2011 for $8.5 billion. This month, Google said it would plug Meet directly into Gmail so users could take video calls inside their email browser window. Google is also mimicking Zoom, releasing a grid-style view for Meet and adding features to improve video quality in low-light conditions. On Wednesday, Google added a noise-cancellation option for video calls and expanded the advanced features to all of its customers for free. Google said Meet use was up more than 25 times what it was in January, with more than 2 million new user sign-ups every day. After questions arose about Zoom’s privacy and security, competitors also rushed to assure customers that their offerings were safer. Javed Khan, a Cisco vice president, said that not only had use of Webex skyrocketed — at one point, the company added 240,000 new users in 24 hours — but so had its security business. “As the largest enterprise security company in the world, we’re helping our customers connect and collaborate, securely,” he said. When Verizon announced its purchase of BlueJeans on April 16, BlueJeans also emphasized security. “As this current work-from-home era has shown us, having secure, reliable and high-quality collaboration tools like BlueJeans is essential,” the company said in a blog post. Houseparty, a video chat app that Epic Games acquired last year, has been popular with younger audiences. In recent weeks, more than 50 million people have signed up for it, widening its audience to those who also use Zoom. To differentiate itself, Houseparty said it was emphasizing features like the ability to play games with other participants in the app. Few companies have been as attuned to Zoom’s rise as Facebook. Zuckerberg recently galvanized several Facebook teams to accelerate their video chat product releases, including a desktop app for Facebook Messenger — which has a video chat feature front and center — this month. More than 700 million people now make calls across Messenger and WhatsApp each day, Zuckerberg said, making it clear that other features needed to be built in as soon as possible. Those include Messenger Rooms, a way to quickly create video chat rooms using Facebook Messenger that can support dozens of people simultaneously. Facebook also integrated video chat into its Dating product and plans to bring the ability to create Rooms to WhatsApp, Instagram Direct and other services. Zuckerberg said Zoom felt more scheduled and a little less casual than Messenger Rooms. He said he wanted to make the video chat experience more serendipitous. “I don’t really think there’s anything today that you can display on an ad hoc basis that you’re hanging out and have whoever wants to join you over video,” he said. “Sometimes people compare what we do to other companies, like you did earlier with Zoom. I think the main thrust of how people are going to experience Rooms will be very different.” Facebook’s augmented and virtual reality division, which offers a video communications device called Portal, has also been working with Zoom since January on a partnership so people could make Zoom video calls on the gadget, according to three people with knowledge of the company’s plans. The companies had planned to release the product in May, these people said, but that was put on hold when Zoom recently decided to freeze all new feature development for 90 days to spend time beefing up its security practices. Facebook’s augmented and virtual reality division is also in discussions with other companies to expand video chat partnerships, two of the people said. Press officers for Facebook and Zoom declined to comment. Yet Zoom may already be too ingrained for Silicon Valley’s giants to dislodge. Late last month, Philipp Schindler, Google’s chief business officer, held a videoconference with thousands of the search giant’s employees using Google Meet, three people who attended the call said. During the session, one employee asked why Zoom was reaping the biggest benefits even though Google had long offered Meet. Schindler tried placating the engineer’s concerns, the people said. Then his young son stumbled into view of the camera and asked if his father was talking to his co-workers on Zoom. Schindler tried correcting him, but the boy went on to say how much he and his friends loved using Zoom. A Google spokesman declined to comment on the episode. 2020 The New York Times Company
