Australia set for 10th day of no local COVID-19 cases

SYDNEY - Australia is on track for a 10th day of no new local COVID-19 cases on Wednesday, allowing its most populous state of New South Wales (NSW) to relax coronavirus restrictions after controlling a fast-spreading cluster.

NSW has recorded no local cases for 10 days after low single digit numbers earlier in January. Victoria state, which is hosting the Australia Open tennis tournament, has gone three weeks without a local case.

Other states and territories which have mostly been COVID-free, some for months, will report daily case numbers later on Wednesday, but are expected to report zero local infections.

Australia's success in curbing small outbreaks, with a total 22,000 local cases since March 2020 and 909 deaths, comes at a time when global coronavirus cases are edging towards 100 million with the death toll surpassing 2 million.

NSW Premier Gladys Berejiklien announced coronavirus restrictions would be eased from Friday, including rules around mask wearing and allowing more people in house parties, weddings, funerals and places of worship.

The restrictions had kicked in late last year to successfully curb virus clusters in Sydney's northern beaches and western suburbs. The outbreaks saw other states and territories close borders or restrict travel from NSW.

Berejiklien hinted that restrictions would be eased further in two weeks if there were no further cases, adding she was "striking the right balance" between economic growth and virus control.

"They both go hand in hand, you can't have an open economy unless you make sure you get the health settings right," she said, while urging Sydneysiders to come out and get tested for COVID-19 even for the "mildest of symptoms".

Despite its relative success in handling the pandemic, Australia's international borders will likely remain shut to non-citizens this year although there may be exclusive travel arrangements called "bubbles" with its South Pacific neighbors.

Australia had a one-way "travel bubble" with New Zealand where those arriving from the latter didn't have to quarantine, but that arrangement was suspended for 72 hours on Monday after a highly infectious coronavirus strain was found in New Zealand.

New Zealand reported a third day of zero cases on Wednesday, allaying fears of a fresh outbreak.

-reuters-

Europe tightens coronavirus curbs as global cases top 40 million

A number of European countries took urgent new measures on Monday to combat a second wave of coronavirus infections, as the World Health Organization blamed the surge in worldwide cases -- now more than 40 million -- on countries' failure to quarantine infected people properly.

Ireland and Wales became the first countries on the continent to re-enter lockdown as the number of people who have died from Covid-19 in Europe passed 250,000, according to an AFP tally.

Irish prime minister Micheal Martin issued a nationwide "stay at home" order from midnight Wednesday, with all non-essential retail businesses to close and bars and restaurants limited to takeaway service only, although schools will remain open.

Wales also announced "firebreak" confinement measures for two weeks, ordering the territory's three million residents to stay at home except for very limited purposes such as exercise or work, and banning people from mixing indoors or outdoors.

WHO emergencies director Michael Ryan blamed soaring transmission rates in the northern hemisphere on a failure to enforce quarantines rigorously.

Speaking to a virtual press conference from the WHO's headquarters in Geneva, Ryan said the fact that self-isolation measures were not being enforced systematically was "a good part of the reason why we're seeing such high numbers". 

Many governments are seeking to avoid the costly full-scale lockdowns imposed in the first wave as they battle to keep their economies going.

But in some countries, people are chafing against new restrictions on daily life, and anti-mask protests, court challenges and battles between central and local governments are on the rise.

Belgium -- where hospitalisations rose 100 percent in just the last week -- closed bars and restaurants on Monday for a month and reinforced a curfew overnight.

Italy, the initial epicentre of Europe's outbreak, also announced fresh curbs including earlier closures for bars and restaurants and a push to increase working from home.

In Poland, where around half the country is now designated as a coronavirus "red zone", the government said the national stadium would double as a field hospital to help ease the strain on overwhelmed health facilities.

'Second wave is here'

Switzerland meanwhile made mask-wearing compulsory in indoor public spaces and limited public gatherings after infections doubled over the last week. 

"The second wave is here, earlier and stronger than we expected, but we are prepared," Swiss Health Minister Alain Berset said.

France imposed its own overnight curfew from the weekend in nine cities including Paris, affecting 20 million people, with a record 32,400 new infections reported on Saturday.

Slovenia followed suit, with its roughly two million inhabitants forced to stay home between 9:00 pm and 6:00 am from Tuesday and banned from non-essential travel.

While European nations imposed new restrictions, Australia's second-biggest city of Melbourne eased its lockdown on Monday, as residents flocked to reopened hair salons and golf courses that had been closed for more than 100 days.

Just four cases were recorded Monday in Victoria state, of which Melbourne is the capital.

Vaccine hopes

Iran, the Middle East country hardest hit by the pandemic, announced a daily record of 337 deaths from coronavirus.

By contrast, Israel lifted restrictions that banned people from travelling more than a kilometre from home and had closed kindergartens, beaches and national parks.

Saudi Arabia also eased more of its own virus restrictions when it allowed worshippers to re-enter the Grand Mosque in Mecca, Islam's holiest site, for prayers on Sunday for the first time since March.

Numerous political figures have contracted the virus in recent days, including veteran chief Palestinian negotiator Saeb Erekat, who is in a "critical" condition and in a medically induced coma, the Jerusalem hospital treating him said.

South Africa's Health Minister Zweli Mkhize said he tested positive for Covid-19 just two days after the country's diagnosed cases topped 700,000.

A vaccine remains the greatest hope to end the cycle of imposing and lifting lockdowns across the world, and the United Nations said Monday it would stockpile a billion syringes worldwide by the end of 2021 for that purpose.

"Vaccinating the world against Covid-19 will be one of the largest mass undertakings in human history," UNICEF executive director Henrietta Fore said.

In the US, President Donald Trump went after top government scientist Anthony Fauci, suggesting the hugely respected and popular doctor was an "idiot." 

Fauci, a key member of the White House coronavirus task force, has increasingly become a focus for the president's frustration as he bids to shape the messaging on the much-criticised federal response to the pandemic. 

But according to several US media outlets, Trump told his campaign team: "People are tired of Covid. People are saying, 'Whatever -- just leave us alone.' They're tired of it. People are tired of hearing Fauci and all these idiots." 

The pandemic has killed almost 220,000 people in the United States. 

Agence France-Presse

Canada's top doctor urges mask wearing during sex, no kissing

OTTAWA —  Canada's chief public health officer on Wednesday urged couples to wear masks during sex to prevent the spread of the new coronavirus.

"Sex can be complicated in the time of COVID-19, especially for those without an intimate partner in their household or whose sexual partner is at higher risk for COVID-19," Theresa Tam said in a statement.

"The lowest risk sexual activity during COVID-19 involves yourself alone," she added. 

But those having sex with a partner who is at risk or from  outside their household should be "skipping kissing and avoiding face-to-face contact or closeness (and) consider using a mask that covers the nose and mouth.”

Tam said people should also limit their consumption of alcohol or "other substances so you and your partner(s) are able to make safe decision."

She noted that there is a "very low likelihood" of transmission of the new coronavirus through semen or vaginal fluids. But she still urged condom use.

The number of COVID-19 cases rose on Wednesday to 129,705, including 9,171 deaths. Almost 90 percent of the people who fell sick have recovered.

Agence France-Presse

A possible weapon against the pandemic: Printing human tissue

As shortages of personal protective equipment persist during the coronavirus pandemic, 3D printing has helped to alleviate some of the gaps. But Anthony Atala, director of the Wake Forest Institute for Regenerative Medicine, and his team are using the process in a more innovative way: creating tiny replicas of human organs — some as small as a pinhead — to test drugs to fight COVID-19.

The team is constructing miniature lungs and colons — two organs particularly affected by the coronavirus — then sending them overnight by courier for testing at a biosafety lab at George Mason University in Fairfax, Virginia. While they initially created some of the organoids by hand using a pipette, they are beginning to print these at scale for research as the pandemic continues to surge.

In the last few years, Atala’s institute had already printed these tiny clusters of cells to test drug efficacy against bacteria and infectious diseases like the Zika virus, “but we never thought we’d be considering this for a pandemic,” he said. His team has the ability to print “thousands an hour,” he said from his lab in Winston-Salem, North Carolina.

The process of constructing human tissue this way is a form of bioprinting. While its use in humans is still years away, researchers are honing the methods to test drugs and, eventually, to create skin and full-size organs for transplanting. Researchers are making strides in printing skin, critical for burn victims; managing diseases like diabetes in which wound healing is difficult; and for the testing of cosmetics without harming animals, or, of course, humans.

“Even to us it sometimes seems like science fiction,” said Akhilesh Gaharwar, who directs a cross-disciplinary lab in the biomedical engineering department at Texas A&M University that focuses on bioprinting and other approaches to regenerative medicine.

Bioprinting’s importance for pharmaceutical analysis is paramount now, not only for potential COVID-19 treatments but also for testing treatments for cancer and other diseases. Atala says that the organoids allow researchers to analyze a drug’s effect on an organ “without the noise” of an individual’s metabolism.

He cited Rezulin, a popular diabetes drug recalled in 2000 after there was evidence of liver failure. His lab tested an archived version of the drug, and Atala said that within two weeks, the liver toxicity became apparent. What accounts for the difference? An organoid replicates an organ in its purest form and offers data points that might not occur in clinical trials, he said, adding that the testing is additive to, rather than in lieu of, clinical trials.

Testing on bioprinted skin or other miniature organs also can more readily determine which drugs that work in animals like rats might not perform well in people.

“The 3D models can circumvent animal testing and make the pathway stronger from the lab to the clinic,” Gaharwar said. That has importance for consumer goods as well as pharmaceuticals; since 2013, the European Union, for example, has prohibited cosmetics companies from testing products on animals.

The foundation for a printed organ is known as a scaffold, made of biodegradable materials. To provide nutrition for the organoid, microscopic channels only 50 microns in diameter — roughly half the size of a human hair — are included in the scaffold. Once completed, the “bioink,” a liquid combination of cells and hydrogel that turns into gelatin, is then printed onto the scaffold “like a layer cake,” Atala said.

Another important part of the process is constructing blood vessels as part of the printing. Pankaj Karande, an assistant professor of chemical and biological engineering at Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute, has been experimenting with skin printing since 2014 and recently had success in this step.

Using a cell known as a fibroblast, which helps with growth, along with collagen, as a scaffold, researchers at the institute printed the epidermis and dermis, the first two layers of skin. (The hypodermis is the third layer.) “It turns out the skin cells don’t mind being sheared,” Karande said, and they could ultimately survive.

But their work hit a snag: Without incorporating blood vessels, the skin eventually sloughs off. Collaborating with Jordan Pober and W. Mark Saltzman of Yale University, they eventually succeeded in constructing all three layers of human skin as well as vasculature, or blood vessels, which Karande said was essential to the skin’s surviving after it had been grafted.

The three began experimenting with integrating human endothelial cells, which line blood vessels, and human pericyte cells, which surround the endothelial cells, into the skin as it was printed. Eventually, after much trial and error, they were able to integrate the blood vessels with the skin and found that connections were formed between new and existing blood vessels.

While the work is preliminary — tested in mice — Karande said he was hopeful that the success in printing integrated skin and vasculature would set the stage for successful grafting in humans eventually.

The research, according to Karande, is painstaking and involves a lot of trial and error. “We have Plan A, which we often know won’t work, and then we go down the list. We can often write about what works in five pages but have 5,000 pages of what didn’t work,” he added.

-The New York Times Company-

Who gets the COVID-19 vaccine first? Here’s one idea

When a coronavirus vaccine becomes available, who should get it first?

A preliminary plan devised by the US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention this spring gives priority to health care workers, then to people with underlying medical conditions and older people. The CDC has not yet decided whether the next in line should be Blacks and Latinos, groups disproportionately affected by the coronavirus.

But let’s suppose that health care workers and people with underlying medical conditions use up the first doses of the available vaccine. Should some be held in reserve for Black and Latino people? What about bus drivers and train conductors? Perhaps teachers or schoolchildren should get it so they can return to classrooms with peace of mind.

If shortages happen, most of the nation will have no chance to get the initial lots of a vaccine under the CDC’s plan. And as the United States combats a soaring number of coronavirus cases, rising demand for drugs and maybe ventilators is expected. They, too, will need a fair system of distribution.

One solution that is starting to attract the attention of public health experts is a so-called weighted lottery, which gives everyone a chance at access, although some get a better shot than others.

Doctors and ethicists rank patients, deciding which groups should be given preference and how much. First-responders, for example, may be weighted more heavily than, say, very sick patients who are unlikely to recover.

The goal is to prevent haphazard or inequitable distribution of a treatment or vaccine when there isn’t enough to go around. Such a system has already been used in allocations of remdesivir, the first drug shown to be effective against the coronavirus.

“This is all very new,” said Dr. Douglas White, an ethicist and vice chairman of the department of critical medicine at the University of Pittsburgh, which began using a weighted lottery last month to distribute remdesivir.

Patients have accepted the results, even when they lost in the lottery and ended up being denied the drug, he added.

“I speculate that is because we are very transparent about the reason and the ethical framework that applies to everyone who comes into hospital, whether that is the hospital president or someone who is homeless,” he said.

To allocate the drug, Pittsburgh doctors decided that the lottery would give preference to health care workers and emergency medical workers. The doctors also weighted the odds to favor people from economically disadvantaged areas, who tend to be mostly Black and Hispanic.

People with other illnesses and limited life spans, like end-stage cancer patients, had the odds weighted against them, giving them a smaller chance to win in the lottery. The system did not consider age, race, ethnicity, quality of life, ability to pay or whether a patient has a disability.

The lottery began in early June, White said: “We had 64 patients. We had to make the supply of remdesivir last at least two weeks. We only had enough to treat 1 in 4 patients.”

They had a brief respite from the lottery when cases began falling and supplies of remdesivir seemed adequate. But on Sunday, with cases rising again and enough remdesivir for only about half the patients who could be helped by taking it, the hospital system was forced to go back to a lottery.

A weighted lottery will be used in South Carolina if the swelling number of patients causes a shortage, said Dr. Dee Ford, an infectious disease specialist at the Medical University of South Carolina and a member of an advisory group to the state Health Department. So far, she said, the state’s supply of remdesivir remains adequate.

White and his colleagues were considering a weighted lottery before the remdesivir shortage began. And so were other ethicists, like Dr. Robert Truog at Harvard Medical School who had learned about the system when he’d feared a ventilator shortage in March.

He consulted with White, who had developed a system that awarded points to severely ill coronavirus patients depending on their estimated likelihood of surviving. After Truog and his colleagues published a paper on ventilator distribution, Truog said, “we got a call from an economist at MIT.”

The economist, Parag Pathak, told Truog that he and other economists had spent years thinking about how to allocate resources, and have developed and successfully used weighted lotteries.

For example, Pathak told him, such systems are used to allocate spots in oversubscribed charter schools, giving preference to children from certain neighborhoods. Truog was intrigued, but it turned out that there were enough ventilators, so a lottery was not needed.

But remdesivir was another story, White and Truog realized: The shortages were not just possible; they were happening.

“When remdesivir shortages began, we felt that a lottery system would be a much better allocation methods than a point system,” he explained. His group and Truog developed a weighted lottery for remdesivir, and the Pittsburgh hospitals began using it.

They also noted another advantage: Weighted lotteries can allow researchers to find out, in a rigorous way, which subgroups of patients do best with a new drug or vaccine.

That is because allocation within a group is random. The distribution is, in effect, a randomized, controlled clinical trial. The only difference between, say, people over age 60 who got the drug and those who did not is the toss of a coin in the lottery.

For that reason, outcomes can reveal how well a drug or vaccine works for subgroups of people.

That sort of analysis has been done to study the variations in students’ performances at different schools, answering questions like: Did students with higher test scores do just as well with or without a charter school? Did the school benefit those who were not doing well in their neighborhood schools?

A large, federal clinical trial showed that remdesivir slightly improved recovery times for hospitalized patients. That study, though, was not designed to show whether some groups — like younger people, or those who were earlier in the course of their infection — benefited more than others.

These outcome data are buried in the patients’ electronic health records. Were the patients participating in a weighted lottery, it would be far easier to see who benefited and who did not from remdesivir.

Similar questions can be addressed if a vaccine were to be distributed with such a lottery. But getting that data would be more complicated, because vaccine distribution may involve tens of millions of people.

Still, in principle, lottery data about a vaccine can be as useful as randomized clinical trial data, Pathak said.

“We would like to get people to think ahead about how vaccines are allocated,” he said. “There is no way we can vaccinate everybody, so we have to think about what’s fair and what’s just.”

- The New York Times Company -

Bill Gates denies conspiracy theories he created virus outbreak

WASHINGTON — Billionaire philanthropist Bill Gates on Thursday pushed back against some of the conspiracy theories spreading online accusing him of creating the coronavirus outbreak.

"It's a bad combination of pandemic and social media and people looking for a very simple explanation," the Microsoft founder said during a CNN Town Hall interview.

Doctored photos and fabricated news articles crafted by conspiracy theorists -- shared thousands of times on social media platforms and messaging apps, in various languages -- targeting Gates have gained traction online since the start of the pandemic.

A video accusing Gates of wanting "to eliminate 15 percent of the population" through vaccination and electronic microchips has racked up millions of views on YouTube.

"Our foundation has given more money to buy vaccines to save lives than any group," Gates said, referring to his eponymous foundation.

He has pledged $250 million in efforts to fight the pandemic, and his foundation has spent billions of dollars improving health care in developing countries over the past 20 years. 

"So you just turn that around. You say, ok, we're making money and we're trying to kill people with vaccines or by inventing something," Gates continued.

"And at least it's true, we're associated with vaccines, but you actually have sort of flipped the connection," he said, adding he hopes the conspiracies don't generate "vaccine hesitancy."

Since the start of the crisis, AFP Fact Check has debunked dozens of anti-Gates rumors circulating on platforms like Facebook, WhatsApp and Instagram in languages including English, French, Spanish, Polish and Czech.

A number of accusations, including posts claiming that the FBI arrested Gates for biological terrorism or that he supports a Western plot to poison Africans, share a common thread. 

They accuse the tycoon of exploiting the crisis, whether it is to "control people" or make money from selling vaccines.

"I'm a big believer in getting the truth out," Gates told CNN.

It is not the first time Gates has found himself targeted by conspiracy theorists. When Zika virus broke out in 2015 in Brazil, he was one of several powerful Western figures blamed for the disease. 

Other rumors claim he is secretly a lizard, an old favorite among online trolls.

Agence France-Presse

Coronavirus surge is killing America’s small businesses

On the last Friday of June, after Gov. Greg Abbott of Texas said that bars across the state would have to shut down a second time because coronavirus cases were skyrocketing, Mick Larkin decided he had had enough.

No matter that Larkin, an owner of a karaoke club in Wichita Falls, Texas, had just paid $1,000 for perishable goods and protective equipment in anticipation of the weekend rush. No matter that the frozen margarita machine was full, that 175 plastic syringes with booze-infused Jell-O were in place, or that there were masks for staff members and hand sanitizer for guests.

That day, June 26, Larkin and his partner dumped what they had just bought into the trash and decided to close their club, Krank It Karaoke, for good.

“We did everything we were supposed to do,” Larkin said. “When he shut us down again, and after I put out all that money to meet their rules, I just said, ‘I can’t keep doing this.’ ”

It was harrowing enough for small businesses — the bars, dental care practices, small law firms, day care centers and other storefronts that dot the streets and corners of every US town and city — to have to shut down after state officials imposed lockdowns in March to contain the pandemic.

But the resurgence of the virus, especially in states such as Texas, Florida and California that had begun to reopen, has introduced a far darker reality for many small businesses: Their temporary closures might become permanent.

Nearly 66,000 businesses have folded since March 1, according to data from Yelp, which provides a platform for local businesses to advertise their services and has been tracking announcements of closings posted on its site. From June 15-29, the most recent period for which data is available, businesses were closing permanently at a higher rate than in the previous three months, Yelp found. During the same period, permanent closures increased by 3 percent overall, accounting for roughly 14 percent of total closures since March.

Researchers at Harvard believe the rates of business closures are likely to be even higher. They estimated that nearly 110,000 small businesses across the country had decided to shut down permanently between early March and early May, based on data collected in weekly surveys by Alignable, a social media network for small-business owners.

Christopher Stanton, an associate professor at Harvard Business School who was one of the researchers, said it was difficult to accurately gauge how many small businesses were closing because, once they shut their doors for good, the owners were hard to reach. He added that it could take up to a year before government officials knew the true toll the pandemic was taking on small businesses.

At the moment, 39 states continue to record growing numbers of new cases daily.

It is not clear how many of the businesses Yelp is tracking count as “small” — defined by the Small Business Administration as those with 500 or fewer employees. But the company found that, among the tracked businesses — which include restaurants, retailers and other independent, consumer-facing operations — retail businesses, led by beauty supply stores, have been closing at the highest rate since the pandemic began. Restaurants are the next hardest-hit group.

Small businesses account for 44 percent of all US economic activity, according to the SBA, and closures on such an immense scale could devastate the country’s economic growth. If they were grouped together, small businesses would be among the country’s biggest employers, said Satyam Khanna, a resident fellow at the Institute for Corporate Governance and Finance at New York University School of Law who has written about the effects of the pandemic on small businesses.

So when small businesses close en masse, an entire sector of the economy suffers, Khanna said. There is lower cash flow, higher debt and more unemployment. “That leads to a big drag on the eventual recovery,” he said. “Because they are such an important source of jobs, losing them the way we are losing them now is going to make things far worse than they otherwise need to be.”

Because small businesses depend heavily on foot traffic and operate on thin margins, they are especially vulnerable to the ripple effects of a widespread shutdown.

For nearly two decades, Rich Tokheim and his wife sold sports memorabilia — hats, T-shirts, coffee mugs and other trinkets — to fans in Omaha, Nebraska, at their store, The Dugout. Since 2011, The Dugout has occupied prime real estate across the street from the city’s 24,000-seat baseball stadium, which usually hosts the College World Series each spring.

The 2020 World Series was canceled in March. In the weeks that came after, other sporting events were scrapped — starting with college sports and extending to professional leagues that have struggled to relaunch their activities.

Tokheim, 58, watched his business fall off with growing unease, but it was only after a friendly chat with a retired college athletic director in May that the gravity of his situation hit home. He was already worried about the state of the virus in Nebraska and whether there was enough tracking. Then the athletic director predicted that if college football was canceled for the year, it would be the end of Division I sports as a whole.

“That really put me in overdrive,” Tokheim said. He negotiated an early exit on his store lease and announced a clearance sale at the store. The Dugout closed for good June 30.

The government’s Paycheck Protection Program, rolled out in April and administered by the SBA, earmarked $660 billion of aid for small businesses but stipulated that a loan would be forgiven only if most of it was used to pay employee wages for eight weeks. The rules were later relaxed, but in a sign of how many small-business owners did not feel confident that they would be on steady ground by the time repayment was due, roughly $130 billion of aid money remained untapped when the program ended in June.

Even for those who took a PPP loan, survival is no guarantee. Nick Muscari, a 38-year-old restaurateur in Lubbock, Texas, received one. His restaurant, Nick’s Sports Grill and Lounge, had been the culmination of Muscari’s life’s work — his years of toil as a waiter, pizza cook and manager at restaurants and bars beginning in his teenage years. Three years ago, he bought out the two partners who helped him start the restaurant in 2010. He considered it a crowning achievement, but to do so, he had to borrow money. He still owes a bank $80,000.

Muscari tried to ride out the spring lockdown that temporarily shuttered his restaurant with the help of the PPP money. But when the state’s second closure order took effect June 26, he decided to close for good.

“It had been in the back of our minds, just like, you know, if this happens again, can we make it?” Muscari said. “We were following all the rules, and people were spread out. We never had anybody catch the virus in our establishment.”

Muscari, with the business closed and its 30 employees jobless, has nothing left but his house and his car. He also expects his landlord to try to sue him for the eight years’ worth of rent he is contracted to pay on his defunct restaurant’s space.

Many small businesses are also finding it onerous keep up with constantly changing local guidelines, while others are deciding that no matter what their local officials say, it just is not safe to keep going.

Gabriel Gordon, owner of a tiny but popular barbecue restaurant in Seal Beach, California, decided to close permanently after studying the restaurant’s layout. He had determined that the kitchen would never be safe for multiple staff members to occupy at once while the virus was still active in the area.

“It’s essentially two hallways that are 11 feet wide,” Gordon said, describing the shape of the restaurant, Beachwood BBQ. “There are food trucks that are larger than my kitchen.”

Whatever the specific reasons may be for each closure, Justin Norman, Yelp’s vice president of data science, said that the federal government should offer small businesses more help. Norman said Yelp was concerned about the effects of small-business closures, especially those owned by people of color, on society. Yelp, however, also has a financial interest in maintaining a robust small business environment, because it relies heavily on advertising by businesses on its platform.

“The time is right now to inject more capital, or we may lose them forever,” Norman said. “It’s going to make our economies worse; it’s going to make our communities worse.”

-The New York Times Company- 

Drug giants create fund to bolster struggling antibiotic startups

Twenty of the world’s largest pharmaceutical companies on Thursday announced the creation of a $1 billion fund to buoy financially strapped biotech startups that are developing new antibiotics to treat the mounting number of drug-resistant infections responsible for hundreds of thousands of deaths each year.

The fund — created in partnership with the World Health Organization and financed by drug behemoths that include Roche, Merck and Johnson & Johnson — will offer a short-term but desperately needed lifeline for some of the 3 dozen small antibiotics companies, many of them based in the United States, that have been struggling to draw investment amid a collapsing antibiotics industry.

Over the past year, 3 US antibiotics startups with promising drugs have gone bankrupt, and many of the remaining companies are quickly running out of cash.

The new AMR Action Fund will make investments in roughly 2 dozen companies that have already identified a promising drug with the goal of bringing two to four novel antibiotics to the market within a decade, according to the International Federation of Pharmaceutical Manufacturers and Associations, an industry trade group that is administering the fund.

Recipients will be chosen by an advisory panel made up of drug company executives, scientists and other experts in the field. The companies will also provide free expertise to biotech companies with promising drugs as they navigate the clinical and regulatory hurdles needed to bring an antimicrobial compound from laboratory to market.

“Antibiotics are the mortar that holds the entire health care system together,” said David Ricks, chief executive of Eli Lilly, who helped spearhead the effort. “We make drugs for diabetes, cancer and immunological conditions, but you couldn’t treat any of them without effective antibiotics.”

In an interview, Ricks said he was well aware of the irony that Eli Lilly and many of the other companies contributing to the fund were once the giants of antibiotics development but have long since abandoned the field because of their inability to earn money on the drugs. “We know firsthand how broken the system is,” he said.

The crisis stems from the peculiar economics and biochemical quirks of drugs that kill bacteria and fungi. The more often antimicrobial drugs are used, the more likely they are to lose their efficacy as pathogens survive and mutate. Efforts to promote antibiotics stewardship means that new drugs are used as a last resort, limiting the ability of companies to earn back the billions of dollars it can take to create a new product.

“It’s been a really tough time for companies doing antibiotic discovery despite the tremendous unmet need,” said Zachary Zimmerman, chief executive of Forge Therapeutics, a San Diego company that has several new drugs in the pipeline. He said the fund would provide critical help for companies that have already spent millions identifying an innovative compound but lack the money to carry out the costly clinical trials needed to gain regulatory approval. “A fund like this can really help us get through that valley of death,” Zimmerman said.

The collapse of the antibiotics market has dramatically reduced the number of promising drugs. Between 1980 and 2009, the Food and Drug Administration approved 61 new antibiotics for systemic use; over the past decade that number has shrunk to 15, and one-third of the companies behind those medicines have since gone belly up. Those backing the fund acknowledge that the effort is largely a stopgap measure. Industry executives and public health experts say that fixing the broken marketplace for antibiotics would require sweeping government intervention to create financial incentives for drug companies, including policy changes that would increase reimbursements for lifesaving drugs kept under lock and key and used only when existing therapies fail. Legislation that would address the problem has not gained traction in recent years.

Drug-resistant infections kill 700,000 people a year across the globe, according to the United Nations, which has warned that the death toll could rise to 10 million by 2050 without concerted action.

Dr. Peter Beyer, a senior adviser at the WHO who led the effort to create the new fund, said the threat of antimicrobial resistance rivaled that of the coronavirus pandemic, but it was a slow-rolling crisis that could feel abstract to political leaders focused on the next election cycle.

“Hopefully this fund can bridge the gap until politicians realize the urgency of antimicrobial resistance,” he said.

Everly Macario, a public health expert at The University of Chicago Medicine who focuses on antimicrobial resistance, understands how abstract the threat can feel. In 2004, her 18-month- old son, Simon, died from a drug-resistant staph infection within 24 hours of arriving at a hospital emergency room with breathing difficulties.

“People think drug-resistant infections are something that affects other people,” she said. “But one day, all of us, both young and old, will need an antibiotic. A world in which antibiotics no longer work is something that should terrify everyone.”

-The New York Times Company-

Pilots, once in short supply, now losing jobs

Joshua Weinstein always wanted to be an airline pilot, but the industry was in crisis when he started college in 2002, so he became a middle school teacher instead.

He loved that job, but after a decade of flying in his free time at a cost of tens of thousands of dollars, Weinstein began hearing more about a looming pilot shortage and left the classroom in 2018 to pursue his dream. It worked: In January, he started training to fly for ExpressJet, which operates regional flights for United Airlines. But the coronavirus pandemic, which devastated the airline business, could thin the ranks of pilots by the thousands and has already put the nascent careers of people like Weinstein on hold.

“The worst part right now is that the only thing we know is that nobody knows anything,” he said. “There’s uncertainty. We just don’t know what happens next.”

For years, flight schools, airlines and experts encouraged people like Weinstein to become pilots. They promised young recruits a job that was lucrative and secure because thousands of pilots in their late 50s and early 60s would retire in the coming years and demand for travel would continue growing. The profession is still stacked with older aviators, but airlines are expected to make deep cuts in the coming months, and the pilots most at risk are those who are just starting out.

While air travel has recovered somewhat, it is still only about one-fourth of what it was last year, according to airport security data. Most experts say the recovery will be slow and uneven because of a patchwork of travel bans and the unpredictable nature of the pandemic. The recent surge in coronavirus infections has already forced some governors to delay reopening their state economies and to shut down bars and other businesses. If cases continue to increase, as some public health experts fear, air travel could become a lot less appealing. 

To prepare for that uncertain future, the largest airlines in the US are stockpiling billions of dollars in cash. If ticket sales do not recover soon, American Airlines, Delta Air Lines, Southwest Airlines and United have said they could resort to job cuts as soon as Oct. 1, the first day when airlines are free to eliminate jobs and reduce hours under a stimulus law that Congress approved in March.

Airlines could lay off, furlough or reduce the hours of tens of thousands of pilots, cuts that would disproportionately fall on those who have less union seniority and training. Major airlines have already stopped hiring pilots after posting hundreds of openings in the first quarter of the year, according to Future & Active Pilot Advisors, a consulting firm.

Several companies are offering buyout packages to avoid deeper cuts later. Southwest has acknowledged in discussions with its pilots union that the airline is likely overstaffed by more than 1,000 pilots. The company is offering several years of partial pay and benefits to those who agree to leave the company temporarily or permanently. Delta warned last week that it could furlough nearly 2,600 pilots and is offering early-retirement packages.

Some pilots said the turmoil was nerve-racking, but those who have been in the profession for a while have come to expect it.

“You kind of know going in that aviation has high highs and low lows,” said Lisa Archibald, 41, a Delta pilot and volunteer with the airline’s pilot union, the Delta Master Executive Council. “You do it because you love what you do.”

Like Weinstein, Archibald arrived at the job by way of a detour. After graduating from Purdue University’s School of Aviation and Transportation Technology, she was hired to fly at American Eagle, which American Airlines owns. But the job started days before the 2001 terrorist attacks, and she was furloughed after just a few weeks.

About a year later, Archibald found a job piloting corporate jets, which she did for 15 years. She joined Delta in May 2017.

Unsurprisingly, pilots are passionate about the profession. That is why they spend years in grueling training programs, trying to rack up the minimum flight hours and credentials needed to become airline pilots, at a cost of up to $100,000, not including the price of a college degree.

Weinstein, 36, estimates that he easily spent between $50,000 and $70,000 on flight training, offset by what he earned working at the flight school and teaching middle school in New Jersey over a decade. At ExpressJet, first-year pilots earn a minimum $36,000 a year.
Whatever the outcome, Weinstein said, all that effort has been worth it.

“I have something to show for it because I did make it to the airlines and I did get hired and I did achieve that dream,” he said. “And so part of me says not to regret a single moment of it, because I put my mind to something and I did it.”

The New York Times Company

India becomes third hardest-hit country for virus cases

NEW DELHI — India announced Monday that it has nearly 700,000 coronavirus cases, taking it past Russia to become the third-hardest-hit nation in the global pandemic.

The health ministry said 697,358 cases had now been recorded, a rise of 24,000 in 24 hours, while Russia has just over 681,000. 

The United States and Brazil have the highest numbers of cases but India's tally is not expected to peak for several more weeks and experts predict the one million figure will be passed this month.

India has registered 19,963 deaths from the virus, a much lower number than many other badly hit countries.

India's major cities have been worst hit by the pandemic. New Delhi and Mumbai each have about 100,000 cases, with 3,000 dead in the capital and nearly 5,000 in Mumbai. 

New Delhi has opened a new 10,000-bed temporary virus hospital while other cities are tightening restrictions on movement to head off a new surge in cases.

The Kerala state capital, Thiruvananthapuram imposed a new lockdown from Monday with public transport shut and only pharmacies allowed to open. The clampdown came after hundreds of new cases were reported across the state, which had been praised for its action to curtail the pandemic.

Agence France-Presse 

Nike reports $790 million loss as sales plunge on COVID-19 hit

NEW YORK -- Sports giant Nike reported a surprise loss Thursday as shutdowns due to COVID-19 prompted a big drop in revenues in spite of higher online sales.

Nike reported a loss of $790 million in the quarter ending May 31, which translated to a loss of 51 cents per share compared with analyst expectations for nine cents per share in profit.

Revenues tumbled 38 percent to $6.3 billion following huge declines in sales in most of the world.

In North America, the company's biggest operating region, revenues plunged 46 percent to $2.2 billion.

Nike said 90 percent of its stores were closed for roughly eight weeks during the quarter in three of its four operating regions, with the exception being Greater China. A bright spot was online sales, with digital sales increasing 75 percent during the quarter.

The results are among the first by a major company to detail the hit from the coronavirus during the period of peak shutdowns. Nike is on a different fiscal calendar than most other large companies, with its fourth quarter ending May 31.

The second-quarter earnings period, which covers the quarter ending June 30, will begin in mid-July.

Shares of Nike fell 3.7 percent to $97.61.

Agence France-Presse

Sellers of sex toys capitalize on all that alone time

Well, the data bears out what we expected. Sex toys are selling.

Adam and Eve, a company with franchised locations across North America and an online store, reported a 30 percent increase in online sales in March and April based on the same time period last year.

Other big companies that do most of their sales online also saw an uptick. Wow Tech Group, which owns We-Vibe and Womanizer, reported that online sales for both brands were more than 200 percent higher this April compared to last year.

And as Vice reported in April, online sales for products through Cotr Inc., the company behind B-Vibe, Le Wand and the Cowgirl, were roughly three times higher this March than they were last year. Alicia Sinclair, the chief executive, said that the numbers have continued to climb, with April’s sales surpassing March’s by 80 percent.

Some of this can be chalked up to lockdown boredom. (Also, during the height of stay-at-home orders, Amazon seems to have continued to ship sex toys, despite their nonessential status.)

But while big, corporate sex toy retailers seem to have thrived, the same cannot necessarily be said for brick-and-mortar sex shops. As consumers rush to buy sex toys from websites, businesses that usually rely on foot traffic and interpersonal connections with customers are suffering.

Sid Azmi, 37, the owner of Please, a store in Brooklyn that has been open for roughly 6 years, explained that despite having an accompanying online shop, she cannot compete with bigger online retailers.

Azmi said that small businesses often charge more for sex toys: They do not get bulk-buying discounts from distributors, and they cannot afford to have huge sales on their products. Customers are usually willing to pay more, she said, because of the friendly service and education stores like Please can offer.

“The reason why people come to us rather than buying from Amazon or bigger sex shops like Adam and Eve is because we offer in-house education, conversations, our time and our recommendations,” she said. “It’s that one-on-one personable service that we can’t promote through online sales.”

Shag, a store that features a collection of body-safe sex toys that has been in the Brooklyn borough of New York since 2009, is also feeling financial strain. Samantha Bard, 45, one of the store’s owners, said that while online sales have risen slightly in the last two months, the store is selling far less than it would if the brick-and-mortar shop in Williamsburg was still open.

As a result, the owners have tried different tactics to succeed online: They have started selling locally made face masks; they have revamped their online store and added more products to it; they have even integrated with Amazon, so potential customers can find the store’s products there.

“We’re hoping that that will generate some people to come back after they’ve made their first Amazon purchase, maybe they’ll come back to our own web store and purchase through us,” Bard said.

In addition to single-location sex shops, established chains in New York are also hurting. Lisa Finn, a representative from Babeland — a chain with three of its four locations in New York City — said that, though online sales are higher, it is not enough to make up for how much the stores usually sell in person.

Glen Buzzetti, the CEO of Romantic Depot New York, said that since shifting to online-only, and offering same-day delivery, sales from the website have surged: Online sales in March and April were roughly 12 times higher than they were this time last year.

Yet it does not compare to how much the business, known for its massive, depot-style locations, usually sells from its physical stores.

“It’s not enough to make a difference where it’s going to be able to pay our rent,” he said. “That’s the reality: Our bills are higher than what is coming in.”

Sex shops in other cities, further along than New York in easing restrictions, are still struggling to adapt to new, mostly online business models.

Darling Way, in Houston, was able to open its doors to the public again on May 1. But Beth Liebling, 54, the owner and founder, said that the store is quieter now than it ever has been in its four-year history. The store’s sales in May were 70 percent lower than what Liebling had projected in January.

“People aren’t out and about very much,” she said. “They just aren’t in a big spending mood.”

Serene Martinez, the owner of Pink Bunny in San Francisco, said that it had been a generally positive experience. Though Pink Bunny has not been able to open its doors to the public yet because of California’s restrictions on retail stores, Martinez has been able to connect with customers through one-on-one Zoom calls where she acts as a personal shopper, as well as through the store’s YouTube channel.

June Pilote, a sex educator, said that part of the reason boutique and smaller sex shops are struggling right now is because their prices are higher.

“Sex toys are something that can really help you explore your gender and your sexuality, but they’re also expensive,” he said.

He said that to avoid spending money on a product that is not right (it is usually not possible to return a used sex toy), people should take the time to research the toys they are buying.

Local shops may also be able to provide more education and community. Luna Matatas, a sex and pleasure educator in Toronto, said sex toys made from materials like jelly can be toxic.

She said safe materials include medical-grade silicone, stainless steel and glass.

Liebling emphasized that, though sales may be high for big online retailers, the next few months will be uncertain for business owners like herself.

“I don’t think I’m the only one that’s just looking around and going, ‘Can we do this? Can we actually survive, financially?’ ”

2020 The New York Times Company

US workers face an unequal future when virus recedes

WASHINGTON — As the coronavirus worked its way across the United States, it cleaved the country's workforce in two: those who have the ability to work from home, and those who do not.

From baristas to hotel workers to tourism operators, people whose job requires them to show up in-person were among the hardest hit in the waves of layoffs, and also those on the low end of the US pay scale.

Unemployment is now at a level not seen in since the Great Depression nearly a century ago, and moving higher, while the coronavirus is expected to threaten the country for months to come, factors analysts fear will only serve to deepen inequality for workers in the world's largest economy. 

"People who are well-off and highly skilled and work from home are going to demand that their employers make accommodations for them," said Jesse Rothstein, a former chief economist at the Labor Department who now teaches at the University of California, Berkeley.

But "lower skilled workers... are taking on more risk without more pay."

Federal Reserve Chair Jerome Powell has described the pandemic as "a great increaser of inequality," but experts say that is not inevitable, particularly if Congress passes new stimulus measures to support battered businesses and consumers.

"Every single cleavage we had before is widening," said Claudia Sahm, a former principal economist with the Federal Reserve who is now with the Washington Center for Economic Growth.

"We have an opportunity to do something better than what we were doing before, but it will not just happen. It has to be a policy effort."

AN UNEQUAL RECESSION 

When the coronavirus arrived, the US economy had a tight labor market, with an unemployment rate near a historic low of 3.5 percent in February, while long-stagnant wages were just starting to rise.

Yet the job market was not as healthy as it appeared.

The US Private Sector Job Quality Index (JQI) -- which uses government employment statistics to gauge the balance between non-supervisory jobs with decent pay and those without -- has been charting downwards for years. 

In February, the JQI was back near its all-time low reached in March 2012 as many of the jobs being created paid below the mean weekly wage, according to the index compiled by a consortium of academics and researchers.

And a study late last year from the Brookings Institution found 44 percent of US workers qualify as "low wage," with median annual earnings of just $18,000 a year.

When the pandemic hit and sent the unemployment rate to 14.7 in April and the economy into an almost-certain recession, low-paid workers in industries like leisure, hospitality and food services were laid off in such large numbers their absence skewed average wages upwards.

While government data show most consider their layoffs to be temporary, Michael Weber, an associate professor at the University of Chicago Booth School of Business, warned that if businesses close or scale back staffing, job seekers will be forced to compete against each other, driving wages lower, as is typical in recession job markets.

WHO'S HIRING? 

Grocery store chain Kroger, e-commerce giant Amazon and several fast food companies have announced massive hirings since the pandemic hit, but offer no safe haven. 

"Those are the very jobs that are under criticism over the last few years given that they pay unreasonably low wages," Weber said. And those type of jobs "come hand-in-hand with more precarious income situation."

Robert Hockett, a law professor at Cornell University who is a principal researcher on the JQI, said job seekers could demand risk premiums at workplaces where they face exposure to the coronavirus, or take equity stakes in struggling companies to help keep them afloat.

In fact, the Fed reported this week that Boston area employers were giving workers temporary pay increases of up to 30 percent, in part to compensate for the increased risk and hold onto their employees.

But unemployed workers could end up forced to accept whatever jobs they can find, particularly if Congress fails to extend the small business loans and unemployment benefits temporarily expanded in the $2.2 trillion CARES Act approved in March.

"We're kind of on a tightrope or a knife's edge at this moment," Hockett said in an interview.

President Donald Trump's administration has been lukewarm towards further spending on aid for workers, predicting the coronavirus will be defeated and a strong economic rebound starting in July, even as many economists remain skeptical of a rapid, V-shaped recovery.

"It's all going to ride on how desperate workers are," Hockett said, "And that's going to ride on public policy positions."

Agence France-Presse 

Thailand to further ease restrictions, shorten curfew hours

BANGKOK- Thailand will next week shorten curfew hours and ease restrictions on more businesses, the government said on Friday, in response to its low numbers of locally transmitted cases of the coronavirus.

Starting June 1, cinemas and theaters can reopen, but with no more than 200 people at a time and with strict physical distancing measures, said Somsak Roongsita, secretary-general of the National Security Council.

A curfew will be shortened by one hour to last from 11 p.m. to 3 a.m. and shopping malls, which reopened earlier this month, will also be allowed to extend their operating hours, he added.

"The reopening will help stimulate the economy and ease some financial burdens," Somsak said.

Zoos, beauty clinics, spas, and traditional Thai massages will be allowed to operate, with physical distancing in place, as will soccer fields and volleyball and basketball courts, but only for training purposes and with limits on spectators.

Fitness clubs can also reopen but with limited users at each time.

Thailand's planning agency on Thursday said the impacts of the coronavirus could cause the loss of up to 2 million jobs this year, particularly in the tourist industry. It predicts the economy will shrink 5 to 6 percent this year.

Thailand confirmed 11 new coronavirus cases on Friday, and no new deaths. All those cases were arrivals from Kuwait and were in state quarantine.

All but one of the cases reported this week were detected in quarantine.

The government has previously said it planned to reopen all businesses within June, although passenger flights remain suspended.

The Southeast Asian country has seen a slowdown in locally transmitted cases, and more recent cases have been found among those in state quarantine after returning from abroad.

The coronavirus has infected 3,076 in Thailand since January and killed 57.

-reuters-

Pharma chiefs see coronavirus vaccine by year-end, but challenges 'daunting'

GENEVA — Pharmaceutical company executives said Thursday that one or several COVID-19 vaccines could begin rolling out before 2021, but warned the challenges would be "daunting" as it was estimated that 15 billion doses would be needed to halt the pandemic.

Well over 100 labs around the world are scrambling to come up with a vaccine against the novel coronavirus, including 10 that have made it to the clinical trial stage.

"The hope of many people is that we will have a vaccine, hopefully several, by the end of this year," Pascal Soriot, head of AstraZeneca, told a virtual briefing.

His company is partnering with the University of Oxford to develop and distribute a vaccine being trialed in Britain.

Albert Bourla, head of Pfizer, meanwhile said that his company, which is conducting clinical trials with German firm Biontech on several possible vaccines in Europe and the United States, also believed one would be ready before the end of the year.

"If things go well, and the stars are aligned, we will have enough evidence of safety and efficacy so that we can... have a vaccine around the end of October," he said.

It can take years for a new vaccine to be licensed for general use, but in the face of the COVID-19 pandemic, experimental vaccines shown to be safe and effective against the novel coronavirus could likely win approval for emergency use.

The International Federation of Pharmaceutical Manufacturers and Associations (IFPMA), which organised Thursday's briefing, highlighted the "daunting" challenges facing the industry in the push for a vaccine.

'RUNNING AGAINST TIME'

One challenge, which may seem counterintuitive, is that transmission rates are rapidly declining in Europe where some of the trials are taking place.

Soon they will be too low to properly conduct clinical vaccine trials in a natural setting, Soriot said, adding that so-called "human challenge" studies in which people are intentionally exposed to the virus to test efficacy, were not considered ethically acceptable with COVID-19.

"We are running against time," he said.

The novel coronavirus has killed more than 355,000 people and infected at least 5.7 million worldwide in a matter of months.

IFPMA director Thomas Cueni pointed to estimates that the world will need some 15 billion doses to stop the virus, posing massive logistical challenges.

He stressed that the industry was committed to ensuring equitable access to a future vaccine, but acknowledged that "we will not have sufficient quantities as from day one, even with the best efforts."

Once a working vaccine is developed, one of the biggest obstacles to putting out the amount needed could surprisingly be that there are not enough glass vials to store the doses in.

"There are not enough vials in the world," Soriot said, adding that AstraZeneca, like a number of other firms, was looking into the possibility of putting multiple doses in each vial.

IP 'FUNDAMENTAL'

Paul Stoffels, vice chairman and chief scientific officer at Johnson and Johnson, meanwhile said that if 15 billion doses were needed, a number of different vaccines would be necessary to satisfy the initial demand.

"Not all vaccine candidates could go all over the world depending on features, so somewhere between five and 10 will definitely be needed to serve the whole world," he said.

One challenge could be that some of the vaccines being worked on require storage at very low temperatures, which could be difficult in places lacking the proper infrastructure.

While stressing the need for solidarity and for ensuring fair and equitable distribution of a COVID-19 vaccine, the pharmaceutical chiefs flatly rejected any suggestion that intellectual property rights should be waived on vaccine research.

"IP is absolutely fundamental to our industry," GSK chief Emma Walmsley said.

Soriot meanwhile pointed out that pharmaceutical companies are currently investing billions of dollars with little chance of recuperating the costs.

"If you don't protect IP, then essentially there is no incentive for anybody to innovate," he said.

Agence France-Presse

Pandemic gives Dubai chance to put tech to the test

DUBAI -- From smart police helmets to research labs, the novel coronavirus has given Dubai an opportunity to test its technological and scientific clout as it shapes its approach to the pandemic.

A key part of the glitzy Gulf emirate's fight is its COVID-19 Command and Control Center, set up to coordinate the efforts of Dubai's doctors, epidemiologists and other professionals.

It is hosted within the Mohammed Bin Rashid University of Medicine and Health Sciences (MBRU) in Dubai's Healthcare City, also home to state-of-the-art hospitals, labs and research centers.

"For several years, Dubai has endeavored to put in place solid digital infrastructure, and this has contributed to the fight against the coronavirus", said Amer Sharif, who heads the multidisciplinary center.

It was established at the start of the health crisis by Dubai Crown Prince and social media star Sheikh Hamdan bin Mohammed bin Rashid Al-Maktoum.

In one room, young mask-wearing men and women sit at carefully separated desks crunching data on laptops and coordinating with workers on the ground.

The initiative includes a scientific team whose role is "to stay abreast of the latest advances in research and scientific evidence, both in the country and elsewhere in the world", team head Alawi Alsheikh-Ali told AFP.

'DATA AND SCIENCE' 

The United Arab Emirates has carried out more than 1.6 million coronavirus tests, and has officially declared over 28,700 infections, including 244 deaths.

This high-tech approach, Sharif said, including "the complete digitization of the health system", has prevented a greater spread of the virus and made the lockdown easier.

Tom Loney, associate professor of public health and epidemiology at MBRU, said the coronavirus was an opportunity for Dubai to put its capabilities to the test.

"It's the ability to react, to make quick decisions based on data and science" that sets Dubai apart, said Loney, who is also an adviser to authorities in the city-state.

According to him decisions were made by order of Dubai ruler Sheikh Mohammed bin Rashid Al-Maktoum, whose portrait is featured on the MBRU building.

Dubai is one of 7 emirates in the UAE, a key Gulf state with big technological and scientific ambitions.

The emirate lacks the oil wealth of its neighbors, but has the most diversified economy in the Gulf, building a reputation as a financial, commercial and tourism hub.

The UAE sent an astronaut into space last year, and in July is set to launch the first Arab probe towards Mars, a project sponsored by the emir of Dubai.

'OWN MODEL' 

Many tech options were already at Dubai's fingertips when the pandemic struck, and the emirate was quick at putting its technology to a variety of uses during the virus crisis.

Police wear smart helmets that take the temperature of passers-by while laboratories make protective masks using 3D printers.

When a night-time curfew begins, Dubai residents -- 90 percent of whom are expats -- receive a reminder message on their mobile phone in Arabic, English or other languages.

The UAE has regularly announced research advances into the COVID-19 illness, developing several apps to help manage the pandemic.

One of them, Alhosn, which the government has encouraged residents to download, helps track people who are infected with the virus or who may have come in close contact with confirmed cases.

But the use of technology to fight the pandemic has raised concern across the world over government surveillance and privacy risks. 

Tech experts and the media have highlighted this issue in the UAE, where some foreign websites and applications are already blocked.

But Sharif pushed back against skepticism.

"Dubai and the Emirates respect privacy, whether it is a question of patient records or smart applications", he said.

The emirate was creating its "own model" of responding to the health crisis, Sharif added, though authorities were also looking at countries such as South Korea, seen as a positive policy response to the crisis.

"We must follow the developments... but also add to them," he said.

Agence France-Presse