The first large study of safety and effectiveness of a coronavirus vaccine in the United States began Monday morning, according to the National Institutes of Health and biotech company Moderna, which collaborated to develop the vaccine.
A volunteer in Savannah, Georgia, received the first shot at 6:45 a.m., Dr. Anthony Fauci, director of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases, said at a news briefing.
The study, a Phase 3 clinical trial, will enroll 30,000 healthy people at about 89 sites around the country this summer. Half will receive two shots of the vaccine, 28 days apart, and half will receive two shots of a saltwater placebo. Neither the volunteers nor the medical staff giving the injections will know who will get the real vaccine.
Researchers will then monitor the subjects, looking for side effects. And their main goal will be to see if significantly fewer vaccinated people contract COVID-19, to determine whether the vaccine can prevent the illness. The study will also try to find out if the vaccine can avert severe cases of COVID and death; if it can block the infection entirely, based on lab tests; and if just one shot can prevent the illness.
Fauci estimated that the full enrollment of 30,000 people would be completed by the end of the summer and that results might be available by November. Findings might emerge even earlier, he said, but added that he doubted it. He said that the high rates of transmission in some parts of the country, though unfortunate, would help speed up the process of determining whether the vaccine works.
Overall, a total of 150 to 160 coronavirus infections in the study will be enough to determine whether the vaccine is acceptably effective — that is, if it protects 60 percent of those who receive it, Fauci said.
Ideally, he would like the figure to be higher, but he said 60 percent “would be a major, huge step at controlling this outbreak; we’ll take that amount.”
Dr. Francis Collins, director of the National Institutes of Health, said the US government was reaching out to groups hit hardest by COVID — older people, those with chronic diseases, Blacks, Latinx and Native Americans — to encourage them to participate in the study. He said that the pandemic had put health disparities into “sharp relief” and that extra efforts were needed to gain the trust of people in those groups who might be reluctant to sign up for a medical experiment.
Earlier tests of Moderna’s vaccine showed that it stimulated a strong immune response, with minor and transient side effects like sore arms, fatigue, achiness and fever. But exactly what type of immune response is needed to prevent the illness is not known, so Phase 3 studies are essential to determine whether a vaccine really works.
In a statement, Collins said, “Having a safe and effective vaccine distributed by the end of 2020 is a stretch goal, but it’s the right goal for the American people.” He said that despite the unprecedented speed in bringing this experimental vaccine to human testing, “the most stringent safety measures” were being maintained.
Moderna said in a statement that it would be able to deliver about 500 million doses a year and possibly up to 1 billion doses per year, starting in 2021. The Massachusetts-based company, which has received nearly $1 billion from the federal government to develop a coronavirus vaccine, has said it will not sell the vaccine at cost, but for profit.
Moderna has not said what it will charge.
“We will price it responsibly during the pandemic, to make sure it is broadly accessible,” a spokesman, Ray Jordan, said in an email. The company may change the price later, when the virus becomes endemic, “but that is not something we have settled at this time,” Jordan said.
Moderna shares were up 8% at $79 in midday trading Monday.
The company’s vaccine uses a synthetic version of genetic material from part of the coronavirus, encased in tiny particles made of fat that help it get into human cells. The genetic material, called messenger RNA, or mRNA, then prompts the cells to churn out a tiny piece of the virus, which the immune system sees as foreign and learns to recognize. If the person is later exposed to the real virus, the immune system will attack it.
Messenger RNA has not yet produced any approved vaccines, but other companies have also invested in the approach because of its potential to produce vaccine quickly. The government announced last week that it had reached a $1.95 billion deal to buy 100 million doses of an mRNA vaccine made by Pfizer, in partnership with German company BioNTech, by the year’s end. That vaccine is also expected to begin Phase 3 trials soon, and the government will buy it only if the trial proves it safe and effective. CureVac and Sanofi are also working on mRNA vaccines.
At the news briefing, Collins said that three more Phase 3 trials would be starting soon, each needing 30,000 patients. Those trials will involve vaccines made by Novavax, Johnson & Johnson and a collaboration of the University of Oxford and AstraZeneca. All three companies are part of the Trump administration’s Operation Warp Speed.
Adults interested in participating in the Moderna trial can visit coronaviruspreventionnetwork.org or clinicaltrials.gov and search identifier NCT04470427.
-The New York Times Company-
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 -
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
The number of new state unemployment claims dipped last week, but job losses continue to batter the economy as rising coronavirus cases pushed some regions of the country to reverse course and reimpose shutdown orders on businesses.
More than 1.3 million workers, seasonally adjusted, filed new claims for regular unemployment benefits last week, the government reported Thursday. Another million first-time claims were filed under the federal Pandemic Unemployment Assistance program. Taken together, the report paints a disappointing picture of recovery: Total new unemployment claims have edged up from their mid-June lows.
Although hiring nationwide has picked up in recent weeks, most of the payroll gains were temporarily laid-off workers who were rehired. The pool of employees whose previous jobs have disappeared and who must search for new ones has grown.
“Their circumstances may be more challenging to rectify than those who were laid off because of a temporary closure,” said Elizabeth Akers, who was a staff economist with the Council of Economic Advisers under President George W. Bush. “Finding new jobs will be more difficult. There’s been scarring in the economy.”
Recent readings from employment sites also point to more lasting damage to the labor market. Overall job openings at ZipRecruiter rose last week, for instance, but the number of new jobs posted declined for the fourth week in a row.
“For now, at least, that suggests the increase in vacancies is being driven by a slowdown in hiring, not an increase in labor demand,” said Julia Pollak, ZipRecruiter’s labor economist.
“Recent jobs reports are encouraging, but the increase in employment entirely reflects rehires of workers on temporary layoff,” she added. “The recovery in new hiring has yet to begin.”
The longer the pandemic dampens or halts shopping, dining out, travel and business operations, the more likely it is that jobs put on a brief hold simply vanish.
Brooks Brothers, the nation’s oldest apparel brand in continuous operation, filed for bankruptcy this week and permanently closed 51 stores. And airlines announced that they might lay off or furlough tens of thousands of employees in October despite billions of dollars in government aid because air travel has not rebounded.
In Texas, where a jump in coronavirus cases has led to a new round of business closings and other restrictions, unemployment claims have risen. More than 117,000 people filed for benefits in Texas last week, a jump of more than 20,000 from a week earlier. It was the second straight weekly increase and the most new filings since late May, although still below the peak in early April.
A wide range of indicators recently have suggested that the economic rebound is losing momentum in states where virus cases are rising quickly.
The unemployment data released Thursday didn’t paint a clear picture, however. New filings fell in Oklahoma, Florida and other virus hot spots, and rose only slightly in Arizona. Claims rose in New Jersey and New York, states where the virus is comparatively under control. And economists caution against reading too much into week-to-week changes in state filings, which can be volatile.
Congress created the emergency Pandemic Unemployment Assistance program in March to extend benefits to independent contractors, self-employed workers and others who don’t qualify for regular state unemployment insurance. The effort got off to a slow start: Many states struggled to roll out the program while dealing with a record number of regular unemployment claims. Jobless workers across the country reported encountering jammed websites, lost paperwork and confusing or contradictory instructions.
Those issues have spilled into the data itself. Backlogs, data-entry errors and other issues have made it hard to know how many people are receiving benefits under the program, or exactly when their claims were first filed. At least some states appear to be counting the same recipients multiple times.
But economists say there is little doubt that the program is helping millions of workers who would ordinarily fall through the cracks of the unemployment safety net. More than 10 million people have filed claims under the emergency pandemic program, which is set to expire at the end of the year.
A weekly $600 federal supplement for all jobless workers is scheduled to end this month. The Paycheck Protection Program, an effort designed to preserve jobs by offering forgivable loans to small business, was recently extended through October.
Liz Etheredge, the chief executive of Mecklenburg Paint in Charlotte, North Carolina, said the federal loan made it possible for her to keep workers employed.
The spring paint season was just starting when the pandemic hit. “Oh, gosh, things just pretty much stopped,” said Etheredge, whose company also handles property management.
Initially she helped most of her 30 employees apply for unemployment benefits, which she said was time consuming and confusing. “One day I waited on hold for three hours to reach somebody” with the state to work out glitches with benefit applications, she said, “and then another day I waited two hours.”
She applied for a Paycheck Protection Program loan, hoping to avoid permanently laying off painters.
“It came just in time,” said Etheredge, who was able to avoid using up her savings.
She has put everyone back on the payroll through the use of her loan money, so she expects that the entire amount will be forgiven.
“I just worry how this country is going to pay it all back,” she said.
Lisa D. Cook, a professor of economics and international relations at Michigan State University, worries what will happen when these assistance programs dry up.
“At the heart of this is job loss,” said Cook, who testified before a congressional committee this week. State and local governments are laying off health care and education workers, and eviction bans are expiring even though a significant chunk of household renters and businesses are having trouble making payments.
“I just worry about this all piling up in the system,” she said.
Many jobless workers may have to wait a long time for the labor market to improve. The Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development said this week that high unemployment would probably persist in the United States and other developed countries at least until 2022.
-The New York Times Company-
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-
NEW YORK -- Champions of plant-based meat see an opportunity to make inroads with American shoppers in the wake of coronavirus outbreaks at US slaughterhouses that have pressured meat supply.
Prices of conventional protein have surged in recent weeks following the temporary closure of at least 18 meat processing plants in the US at a time of already-elevated demand due to panic buying and pantry loading.
The upshot is that producers of plant-based steaks, nuggets and sausages see a chance to win over shoppers from a broader set of consumers.
"Relative to higher prices in the protein market today, we can make significant inroads into consumers and help them expand their choices of proteins," Beyond Meat Chief Executive Ethan Brown said this week.
Brown added that the company plans "heavier discounting" of some products to make them more competitive with old-fashioned meat.
Another emerging player in plant-based meat, Impossible Foods, also from California, this week launched in Kroger, the nation's biggest grocery chain.
The move expands the retail footprint by 18-fold to 2,700 retail locations, said the company, which boasts that its products can be used in stews, sauces or on a barbecue.
"We are moving as quickly as possible to expand with additional outlets and in more retail channels," said Impossible Foods President Dennis Woodside.
Part of the opportunity is that the disruptions from coronavirus comes on the heels of the hit from African swine fever, which has hit Asia's pork supply.
"Agricultural challenges in commodity crop production and processing will be slower to percolate into the food chain, meaning plant-based burgers and chicken alternatives have a window of opportunity right now to present themselves as more reliable alternatives –- or potentially the only choice –- next to empty meat cases in grocery stores," said Sara Olsen of Lux Research.
UPHEAVAL PRESENTS TEST, OPPORTUNITY
Though growing fast, alternative meat accounts for just a tiny portion of the current market.
Beyond Meat estimates that its products have reached just 3.6 percent of US households. The company's revenues in the just-ended quarter more than doubled to $97.1 million, but that is still a pittance compared to the $10.1 billion reported by Tyson Foods in the same period.
But COVID-19 has exposed the meat processing plants as a weak link in the supply chain, denting supply at a time of intense demand.
Fresh beef sales rose by more than 45 percent and chicken by more than 40 percent over the last eight weeks compared with last year, according to Nielsen.
US slaughterhouses have emerged as outbreak hotspots in several states, compelling plant closures, especially for pork and beef. Crowded workspaces are common at the plants, making social distancing difficult.
The Farm Bureau has estimated that pork processing capacity has been reduced by as much as 20 percent and beef processing capacity as much as ten percent.
Costco this week became the latest big grocer to limit consumer meat purchases, joining Kroger and Wegmans.
On Wednesday, fast-food chain Wendy's said some of its restaurants have stopped offering beef products online because of tight supply, prompting it to shift to marketing around chicken for which supplies are more robust.
Alternative meat companies have not been immune from upheaval amid COVID-19.
Beyond Meat withdrew its 2020 financial forecast due to COVID-19 uncertainty and said it had seen a big drop-off in demand from restaurants and other food-service customers that had led it to reroute products to retail stores where sales have been strong. The company will also go slow on some new product launches, such as breakfast sausage offering.
But Beyond Meat's Brown expressed confidence in the company's prospects
"There is an opportunity for the consumer to become more aware of a different model of doing this," he said. "And we want to be as aggressive as we can to provide the consumer with that additional option."
Agence France-Presse
RIYADH -- G20 agriculture ministers on Tuesday pledged to ensure "sufficient" global food supplies amid the coronavirus pandemic as the UN warned the number of people facing acute hunger globally could nearly double.
"We will work together to help ensure that sufficient, safe, affordable, and nutritious food continues to be available and accessible to all people, including the poorest, the most vulnerable, and displaced people," said the ministers from the 20 most advanced economies.
"Under the current challenging circumstances, we stress the importance of avoiding food losses and waste caused by disruptions throughout food supply chains, which could exacerbate food insecurity and nutrition risks and economic loss," they said after a virtual meeting hosted by the group's current president Saudi Arabia.
As COVID-19 lockdowns disrupt the global economy, the G20 ministers also said they were working to prevent "excessive food price volatility" in international markets.
The ministers stressed it was important that coronavirus restrictions do not create "unnecessary barriers" to trade and food supply chains.
The number of people facing acute food insecurity could increase to 265 million in 2020, from 135 million in 2019, as a result of the economic impact of COVID-19, the United Nation's World Food Program warned on Tuesday.
The warning came as a report by the WFP and its partners said food insecurity had already risen last year before the outbreak of the coronavirus crisis.
It found that 135 million people in 55 countries were living in acute food crises or outright humanitarian emergencies last year.
Agence France-Presse
SEOUL - Temperature checks on voters, separate booths for those with fevers, special polling stations for the quarantined: South Koreans headed to the polls Wednesday with a big turnout expected despite the coronavirus threat.
South Korea is the first country with a major virus outbreak to hold a national election since the global pandemic began, and a complex web of safety measures was spun around the ballot, as well as the campaigning that preceded it.
The parliamentary poll vote kicked off at 6 am (5 a.m. in Manila) with 43.9 million voters eligible to cast their ballots.
All citizens must wear protective masks and undergo temperature checks at the polling station. Those found to have fever will cast their ballots in separate booths to be disinfected after each use.
Voters have also been asked to wear plastic gloves after cleaning their hands with sanitizer at polling stations, and to keep at least one meter apart.
"We are now holding an election at a very difficult time amid social distancing campaigns and a contraction of economic activity," election commission chairman Kwon Soon-il said Tuesday.
"Please go to the polling stations tomorrow and show that you are the owners of this country."
South Korea was among the first countries to be hit by the virus outside China, where the coronavirus first emerged.
For a time South Korea had the world's second-largest outbreak, before it was largely brought under control through a widespread testing and a contact-tracing drive.
Those self-quarantining at home will be allowed out to vote in a 100-minute window around the polls' 6:00 pm close, as long as they do not show virus symptoms.
Special polling stations were set up at eight central quarantine facilities at the weekend to enable residents to vote.
But anyone who is staying at home and has developed symptoms is effectively disenfranchised.
Campaigning has also been affected by the outbreak: instead of the traditional handshakes and distributing of name cards, candidates have been keeping their distance from citizens, bowing and offering an occasional fist bump.
Many have turned to online media such as Youtube and Instagram to connect with voters, while some have even volunteered to disinfect parts of their constituencies.
RECORD EARLY TURNOUT
A survey conducted by Gallup Korea last week showed that 27 percent of respondents were reluctant to vote due to the epidemic.
But 72 percent said they were not worried, and a high turnout is expected after 11.7 million people, including President Moon Jae-in, voted early over the weekend.
South Korea's relatively quick and effective handling of the epidemic has been a boon for the left-leaning Moon ahead of the vote, largely seen as a referendum on his performance.
Just a few months ago he was assailed by critics over sluggish economic growth and his dovish approach to North Korea.
But fewer than 40 new coronavirus cases were recorded on each of the six days up to and including Monday, the latest available figures.
Overall, the country has had nearly 11,000 infections, and 222 deaths.
Moon's approval rating has jumped from 41 percent in late January to 57 percent last week, according to Gallup polls.
Moon's position is not at issue as he is directly elected, but while his Democratic party is the largest in parliament it does not hold a majority, relying on minority support to pass legislation.
The country uses a mix of first-past-the-post constituencies and proportional representation, and some high school students are voting for the first time after Seoul lowered the age limit from 19 to 18.
South Korea bans opinion polls in the last week before an election, but the last available gave the Democratic party 44 percent support, a huge lead over the main conservative opposition United Future Party, on 23 percent.
At first the coronavirus outbreak worked against the government, said Hahn Kyu-sup, a communications professor at Seoul National University, "but now with the virus spreading to other countries and South Korea receiving a relatively good evaluation in comparison, the epidemic has become an advantage".
Agence France-Presse
NEW YORK -- Asian stocks were set for a modest bounce on Tuesday as US stock futures edged higher, although fears the coronavirus could drag on the global economy for months are likely to temper investor confidence.
E-Mini futures for the S&P 500 nudged 0.3 percent higher, while Nikkei futures pointed to an opening gain of about 70 points.
All eyes will be on China's trade data, to be released on Tuesday, which is expected to show exports tumbling 14 percent in March from a year ago, as the coronavirus shutters businesses around the world, crippling demand and economic growth.
Indeed, some analysts are saying any optimism over signs the outbreak may be peaking in hard-hit cities is quickly being offset by concerns that it may be awhile yet before businesses recover.
"Signs of the outbreak peaking -- or at least slowing in some regions -- have started to turn the talk to when restrictions on activity can be eased," analysts at JPMorgan said in a note.
"Short of the unlikely near-term event of a vaccine or significant herd immunity, restarting economies...may be challenging," the analysts wrote.
Wall Street indexes ended mixed on Monday with the Dow and S&P 500 falling while a 6.2 percent gain in Amazon shares helped the Nasdaq end higher.
In Asia, an expected trade slump in China will reinforce views that the world is headed for a global recession this year, despite an unprecedented burst of stimulus from policymakers in the last two months to shore up growth.
Many analysts already expect China's economy, the world's second-largest, to have contracted sharply in the March quarter for the first time since at least 1992. China reports its first-quarter gross domestic product data on April 17.
Elsewhere, Britain's finance minister told colleagues the UK economy could shrink by up to 30 percent this quarter due to the coronavirus lockdown that has shuttered businesses.
In another sign of worries about struggling global demand, oil prices barely reacted to a global deal to cut output by a record amount of nearly 10 percent of world supply. US crude was up just 39 cents at $22.8, well under its January peak of $63.27.
A skittish market helped gold prices to cling to highs not seen in more than seven years at $1,718.46 an ounce.
In the United States, which has recorded the highest number of casualties from the virus in the world, President Donald Trump said on Monday his administration was close to completing a plan to re-open the US economy, even though some state governors have signalled that the decision on when to restart businesses lay with them.
The dollar continued to extend losses on the back of the US Federal Reserve's massive new lending program. The dollar index fell 0.105 percent, while the Japanese yen was flat versus the greenback at 107.68 per dollar. The euro was also little changed against the dollar at $1.0917.
The yield for benchmark 10-year US Treasury notes edged higher to 0.7697 percent.
-reuters-
WASHINGTON -- The World Bank is seeing "a huge willingness" on the part of official bilateral creditors to suspend debt payments by the world's poorest countries so they can focus on fighting the coronavirus pandemic, a top Bank official said on Monday.
World Bank Managing Director Axel van Trotsenburg said the Group of 20 major economies and the Group of Seven (G7) had been largely supportive of a call by the World Bank and International Monetary Fund for a temporary halt in debt payments.
"Everybody understands that we need to help the poorest countries. There is a huge willingness - as in nobody is questioning that, absolutely nobody," he told Reuters in an interview. "I think we are in a good place to move forward."
Finance officials from the G7 and G20 countries are due to discuss the debt relief issue this week. Three sources familiar with the process said details were still being finalized, but they expected the G20 countries to back a suspension of debt payments at least until the end of the year.
World Bank President David Malpass said last week he expected a "broad endorsement" of the proposal by the 25-member joint Development Committee of the World Bank and IMF on Friday.
The World Bank and the IMF have begun disbursing emergency aid to countries struggling to contain the virus and mitigate its economic impact. They first issued their call for debt relief on March 25, but China - a major creditor - and other G20 nations have not formally endorsed the proposal.
The IMF announced on Monday a first round of debt relief grants to 25 of its poorest member countries, including Afghanistan, Mali, Haiti and Yemen.
The funds will cover those countries' debt service payments to the Fund for the next 6 months, but the IMF is pushing donor countries to more than double the $500 million available in its Catastrophe Containment and Relief Trust so it can extend the debt relief for a full two years.
The IMF-World Bank push for broader bilateral debt relief won significant backing over the past week, including from Pope Francis and the Institute of International Finance (IIF), which represents over 450 global banks, hedge funds and sovereign wealth funds.
The two institutions are urging China and other big creditors to suspend debt payments from May 1 for International Development Association (IDA) countries that are home to a quarter of the world's population and two-thirds of the world's population living in extreme poverty. With a combined gross domestic product of around $2 trillion, those countries face official bilateral debt service obligations of $14 billion through the end of 2020, the World Bank estimates.
The World Bank has already approved $2.1 billion in emergency funding for 32 countries to respond to the COVID-19 crisis, with decisions on 40 more expected this month.
Van Trotsenburg said it was crucial that commercial creditors also provide debt relief for the poorest countries, which have also seen massive outflows of capital and a sharp drop-off in remittances by citizens living overseas.
"This is a global problem affecting everybody. Unless everybody acts, it will not add up," van Trotsenburg said. "That means every institution has the obligation to see what can it mobilize to the best of its ability, and to be fast."
IIF President Tim Adams said official bilateral debt relief could be provided relatively quickly but that it would take longer to provide commercial debt relief given the lack of details and oversight about who exactly holds all the debt.
Van Trotsenburg said it was also important to ensure that unsustainable debt levels not impede the poorest countries' movement toward more sustainable development, when asked about the need for a broader round of debt restructuring.
Adams said that discussion was premature, with circumstances and needs varying widely from country to country. But he said the crisis highlighted the need for greater transparency about lending to poor countries by China and others.
-reuters-
MANILA – Central banks should take advantage of low inflation to “print lots of money” to support their economies as governments around the world implement lockdowns to check the spread of COVID-19, an analyst said on Tuesday.
The risk of sparking hyperinflation, similar to what happened in Zimbabwe and Argentina is very low right now, according to Jeffrey Halley, senior market analyst at currency trader OANDA.
“It's actually not a bad time to do it because we basically have zero to no inflation in the world,” Halley said in an interview with ANC.
"There’s never been a better time for governments to go and print lots of money and throw it at the economy."
Halley said small businesses could benefit from central banks “directly giving money” to businesses because firms are more concerned about cash flow rather than interest rates.
“Small businesses don’t care what their borrowing costs are. They care about having enough money to pay their staff and their invoices at the end of the month.”
He said that some of the major world economies might be in for a “hard landing” despite the stimulus programs they have announced.
“I think what we really have to understand here is that these stimulus packages are here to keep the lights on in the global economy they’re not there to be a magic panacea that turns that ship around and immediately starts growth up again.”
source: news.abs-cbn.com
Simon Powell watches fever hotspots in America. Stephen Innes pores over real-time measurements of vehicle traffic -- or the lack of it-- in cities around the globe. And, Mark Galasiewski studies stock performance charts from the time of Sars and the 1968 flu pandemic.
The three financial analysts are tapping diverse and sometimes quite esoteric data to try to predict how the spreading coronavirus pandemic will affect the price of assets -- everything from stocks on Hong Kong's Hang Seng Index to gold and orange juice futures.
Even obesity rates in the US may be worth pondering because they might explain why young people seem to account for a higher portion of infections in America than in China. That, in turn, has implications not only for short-term stock prices but also for the future of the US workforce.
And those orange juice futures? They spiked, signaling a surge in demand for Vitamin C just when supplies were getting harder to transport.
"Economics in the time of Covid-19 is a different beast, with the best data being real time that provides insight into the extent of the slowdown," said Thailand-based Innes, chief global asset strategist at AxiCorp, who finds himself up before dawn to check data from other parts of the world.
"I'm using more real-time data now than I ever have before. I would never ever care about initial (US unemployment) claims, but it is huge now. ... I would never wake up at 2 a.m. (to check it) on such a regular basis," he said.
"One of the more interesting ones is traffic data from TomTom. It shows the speed with which Houston went into a virtual shutdown, which both illustrates the ghost town outlook due to the collapse of the shale industry and mobility restrictions," he explained.
Coronavirus turns stock markets into the wildest ride on the planet " and that's not likely to change soon
Even from a strictly financial perspective, this moment is like being trapped in the early chapters of a Stephen King horror novel, he says. And the saga of this pandemic is unfolding in terrifying twists and turns that are buffeting the portfolios handled by professionals and family investors alike.
Here are five questions investors should be asking.
1. When will markets hit bottom?
Volatility is generally expected to continue in Hong Kong and elsewhere for at least the next few weeks.
Powell, the global head of thematic research at Jefferies, thinks global markets have further to fall.
"What the market is trying to figure out is, 'Are we in for a global recession? Could it actually be a thing that starts with a 'D' -- a depression? And how much stimulus might be needed to dampen the impact on people's lives?
"If the economy grinds to a halt globally, then maybe there could be another leg down in markets ... This shock could be bigger than anything we've seen since WWII in terms of shock to global trade and global demand," Powell said.
Some analysts believe a bottom is likely already behind us " at least in Hong Kong and China, and possibly in the US.
"From now on, the (Hong Kong) market will stabilize a bit, because the wave of panic selling and liquidation is over," said Alex Wong, director of asset management at Ample Capital.
Twice in recent weeks -- on March 19 and March 23 -- the Hang Seng Index closed below 22,000. It won't go lower, Wong predicts, saying it will now trade between 22,000 and 26,000, as traders finish shifting to more promising sectors and gain confidence in making larger bets.
2. Is anywhere a fairly safe place to invest?
Predictably, analysts point in different directions.
In Hong Kong, avoid retail, local property, as well as airlines, restaurants, casinos and anything else connected with tourism, argues Wong of Ample Capital.
Last week saw investors shifting out of those sectors and into social media giant Tencent and other new-economy stocks likely to thrive on lockdowns and work-from-home directives.
Could coronavirus lockdown have big upside for China's new economy stocks as users and smartphones become BFFs?
Yet casino operator Galaxy Entertainment is one of the pummeled stocks liked by Morningstar's Lorraine Tan. She also points to Anta Sports, which like Galaxy is listed in Hong Kong, and US-listed Ctrip.com, a Chinese online travel agency.
"It has been difficult to keep on top of the rapidly shifting environment, but collectively we find more opportunities to buy than sell shares at the current level," said Tan, Morningstar's director of equity research, Asia.
"We think there are a number of names with strong competitive advantage that investors should consider adding to their portfolios as well as heavily sold-down stocks that could see a good post-virus bounce," she added.
China's health care, infrastructure stocks lure global bargain hunters even as coronavirus pandemic roiled equity markets in March
In the US, Wong likes e-commerce giant Amazon, Microsoft, and Netflix.
Internet-based companies are seeing a surge in traffic, Goldman Sachs analysts note.
Those include Tencent Holdings, China Literature, office software maker Kingsoft, all listed in Hong Kong, and Chinese game-streaming platform Huya, and Baozun, which helps foreign brands sell to online Chinese customers, both of which are listed in the US.
3. Is a virus-triggered downturn different from an ordinary financial crisis?
In many ways, yes.
US Federal Reserve chairman Jerome Powell stressed that the US economy, the world's largest, was fundamentally strong before the pandemic and predicted that it will rebound quickly once the virus's spread is controlled. That makes today's situation different from, say, the 2008-2009 global financial crisis, which was caused by underlying financial problems.
But the modern world has never been assaulted by a pandemic of this scale, and its threat to global GDP is undeniably real, as is the danger -- pointed out by US infectious disease expert Anthony Fauci -- that this coronavirus come back until there is a vaccine.
"We're dealing with a pandemic economic crisis that, at this stage, is medically unstoppable, which is flat-out scary, which we only thought existed in Stephen King's horror stories," AxiCorp's Innes said.
"We tend to overlook that during the (2008) Lehman(Brothers' bankruptcy) crash, outside the financial sector, life went on. In essence, restaurants took bookings; taxis took rides; shops were still bustling. This time around, the entire world is on the precipice of shutting down. Unemployment will soar," Innes said.
Indeed, US unemployment already has, skyrocketing to an unprecedented 3.3 million claims last week alone -- up from about 200,000 just 3 weeks ago.
Yet Galasiewski, chief equity analyst for Asia and emerging markets at Elliott Wave International, is positively bullish. His study of infectious diseases has lead him to see them as long-term buy signals in the local markets. Sars in 2002, for example, led to a tremendous bull run in Hong Kong. He is now especially bullish on stocks listed in China, where the coronavirus outbreak began.
"A big advance has begun in the main Asia and emerging market indexes. This is not just a rebound. It's the early stages of a secular bull market," he said, referring to a long period of rising stock prices due to policy supports.
4. What data might offer clues for smart asset management?
Analysts are closely watching Italy's new infection totals to see whether its containment efforts are beginning to work. The numbers coming out of Italy will help analysts project the length and depth of the crisis in the world's largest economy, where the pandemic is much newer.
The US Federal Reserve and government have thrown in the "kitchen sink" to try to keep businesses and workers afloat. So analysts are looking for economic indicators that show that the US effort is having the desired effects of increased lending and stable stock markets, for example.
And, of course, analysts are watching for news of promising therapies and a vaccine, generally not expected until next year.
Unusual windows into the virus include TomTom.com, which shows real time traffic around the globe, Kinsa's tracking of fevers in America through smart thermometers (healthweatherus.com), and the Centre for Disease Control and Prevention's website, which is tracking infections and deaths, as well as outbreaks of influenza-like illnesses on its FLUVIEW chart.
"I never thought I would be looking at the collective body temperature of people in the US," said Jefferies analyst Powell.
5. What are the 'what ifs' ahead?
What if the pandemic dies away but comes back with equal fury?
What if people who recover remain infectious?
What if the disease causes permanent lung damage to young people? "Could we end up with a generation of people who are disabled and sick as a result of what this virus does?" Jefferies' Powell asks.
What if the pandemic explodes in India, a country with 1.3 billion people, an inadequate health care system and little sanitation for many countless slum dwellers?
India, now under a nationwide lockdown for 21 days, is the world's largest supplier of generic drugs. It has already halted the export of ventilators and an antimalarial drug used with some success against the new coronavirus.
What if a vaccine simply can't be found?
Despite everyone's endless "what ifs" about the future health of the world's people and finances, Powell, an experience yachtsman's who has weathered frightening tempests before remains hopeful.
"I am hugely optimistic that humankind can turn a veritable firehose of intellectual property and money and research and development at this virus to understand it and find a therapy and find a vaccine and get it out. Humankind has defeated many pandemic viruses ...
"But investors do need to be cautious."
Copyright (c) 2020. South China Morning Post Publishers Ltd. All rights reserved.
TOKYO -- Asian stocks rose on Friday as investors wagered policymakers will roll out additional stimulus measures to combat the coronavirus pandemic after US unemployment filings surged to a record.
MSCI's broadest index of Asia-Pacific shares outside Japan rose 1 percent. Australian shares were up 2.02 percent, while Japan's Nikkei stock index rose 3.65 percent.
E-Mini futures for the S&P 500 rose 0.81 percent in Asia following 3 consecutive days of gains in the S&P 500 on Wall Street.
The dollar nursed losses against major currencies as central banks' steps to solve a dollar shortage in funding markets started to gain traction.
The US House of Representatives is expected to pass a $2 trillion stimulus package later on Friday that will flood the world's largest economy with money to stem the damage caused by the pandemic.
The US Federal Reserve has already slashed rates to zero and launched quantitative easing. The Fed will also take the unprecedented step of offering a direct backstop for corporate loans.
The United States is now the country with the most coronavirus cases, surpassing even China, where the flu-like illness first emerged late last year. Policymakers may need to offer more stimulus as the virus slams the brakes on economic activity and increases healthcare spending.
"I'm not sure what measures are left, but the reaction in stocks shows some people hoping for more stimulus thought the market was a little oversold," said Yukio Ishizuki, FX strategist at Daiwa Securities in Tokyo.
"Currencies tell a different story. The dollar is the lead actor. The mad rush to buy dollars due to liquidity concerns is starting to fade."
The number of Americans filing claims for unemployment benefits surged to a record of more than 3 million last week as strict measures to contain the coronavirus pandemic ground the country to a sudden halt, data showed on Thursday.
The jobless blowout was announced shortly after Federal Reserve Chairman Jerome Powell said that the United States "may well be in recession," an unusual acknowledgement by a Fed chair that the economy may be contracting even before data confirms it.
Global equity markets took the data in their stride, partly because most central banks have already aggressively eased policy and governments are backing this up with big fiscal spending.
Leaders of the Group of 20 major economies pledged on Thursday to inject over $5 trillion into the global economy to limit job and income losses from the coronavirus and "do whatever it takes to overcome the pandemic."
In the currency market, the greenback fell 0.25 percent to 109.34 yen in Asia on Friday, on pace for a 1.3 percent weekly decline.
The dollar was also headed for weekly declines against the Swiss franc, the pound, and the euro .
The US currency's fall after two weeks of gains suggests that the Fed's efforts to relieve a crunch in the dollar funding market are working, some analysts said.
The yield on benchmark 10-year Treasury notes rose slightly in Asia to 0.8383 percent, while the two-year yield edged up to 0.2946 percent.
Yields were still headed for a weekly decline, taking cues from the Fed's extraordinary steps to bolster markets and the $2 trillion stimulus package.
US crude ticked up 1.77 percent to $23 a barrel in Asia. Energy markets have been caught in a tug-of-war between hopes for stimulus spending and worries about excess supplies of crude.
Gold, normally bought as a safe haven, was slightly lower. Spot gold fell 0.30 percent to $1,626.58 per ounce.
Gold market participants remained concerned about a supply squeeze following a sharp divergence between prices in London and in New York. The coronavirus has grounded planes normally used to transport gold and closed precious metals refineries
source: news.abs-cbn.com
NEW YORK/LONDON -- Stock markets soared on Tuesday, with a gauge of global equities posting its biggest gain since the coronavirus roiled financial markets a month ago, as the US Congress zoned in on a $2 trillion stimulus package to curb the pandemic's economic toll.
Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell said a deal was "very close" for an aid package that investors hoped would turn around markets reeling from the biggest downturn since the global financial crisis more than a decade ago.
The market rally came a day after the US Federal Reserve's offer of unlimited bond-buying to help avert a global depression failed to persuade skittish investors, at least initially.
The mood improved on Tuesday, with US gold futures climbing as much as 6.7 percent to $1,672.60 an ounce and the dollar halting its steady rise as the moves by the Fed and others eased the need for cash and slashed the demand for dollars.
The rally led some to suggest a rout that has trimmed US and European equities by roughly 30 percent in the past month may be near an end.
"We're seeing some signs that a bottoming is happening," said Neel Shah, senior trader at Peak6 Capital Management. "The next big step is the Senate passing the stimulus bill."
US and European stocks jumped 6 percent or more and the dollar index, a basket of major trading currencies, slid.
MSCI's gauge of stocks across the globe gained 8.39 percent, the largest single-day gain since equities tumbled from all-time highs a month ago and since the height of the global financial crisis in October 2008.
The broad pan-European STOXX 600 index rose 8.40 percent, its strongest session since late-2008. The index is still down about 30 percent from a record peak hit in February.
German stocks jumped 11 percent and British blue chips added 9 percent as both bourses also posted their best sessions since 2008.
Europe's so-called fear gauge fell to 52.53, its lowest in nearly 2 weeks, after spiking to 12-year highs earlier this month.
Emerging market stocks rose 5.73 percent.
The rally was wide, lifting most stocks, with only 11 S&P 500 stocks declining on the day.
On Wall Street, the Dow Jones Industrial Average rose 2,112.98 points, or 11.37 percent, to 20,704.91. The S&P 500 gained 209.93 points, or 9.38 percent, to 2,447.33 and the Nasdaq Composite added 557.18 points, or 8.12 percent, to 7,417.86.
Measures the Fed unveiled on Monday to boost liquidity across debt markets and backstop lending were seen by investors as helping market conditions.
"The Fed's measures are unprecedented, and they have been extremely proactive in preventing this external shock from morphing into a wider funding crisis," said Vasileios Gkionakis, head of FX strategy at Lombard Odier.
The Fed also will expand its mandate to buy corporate and municipal bonds and backstop a series of other measures that analysts estimate will deliver more than $4 trillion in loans to non-financial firms.
Other countries unveiled their own measures. South Korea's ravaged market climbed 8.6 percent after the government doubled a planned economic rescue package to 100 trillion won ($80 billion).
In China, mainland stocks posted their biggest gain in three weeks of almost 3 percent, while Japan's Nikkei soared 7 percent, its biggest daily gain in four years.
Still, investors remained wary, as the number of coronavirus infections globally neared 400,000 and new infections brought in from abroad rose in China.
Business activity collapsed from Australia and Japan to Western Europe at a record pace in March, as measures to contain the outbreak hammered the world economy, and Japan said it was postponing the Olympics.
IHS Markit's flash composite Purchasing Managers' Index (PMI) for the euro zone, seen as a good gauge of economic health, plummeted to a record low of 31.4 in March, the biggest one-month fall since the survey began in 1998.
The government and central bank financial support helped calm nerves in bond markets, where yields on two-year US Treasuries hit their lowest since 2013.
The benchmark 10-year US Treasury note fell 31/32 in price to yield 0.8642 percent.
Germany's 10-year yield was up 2 basis points on the day at -0.36 percent, compared with a 4 bps rise before the purchasing managers index (PMI) releases, all small moves when compared to record lows hit at -0.90 percent earlier in March.
ALL ABOUT THE ECONOMY
The impact of the virus on the global economy is evident in a series of growth forecast downgrades and advance readings of PMIs across the world's biggest economies.
German activity plunged to the lowest since the 2009 crisis, driven by a record services contraction, while French activity hit all-time lows. Japan posted its biggest-ever services fall.
However, the prospect of massive Fed funding pushed the greenback 0.26 percent lower against rivals, off three-year peaks , falling against the yen and sliding 1 percent versus the euro.
Brent futures rose 12 cents to settle at $27.15 a barrel, while US West Texas Intermediate (WTI) crude rose 65 cents to settle at $24.01.
source: news.abs-cbn.com
