The Trump administration is quietly organizing a Manhattan Project-style effort to drastically cut the time needed to develop a coronavirus vaccine, with a goal to have 100 million doses ready by year’s end, according to two people familiar with the matter. Called “Operation Warp Speed,” the program will pull together private pharmaceutical companies, government agencies and the military to try to cut the development time for a vaccine by as much as eight months, one of the people said. As part of the arrangement, taxpayers will shoulder much of the financial risk that vaccine candidates may fail, instead of drug companies. President Donald Trump’s top medical advisers, led by the infectious disease expert Anthony Fauci, have repeatedly said that a coronavirus vaccine won’t be ready for 12 to 18 months at best. Until then, White House guidelines envision some economically damaging social-distancing practices maintained even as the U.S. begins to resume a more normal social and business life. Last month, Trump directed Health and Human Services Secretary Alex Azar to speed development of a vaccine, and administration officials have been meeting on the effort for three to four weeks, one of the people said. A meeting on the project was scheduled at the White House on Wednesday. The people asked not to be identified because the project hasn’t yet been publicly announced. A spokesman for the Department of Health and Human Services, Michael Caputo, said the president refused to accept the timeline for standard vaccine development and encouraged a breakthrough process. Vaccine development is typically slow and high risk. The project’s goal is to cut out the slow part, the people said. Operation Warp Speed will use government resources to quickly test the world’s most promising experimental vaccines in animals, then launch coordinated human clinical trials to winnow down the candidates. The best prospective vaccines would go into wider trials at the same time mass production ramps up. The project will cost billions of dollars, one of the people said. And it will almost certainly result in significant waste by making inoculations at scale before knowing if they’ll be safe and effective — meaning that vaccines that fail will be useless. But it could mean having doses of vaccine available for the American public by the end of this year, instead of by next summer. There are at least 70 different coronavirus vaccines in development by drugmakers and research groups, according to the World Health Organization. But drugmakers have not coordinated their efforts to the extent they could through the Warp Speed project, one of the people said. The group is also discussing the use of what’s known as a master protocol to test the vaccines. Instead of multiple clinical trials run by each drugmaker, competing for patients and resources, the government would organize one large trial to test several vaccines at once and advance the most promising ones. It’s not clear how much of Operation Warp Speed is new and how much will involve ongoing projects, such as investments made by BARDA, the Biomedical Advanced Research and Development Authority.
Fed keeps rates close to zero during pandemic fallout
The Federal Reserve kept its main interest rate close to zero on Wednesday, as officials weighed the impact of the heavy dose of liquidity and stimulus already delivered to the US economy in the last two months. At the end of a two-day meeting on Wednesday, the Federal Open Market Committee stopped short of any big new monetary policy action or guidance, but pledged to take additional steps if needed. “The Federal Reserve is committed to using its full range of tools to support the US economy in this challenging time, thereby promoting its maximum employment and price stability goals,” it said. “The coronavirus outbreak is causing tremendous human and economic hardship across the United States and around the world.” The target range of the federal funds rate was maintained between 0 and 0.25 per cent, its level since March 15, when Fed policymakers were forced to slash rates and boost asset purchases to shield the economy from the coronavirus pandemic. In its statement, the FOMC said that it would keep rates close to zero “until it is confident that the economy has weathered recent events and is on track to achieve its maximum employment and price stability goals” — using the same language as in March. It also reiterated that the Fed would “use its tools and act as appropriate to support the economy”, highlighting that the US central bank was still poised for additional action if necessary. The FOMC offered an even more downbeat assessment of the economic outlook than it did in March. “The ongoing public health crisis will weigh heavily on economic activity, employment, and inflation in the near term, and poses considerable risks to the economic outlook over the medium term,” it said. The statement came after new data exposed the economic damage already inflicted by the Covid-19 outbreak on the US economy. Output contracted at an annualised rate of 4.8 per cent in the first quarter of the year, its worst performance since the Great Recession, and the slump is expected to be deeper in the second quarter after at least 26m people were left newly unemployed. The Fed has already stepped in with lower interest rates, a sharp expansion of its balance sheet, the establishment of dollar swap lines with foreign central banks, and the creation of lending facilities with the US Treasury to offer credit to struggling businesses across the country. Trading conditions in critical debt markets have stabilised as a result, buoyed by the Fed’s commitment to expand its efforts as needed. “The committee will closely monitor market conditions and is prepared to adjust its plans as appropriate,” the Fed added in its statement. Jay Powell, the Fed chair, has previously said the US central bank is not considering a move towards negative interest rates, as some of its counterparts around the world have done. However, the Fed still has scope to firm up its commitment to ultra-low rates for a long time, by setting specific targets based on unemployment and inflation levels for any increase. It also has room to expand its asset purchases and credit facilities.
Coronavirus Relief Often Pays Workers More Than Work
Roughly half of all U.S. workers stand to earn more in unemployment benefits than they did at their jobs before the coronavirus pandemic shut down swaths of the U.S. economy, a result of government relief that employers say is complicating plans to reopen businesses. The package of coronavirus stimulus laws Congress passed and President Trump signed in March included a $600 boost to weekly unemployment benefits through July 31. As that support is added to state benefits over the coming weeks, the average weekly payment to a laid-off worker should rise to about $978 from the nearly $378 the Labor Department said was paid on average late last year. Qualified workers will receive the government payout every week through July, and in most cases, the combined $978 weekly payout amounts to better pay than what many workers received before the crisis hit. Labor Department statistics show half of full-time workers earned $957 or less each week in the first quarter of 2020. The stimulus measure means that in coming months many low-wage workers will avoid both significant harm to their finances and the potential health risks—and further virus spread—of returning to crowded workplaces. That money in consumers’ pockets in turn puts the U.S. economy on firmer footing to rebound once authorities allow businesses to reopen. Figures on prior earnings of the more than 26 million Americans who sought unemployment benefits from March 15 through April 18 aren’t yet available, but the initial wave of job losses were concentrated among restaurant, hospitality and retail workers, whose median hourly pay is less than the minimum now paid under enhanced unemployment benefits. The $600 bonus payment was intended to make sure the average worker had full wage replacement in the months following mass layoffs caused by the pandemic. Last year, states’ unemployment benefits replaced about 45% of laid-off workers’ wages, according to the National Employment Law Project, which advocates for low-wage workers. Congress opted for a flat amount because decades-old technology underpinning state unemployment systems didn’t allow for payments to be calibrated to each worker’s lost wages. “If we waited for the systems to be set for 100% wage replacement, the payments wouldn’t go out until June,” said Michele Evermore, a NELP senior policy analyst. She added that under the existing system, many laid-off workers waited weeks to have their unemployment claims processed and some still are waiting for the enhanced payments. The $600 payment aligns with working full time at $15 an hour—the minimum-wage level many Democrats in Congress support. The federal minimum wage—followed by 21 states—is $7.25 an hour and has been unchanged for a decade. Restaurant and front-end retail workers in those states, including Texas and Georgia, are likely to receive more in benefits than from their jobs.
Fauci: ‘Bad fall’ in US if virus treatment not found
Director of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases Dr. Anthony Fauci stated on Tuesday that the United States may encounter an unfavorable situation during the fall months if an effective treatment for the novel coronavirus isn’t discovered by then. Speaking in an interview with The Economic Club of Washington, DC, Fauci stressed that the disease will not simply vanish, adding that he thinks “it’s inevitable that we will have a return of the virus” if it even disappears at some point, as cited by CNBC. The states should not restart its local economy and businesses too early as it could cause the reemergence of the same problems the country has been having over the past several weeks, Fauci underlined.
Trump to sign executive order to address food supply liability
https://youtu.be/W4I1Ot00d00
President Donald Trump plans to order meat-processing plants to remain open, declaring them critical infrastructure as the nation confronts growing disruptions to the food supply from the coronavirus outbreak, a person familiar with the matter said. Trump plans to use the Defense Production Act to order the companies to stay open during the pandemic, and the government will provide additional protective gear for employees as well as guidance, according to the person.
Trump signaled the executive action at the White House on Tuesday, saying he planned to sign an order aimed at Tyson Foods Inc.’s liability, which had become “a road block” for the company. He didn’t elaborate.
The order, though, will not be limited to Tyson, the person said. It will affect many processing plants supplying beef, chicken, eggs and pork.
Trump’s order sets the stage for a showdown between America’s meat giants, who’ve been pressing to reopen plants hit by mass outbreaks, and local officials and labor unions who’ve called for closures and are trying to prevent the virus from spreading. The president himself has long agitated for Americans to return to work and restore a U.S. economy crippled by social distancing measures.
The White House decided to make the move amid estimates that as much as 80% of U.S. meat production capacity could shut down. Meat stocks rose on the news. Continue reading “Trump to sign executive order to address food supply liability”
U.S. Coronavirus Forces Farmers to Destroy Their Crops
Farmer Carl Grooms has been planning harvests for decades but now he is getting ready to plow under his nearly ripe peppers and beans because there is no market to buy them—and he doesn’t want to watch them rot. As the coronavirus pandemic disrupts supply chains, American farmers are dumping milk, throwing out eggs and plowing under healthy crops. Produce suppliers are especially vulnerable to surpluses because fruits and vegetables are perishable and can’t be stored. “We’re not just going to let [the food] die, we’ll go in and destroy it,” said Mr. Grooms, the 74-year-old owner of Fancy Farms in Plant City, Fla. “It’s a mental thing, you don’t want to see your crop rot and suffer.” Mr. Grooms said that a few weeks ago, berry orders evaporated nearly overnight and the strawberry harvest collapsed, with much of it remaining in the fields rather than being picked and shipped. It left a stench of rotting berries hanging over his farm. Right now, he has the labor to pick ripe squash, but he has to sell it for a fraction of typical prices, just enough to cover his workers’ pay and the cost of boxes to ship the vegetables, he said. Lettuce producer Mark Borba, in Huron, Calif., said he has had to plow under 230 of 680 acres of recently harvested lettuce since the pandemic swept the country a month ago. He said demand fell off so sharply from restaurants, schools and other large customers that his crews had to unpack 9,000 cartons of lettuce from a warehouse where they had awaited shipment and dump them back in the fields to be plowed under. “The demand [from the large customers] just went to zero,” said Mr. Borba, who manages 10,000 acres under his Borba Farms. “And not only did we lose restaurants and schools, but people were going to the grocery store buying nonperishable stuff to put in the pantry. They were not buying leafy greens.” On Friday, President Trump announced a $19 billion relief program for the agriculture sector. The effort, called the Coronavirus Food Assistance Program, will include $16 billion in direct payments to farmers and ranchers and $3 billion in mass purchases of dairy, meat and produce that will be distributed through food banks.
Coronavirus detected on particles of air pollution
Honduras has ‘incredible’ results with hydroxychloroquine – Trump
United States President Donald Trump stated on Friday the president of Honduras told him the country had “incredible” results in treating COVID-19 with hydroxychloroquine. The president claimed he saw both positive and negative studies about the usage of the drug, stating, however, tests should be conducted to determine whether hydroxychloroquine should be used. In addition, Trump denied pressuring anyone to promote the use of the malaria drug, which the country’s Food and Drugs Administration warned shouldn’t be used for the treatment of COVID-19 outside of a controlled environment.
Trump signs $484 billion coronavirus relief package
Controversial idea to speed coronavirus vaccine gains ground
An idea that might seem outlandish at first is gaining some ground as a way to speed development of a coronavirus vaccine: intentionally infecting people with the virus as part of a trial. The idea, known as a “challenge trial,” would deliberately infect a few hundred young, healthy volunteers, who were first given either the potential vaccine or a placebo. Those picked would be well informed about the risks. That would allow the effectiveness of a vaccine to be determined faster than a traditional clinical trial, which would require that researchers wait for some of the participants to become infected in the course of their daily lives. Supporters say the challenge trial could save several months in the search for a vaccine, which is widely seen as critical for people to feel confident again with social gatherings. A group of 35 House lawmakers, led by Reps. Bill Foster (D-Ill.) and Donna Shalala (D-Fla.), a former secretary of Health and Human Services, wrote to the Food and Drug Administration this week lending their support to the idea. “Our situation in this pandemic is analogous to war, in which there is a long tradition of volunteers risking their health and lives on dangerous missions for which they understand the risks and are willing to do so in order to help save the lives of others,” they wrote in the letter. Stanley Plotkin, a renowned vaccinologist who helped invent the rubella vaccine, also endorsed the idea in an article in the journal Vaccine, along with Arthur Caplan, a bioethicist at New York University. They wrote that the vaccine trial process “normally takes months to years, during which [coronavirus] will infect and possibly kill millions. Acceleration of that standard process is necessary.” Older people have been among the biggest casualties of the coronavirus globally, while younger people have generally shown a higher chance of recovery. Still, the idea of purposefully infecting people with a potentially deadly virus raises some obvious ethical objections. In a statement to The Hill on Thursday, FDA spokesman Michael Felberbaum said the agency is “exploring all possible options” to advance a coronavirus vaccine, but also raised a note of skepticism about human challenge trials, pointing to testing in animals as a possible alternative. “The FDA is exploring all possible options to most efficiently advance the development of safe and effective vaccines that will prevent COVID-19,” Felberbaum said, while adding that “human challenge studies used to develop a COVID-19 vaccine may present ethical and feasibility issues that can be avoided with the use of animal models.” Jeffrey Kahn, director of the Johns Hopkins Berman Institute of Bioethics, said he did not see how an institutional review board that oversees research would approve a human challenge trial for the coronavirus. “Consent can only do so much work,” he said, raising the hypothetical of whether it would be ethical to take out someone’s heart and replace it with an experimental device simply because the person consented. Challenge trials have been conducted in the past, but they are usually done to test vaccines for diseases that can be cured, like malaria. It would be a sharp break from precedent to do a challenge trial for a virus with no known cure that is as deadly as the coronavirus. Even if the volunteers were all young and healthy, that would not entirely reduce the risk of serious illness. Despite the risks, experts in support of the idea said they had already heard from people willing to volunteer.