Here’s what you need to know:
- The F.D.A. withdrew emergency approval for malaria drugs promoted by Trump.
- In the rush to improve virus treatments, some medical journals are losing prestige.
- A wave of cases in Beijing causes officials to lock down a section of the city.
- In the U.S., some officials are threatening renewed shutdowns or pausing reopenings.
- The U.S. Open is set to be held in New York, but the stands will be empty.
- Global markets fall, and Wall Street faces a tough opening.
- A month after reopening, Pakistan records 100,000 new cases, and panic is rising.
The F.D.A. withdrew emergency approval for malaria drugs promoted by Trump.
The Food and Drug Administration said Monday that it was revoking emergency authorization of two malaria drugs to treat Covid-19, saying that they are “unlikely to be effective.”
The drugs, hydroxychloroquine and a related drug, chloroquine, were heavily promoted by President Trump after a handful of small, poorly controlled studies showed that they could work in treating the disease.
Mr. Trump even took hydroxychloroquine after he was exposed to two people who had tested positive for the coronavirus. The agency said that after reviewing some data, it had determined that the drugs, particularly hydroxychloroquine, did not demonstrate benefits that outweighed their risks. Earlier this year, the F.D.A. issued a warning that the drugs could cause alarming heart arrhythmias.
In March, the F.D.A. authorized stockpiles of the drugs to be used in hospitals to treat patients with the virus. But in a letter Monday revoking the authorization, the agency said that further studies have shown that the two drugs were unlikely to be effective in stopping the virus, and that current national treatment guidelines don’t recommend using them outside of clinical trials.
According to the letter, written by Denise M. Hinton, the F.D.A.’s chief scientist, the request to revoke the authorization came from the Biomedical Advanced Research and Development Authority, a unit of the Department of Health and Human Services that is in charge of supplying treatments in public health emergencies.
Members of Congress have questioned increases in the F.D.A.’s granting of emergency use authorizations during the pandemic for certain drugs as potential treatments. They have also questioned authorizations for antibody and diagnostic tests whose data had not been thoroughly vetted before approval, and for certain types of masks and other devices. Some Democratic lawmakers have criticized the Trump administration for pressuring the agency into issuing too many emergency approvals.
In the rush to improve virus treatments, some medical journals are losing prestige.
Recent retractions from respected medical journals are alarming scientists worldwide who fear that the rush for research on the virus has overwhelmed the peer review process and opened the door to fraud, threatening the credibility of prestigious publications when they are needed most.
Two publications recently retracted two coronavirus studies that delivered astounding results and altered the course of research into the pandemic. The research is happening at an unprecedented pace because of the urgent need to publish new findings to improve treatments for desperately ill virus patients.
Peer review is supposed to safeguard the quality of scientific research, a process that used to take many months, or even a full year, to scrutinize and edit a complicated study. The system, widely adopted by medical journals in the middle of the 20th century, undergirds scientific discourse around the world, but some critics have long worried that the safeguards are cracking, and have called on medical journals to operate with greater transparency.
Journals used to take many months, or even a full year, to scrutinize and edit a complicated study, a process that included several weeks for outside experts to peer review the research. But now peer review may be condensed to as little as 48 hours, and some studies deemed of vital importance to patients may be published online within 20 days of submission.
Of two high profile retractions, one study undercut Mr. Trump’s claim that certain antimalarial drugs can treat Covid-19, the illness caused by the virus, concluding that the medications in fact were dangerous to patients. (A separate clinical trial found that the drug did not prevent infections.) The other found that some blood pressure drugs did not increase the risk of Covid-19 and might even be protective.
A wave of cases in Beijing causes officials to lock down a section of the city.
A section of Beijing was locked down on Monday as the government rushed to contain a new outbreak of coronavirus infections — an unnerving breach in the capital, which President Xi Jinping of China had said should be a fortress against the pandemic.
City officials said they had tracked down 79 infections in Beijing over the previous four days, including 36 confirmed on Sunday. All appeared ultimately traceable to the vast, bustling Xinfadi food market in the south of Beijing.
The World Health Organization on Monday called the outbreak a “significant event” and said that Chinese government has shown an appropriate level of concern.
“Certainly in China, when you have spent over 50 days without having any significant local transmission, a cluster like this is a concern and it needs to be investigated and controlled,” said Dr. Michael Ryan, the executive director of the W.H.O., “and that is what the Chinese authorities are doing.”
Until the infections from the market began to emerge on Thursday, Beijing had gone 56 days without new, locally borne cases. Its main worry appeared to be Chinese people returning from abroad with the virus.
While a few dozen new cases seems slight compared to the hundreds or thousands of infections reported daily by other countries, the new outbreak has jolted China, which had appeared to have largely stifled the virus after it emerged late last year from Wuhan, a city in the country’s center.
“We feel this is dangerous,” Chen Xiaoxi, who owns a shop near the market, said by telephone. He said he was waiting for the results of a test to check if he had the virus. “It is a worry, everyone is worried. This is no ordinary disease. We’re waiting at home and can’t go out.”
Some Chinese disease control experts had said Beijing appeared to respond to the outbreak quickly. Even so, this failure in the capital’s defenses appeared to rile Mr. Xi’s subordinates. Two local officials and the general manager of the Xinfadi market were dismissed on Sunday for what the city leadership said was a failure to move quickly enough against the infections.
“The market is densely packed with many moving around, and the risks are high that the outbreak will spread,” Sun Chunlan, a vice premier overseeing health policy, said at a meeting on Sunday, according to Xinhua, an official news agency. “Take firm and decisive measures to thoroughly prevent its spread.”
In the U.S., some officials are threatening renewed shutdowns or pausing reopenings.
As leading infectious disease experts in the United States warn that the virus is not going anywhere, some officials in different parts of the country have threatened renewed shutdowns or paused reopening plans in an effort to get people to take the persistent threat seriously.
On Monday, Gov. Andrew M. Cuomo of New York again called on local governments to enforce the state’s restrictions and limits on reopening, though he did not single out New York City. A day earlier, he said that the state had been deluged with some 25,000 complaints about businesses that were “in violation of the reopening plan.”
Specifically, Mr. Cuomo said that bar patrons in Manhattan and in the Hamptons had been flouting the rules. He warned that if local officials did not crack down on such behavior, the state could be forced to suspend reopening plans.
A spokeswoman for New York City’s mayor pushed back against the governor’s remarks, noting that city employees had been working over the weekend to disperse large groups and help business owners separate patrons.
Up to 25 people will be allowed to gather in Phase 3 of reopening, Mr. Cuomo said Monday. By the end of this week, that phase is expected to apply to all of the state’s regions except for New York City, which entered Phase 1 last week, and the city’s suburbs, which recently entered Phase 2. Statewide, there were an additional 25 deaths, he said.
Governors in Oregon and Utah said last week they were pausing reopening plans after seeing cases rise. “I don’t want to go forward and then take a step backward,” Gov. Gary Herbert of Utah said on Thursday, adding that he did not intend to enact any additional restrictions on businesses.
For her part, Gov. Kate Brown of Oregon said on Thursday that her state was placing county applications for reopenings on hold for a week, in order to give public health experts time to ensure that the virus wasn’t spreading too quickly. She described the move as a “yellow light.”
Experts have estimated that without a vaccine, about 70 percent of the population will need to be infected and develop immunity in order to stop the virus’s spread, a concept called herd immunity. The current number of confirmed cases in the United States is over 2 million, less than 1 percent of the U.S. population, according to a New York Times database.
The U.S. Open is set to be held in New York, but the stands will be empty.
Despite major challenges created by the pandemic, the United States Tennis Association is set to announce this week that it will hold the 2020 United States Open with the support of the men’s and women’s tours.
The tournament is expected to run as originally scheduled from Aug. 31 to Sept. 13, but without spectators, at the U.S.T.A. Billie Jean King National Tennis Center in New York, according to four tennis officials who spoke on condition of anonymity because the plans had not been announced and formal government approval had yet to be secured.
Even if the tournament is confirmed this week, outside forces, including the path of the virus and global travel restrictions, may still scuttle the U.S.T.A.’s plans. The field may also be thinner than usual if athletes stay away.
Players will be subject to frequent virus testing. With few exceptions, they will be lodged together at a hotel outside Manhattan, and some restrictions are expected to be placed on their movement. Star players will also have to eschew their usually large entourages.
The men’s No. 1, Novak Djokovic, who is from Serbia, has criticized the restrictions as “extreme.” The women’s No. 1, Ashleigh Barty, who is from Australia, has expressed uncertainty about committing to play.
Global markets fall, and Wall Street faces a tough opening.
Markets in Asia and Europe tumbled on Monday over renewed fears of more outbreaks around the world, setting the stage for stocks on Wall Street to slip.
Stocks in London, Frankfurt and Paris were 1 to 2 percent lower. That followed some sharper losses in the Asia-Pacific region, including a 4.8 percent drop in South Korea and a 3.5 percent fall in Tokyo.
U.S. stocks tumbled by more than 1 percent. Sentiment in financial markets has been shifting since late last week, as investors seem to acknowledge the risks to the economy from pandemic-related shutdowns earlier this year and the prospect of a second wave.
The sell-off was spread broadly across markets. Oil and gold fell in early futures trading. Prices for U.S. Treasury bonds, which generally rise when market sentiment is weak, gained sharply, sending yields lower.
Investors were reacting in part to bad news out of China, where some monthly economic indicators were weaker than expected, and where officials are battling a new spate of cases in Beijing. In the United States, states including Arizona, Florida and Texas reported higher numbers.
In other economic news:
-
The risks of relying economically on China have never seemed clearer. But as the world tries to get moving again, it needs the Asian superpower more than ever.
-
New data shows Chinese consumers still aren’t spending like they once did, holding back one of the world’s most powerful growth engines.
A month after reopening, Pakistan records 100,000 new cases, and panic is rising.
Pakistanis stricken by the virus are being turned away from hospitals that have simply closed their gates and put up signs reading “full house.” Doctors and nurses are falling ill at alarming rates — and are also coming under physical assault from desperate and angry families.
When Pakistan’s government lifted its lockdown on May 9, it warned that the already impoverished country could no longer withstand the shutdown needed to mitigate the pandemic’s spread. But now left unshackled, the virus is meting out devastation in other ways, and panic is rising.
Before reopening, Pakistan had recorded about 25,000 infections. A month later, the country recorded an additional 100,000 cases — almost certainly an undercount — and the pandemic shows no signs of abating. At least 2,729 people have died, according to a Times database.
Pakistan is now reporting so many new cases that it is among the World Health Organization’s top 10 countries where the virus is on the rise. The W.H.O. wrote a letter criticizing the government’s efforts on June 7 and recommended that a lockdown be reimposed, stating that Pakistan did not meet any of the criteria needed to lift it.
Compounding the dire situation, medical workers across Pakistan are being assaulted on a near-daily basis for not being able to admit patients or having to tell families that their loved ones had died.
“Our hospitals are completely exhausted,” said one doctor, who asked for his name to be withheld because he is a government employee.
Medical professionals now expect the virus to peak in July or August and infect up to 900,000, adding further strain to an already shaky health care system that some warn may collapse.
But government officials have ruled out the possibility of a further lockdown and dismissed the recommendations by the W.H.O.
Listen to ‘The Daily’: What We’ve Learned About the Coronavirus
Six months into the pandemic, we take stock of where we are, and where we might be going.Charter schools have accepted at least $50 million in virus aid meant for small businesses.
Charter schools, including some with healthy cash balances and billionaire backers like Michael Bloomberg and Bill Gates, have quietly accepted millions of dollars in emergency virus relief from a fund created to help struggling small businesses stay afloat.
Since their inception, charter schools have straddled the line between public schools and private entities. The pandemic has forced them to choose.
And dozens of them — potentially more because the Treasury Department has not disclosed a list — have decided for the purpose of virus relief that they are businesses, applying for aid from the Paycheck Protection Program even as they continue to enjoy funding from school budgets, as well as tax-free status.
Parents, activists and researchers have identified at least $50 million in forgivable loans flowing to the schools, which, like all schools, are facing steep budget cuts next year as tax revenue, tuition payments and donations dry up.
“To me, either you’re a fish or a fowl — you can’t say you’re a public school one day, but now because it’s advantageous, say you’re a business,” said Carol Burris, the executive director of the Network for Public Education, a group that scrutinizes charter school management, and whose early donors included a teachers’ union.
Charter leaders say traditional schools have long benefited from capital that they cannot obtain.
“Those who are questioning our eligibility for this program are those who question whether we should get money at all,” said Nina Rees, the president and chief executive of the National Alliance for Public Charter Schools.
GLOBAL ROUNDUP
European countries reopen their borders as they gingerly return to public life.
Europe’s internal borders, closed three months ago in a frenzy of panicked uncertainty, are opening again. In the delicate global stutter-step to restart stalled economies and save whole industries from financial ruin, the return of free and unfettered movement of people across the continent is a significant moment — one fraught with risk as new infections surge around the world.
France, Germany and Switzerland are among the nations that lifted restrictions on Monday for all arrivals from within the European Union and nations that fall under the border-free Schengen zone. They joined Spain, Italy, Belgium and other countries in trying to move to a new phase in the struggle to balance public health imperatives, economic realities and shifting public attitudes.
In order to facilitate navigating between different national rules, the European Commission launched “Re-open EU,” a site dedicated to information on travel to and within the European countries, including quarantine rules and information on tourist facilities.
For Europe, lifting internal border restrictions has important financial implications and deep symbolic resonance. Open borders — free from checkpoints and armed soldiers checking papers — has long been at the heart of the European project to build a continent that is whole, free and at peace. It took decades of diplomacy, the fall of the Iron Curtain and the end of the Cold War to achieve. Here are other international developments.
-
World Health Organization officials on Monday warned that the pandemic’s strain on laboratories and disruption of international transportation has led to a sharp decline in information about circulating influenza strains, which is critical to developing seasonal flu vaccines.
-
Commercial flights will resume to all of Egypt’s airports on July 1. Passengers from countries with high infection rates will be required to submit a lab test proving they are virus-free, the civil aviation minister, Mohamed Manar, said at a news conference on Sunday. Three coastal provinces — the Red Sea and South Sinai in the northeast, and Matrouh on the Mediterranean coast — will reopen to tourists, said Khaled el-Enany, the tourism minister. Egypt has registered more than 44,500 virus cases, and about 1,575 deaths.
-
The president of Moldova, Igor Dodon, has deployed the army to enforce virus-related restrictions after a surge in infections. The country has recorded nearly 12,000 cases and more than 400 deaths. Army officers are to enforce social distancing and the use of face masks in indoor public spaces and on public transport. But restaurants were still on course to reopen on Monday.
The virus left migrants in Russia without work and without a way home.
With regular flights canceled, charters offer the only feasible way out for the more than five million migrant workers from former Soviet republics now stranded in Russia as a result of the pandemic, with many living in increasingly dire circumstances.
While Russia has been battered by the virus, with the third most cases in the world after the United States and Brazil, the crisis has hit migrant workers especially hard, as they were the first to lose their jobs and often the last to receive medical help.
A migrant’s life has never been easy in Russia. Lured by higher salaries, visa-free entrance and a common Soviet heritage, migrants from Central Asia often live in cramped apartments and dorms, frequently sharing a room with up to 10 other workers. Police officers habitually harass them. Many local Russians express a loathing of them. If they are fired, employers often do not pay their final salaries.
But the crisis has magnified the inferior status of migrant workers. The police, for example, have locked up entire dorms when one person has become infected.
In Moscow, the lockdown deprived 76 percent of migrant workers of their jobs, and 58 percent lost all their income, according to a poll conducted by Evgeni Varshaver, head of the Group for Migration and Ethnicity Research. Among Russians, 42 percent lost employment and 23 percent lost all income, Mr. Varshaver said the poll found.
Read tips on how to gather safely with friends and family.
In the United States, Father’s Day is a week away, and July 4 is also drawing near. Here are some tips on celebrating safely with family and friends.
Reporting was contributed by Maria Abi-Habib, Mike Baker, Pam Belluck, Dan Bilefsky, Chris Buckley, Christopher Clarey, Michael Gold, Erica L. Green, Anatol Magdziarz, Salman Masood, Constant Méheut, Raphael Minder, Jesse McKinley, Ivan Nechepurenko, Aimee Ortiz, Elisabetta Povoledo, Nada Rashwan, Zia ur-Rehman, Roni Caryn Rabin, Dana Rubinstein, Dagny Salas, Marc Santora, Kaly Soto, Eileen Sullivan, Katie Thomas, Carlos Tejada, David Waldstein and Karen Zraick.
"world" - Google News
June 16, 2020 at 12:15AM
https://ift.tt/37uFsIk
Live Coronavirus Updates: Leaders Threaten New Lockdowns - The New York Times
"world" - Google News
https://ift.tt/3d80zBJ
https://ift.tt/2WkdbyX
Bagikan Berita Ini
0 Response to "Live Coronavirus Updates: Leaders Threaten New Lockdowns - The New York Times"
Post a Comment