Johnson & Johnson is in talks with multiple governments and global organisations as it seeks to develop a Covid-19 vaccine, it said on Thursday, after Reuters reported that the US company is in talks over a potential EU supply deal.
“We are committed to making our Covid-19 vaccine accessible globally to populations at greatest risk and where it could provide the greatest good according to our vaccine’s profile,” a Johnson & Johnson spokesman said in an email.
“As part of that, we are in ongoing discussions with many stakeholders, including national governments and global organisations.”
The United Nations security council is considering a proposal to reopen a border crossing from Iraq into Syria for six months to allow the delivery of humanitarian aid to help millions of Syrian civilians combat the coronavirus pandemic.
The 15-member council in January allowed a six-year-long cross-border aid operation to continue from two places in Turkey until 10 July, but dropped crossing points from Iraq and Jordan due to opposition by Syrian ally Russia and China.
Germany and Belgium gave the council a draft resolution on Wednesday that would extend approval for the Turkish border crossings for one year and reopen the Iraq crossing for six months.
The draft text also gives the council an option to extend the approval for the Iraq crossing for another six months based on an evaluation of the impact of the coronavirus in Syria by UN chief, António Guterres, later in the year.
New York’s mayor, Bill de Blasio, signed an executive order on Thursday launching the “Open Restaurants” initiative that will allow restaurants, cafes and bars that serve food to apply to use certain spaces such as sidewalks for outdoor dining.
Backyard and patio seating will also be allowed. De Blasio said the initiative would help an estimated 5,000 restaurants and save about 45,000 jobs. The mayor also announced that playgrounds would reopen on Monday across the city.
New York City will begin phase two of reopening on Monday, Mayor Bill de Blasio said on Thursday, citing continued improvements in coronavirus data.
Offices, in-store retail, outdoor dining, hair salons and barbershops are among the businesses allowed to reopen their doors during phase two.
“We’ve seen consistent progress and it is time to say to everyone get ready for phase two,” De Blasio told a daily news conference.
The UK death toll from confirmed cases of the coronavirus has risen to 42,288, an increase of 135, the latest daily figures from the government showed on Thursday.
Stock markets eased back on Thursday as worries that the world has not seen the last of the coronavirus pandemic caused nervous investors to take profits after a recent strong run.
US numbers showing that 1.5 million workers filed for unemployment benefits last week added to jitters about the economic outlook.
In Europe, investors were underwhelmed by the Bank of England’s latest monetary policy decisions, which undermined both the pound and London stocks.
Wall Street fell around 200 points at the opening bell, while European stocks were down by a percent or more, having extended opening losses.
“US stocks are lower in early action, after snapping a string of gains yesterday, with the global markets remaining a bit cautious as uncertainty regarding a second wave of Covid-19 continues to simmer, countering recent economic data that has suggested improvement as economies reopen,” said analysts at Charles Schwab.
Earlier, Asian equity indices had closed mixed after a two-day rally.
The Bank of England on Thursday unveiled an extra £100bn of cash stimulus to prop up Britain’s coronavirus-hit economy, a figure in line with expectations, but analysts said the market had hoped for some forward-looking reassurance.
“BoE watchers could feel a little short-changed,” said Kallum Pickering at Berenberg.
“The market had expected a clear signal that the BoE would ease policy significantly further at a later date or that the bank was seriously contemplating further expanding its toolkit in response to the Covid-19 mega-recession,” he said.
While countries are slowly reopening their economies – with flights resuming, bars, cafes and restaurants serving people and professional football returning – new infections continue to surge in some places and are flaring up again in others.
Beijing has imposed new lockdowns, closed schools and banned flights again after the emergence of new clusters, while there have also been massive spikes in Texas and Florida.
The central German city of Göttingen has once again been labelled a coronavirus hotspot after 100 new coronavirus infections were traced to a residential block of flats.
The 700 residents of the entire block have been placed under quarantine for the next two weeks, city officials said on Thursday. The measure comes just two weeks after scores of city residents went down with the illness after attending a series of family get-togethers, after which an 18-storey high-rise on the northern edge of the university city was kept under close observation and several families went into quarantine.
Authorities said the drastic measures in the most recent case were necessary because a high number of people believed to have been in direct contact with the confirmed infected cases lived there. A mobile test centre was set up for the residents in front of the complex. Sixty test results are thought to be outstanding. The number of new infections in the city per 100,000 inhabitants over the past seven days has risen to 44.86. Fifty cases per 100,000 is the level at which authorities would be forced to place the whole city into lockdown, reverting to conditions as they stood in May.
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Switzerland’s central bank has warned the nation is facing a “sharp recession” due to the coronavirus crisis, with its economy expected to shrink by around six percent this year, AFP reports.
“This would be the strongest decline since the oil crisis in the 1970s,” the Swiss National Bank (SNB) said in a statement detailing its quarterly monetary policy decisions.
“Most economic indicators have deteriorated drastically in recent months,” the bank said, pointing among other things to a sharp rise in unemployment and “record low” consumer sentiment.
During the first quarter of the year, Switzerland’s gross domestic product (GDP) had already shrunk by 2.6%, the bank said.
The worst economic impact of the measures put in place to halt the spread of Covid-19 had come after that, in April, it added. “The decline in GDP is therefore likely to be even stronger in the second quarter,” it said.
While economic activity has begun picking up again since late last month, when most restrictions were lifted, the SNB warned that, as in other countries, it was expecting “only a partial recovery for the time being”.
The bank said it was clear that “GDP will not return quickly to its pre-crisis level,” adding that overall, “GDP is likely to contract by around six percent this year”.
But things look brighter after that: the bank said it expected to see an “economic revival” in the second half of the year, which would likely be reflected in “clearly positive growth” next year.
The UK’s failure to report how many people have recovered from Covid-19 has been criticised by public health experts, who say that a huge proportion of cases have remained “invisible” to the health service.
Britain is an outlier internationally in not reporting the number of people who have recovered from Covid-19 alongside statistics on deaths and numbers of identified cases. Chile is the only other nation not to share this information out of the 25 countries with the highest reported incidence.
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The Austrian low-cost airline Level Europe has announced it is filing for insolvency, AFP reports.
“Level Europe has been impacted by the unprecedented crisis caused by the Covid-19 pandemic,” the airline said in a statement, adding that it had “ceased trading with immediate effect”.
“Once insolvency proceedings are filed, an Austrian court will appoint an administrator,” the statement added.
About 200 jobs in Vienna are thought to be at risk, along with roughly 40 in Amsterdam.
The airline had been launched in 2018 by its parent company, IAG, which owns British Airways and Iberia.
Level Europe was designed to serve short- and medium-haul routes within the continent.
IAG also runs long-haul flights using the Level brand from Paris and Barcelona which are not affected, the company has said.
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