Bhinneka News Online: Thursday Morning Briefing: No time to be complacent

Thursday, 30 July 2020

Thursday Morning Briefing: No time to be complacent

What you need to know about the coronavirus today

No time to be complacent
Spikes in novel coronavirus infections in Asia have dispelled any notion the region may be over the worst, with Australia reporting its deadliest day on Thursday, Vietnam fretting over a new surge of cases and India reporting more than 52,000 new cases over the previous 24 hours.

Asian countries had largely prided themselves on rapidly containing initial outbreaks after the virus emerged in central China late last year, but flare-ups this month have shown the danger of complacency.

In isolated North Korea, which says it has had no domestic cases, the Rodong Sinmun newspaper warned against carelessness. "A moment of inattention could cause a fatal crisis," it said.

"So far, so good" on vaccine
Drugmaker AstraZeneca said on Thursday that positive data was coming in on its vaccine for COVID-19, already in large-scale human trials and widely seen as the front-runner in the race to produce a shot against the novel coronavirus.

AstraZeneca has already reached deals with countries to make more than 2 billion doses of its COVID-19 vaccine, developed in partnership with the University of Oxford, and says it could be approved by the end of this year.

Isolate for longer
Anyone who tests positive or shows symptoms of COVID-19 in Britain will have to self-isolate for 10 days instead of the previous seven, based on a low but tangible possibility that people could remain infectious for longer.

"In symptomatic people COVID-19 is most infectious just before, and for the first few days after symptoms begin," the UK chief medical officers said in a statement on Thursday.

A death a minute
One person in the United States died about every minute from COVID-19 on Wednesday as 1,461 new deaths were recorded, the highest one-day increase since 1,484 on May 27, according to a Reuters tally.

U.S. coronavirus deaths are rising at their fastest rate in two months.

Spikes in infections in Arizona, California, Florida and Texas this month have overwhelmed hospitals. The rise has forced states to make a U-turn on reopening economies that were restricted by lockdowns in March and April to slow the spread of the virus.

"Recession of a century"
The German economy contracted at its steepest rate on record in the second quarter as consumer spending, company investment and exports all collapsed during the peak of the COVID-19 pandemic, wiping out nearly 10 years of growth.

Gross domestic output in Europe's largest economy shrank by 10.1% quarter-on-quarter from April to June after a revised 2.0% contraction in the first three months of the year.

From Breakingviews: Corona Capital - Samsung, Luxury, Lloyds
Read concise views on the pandemic’s financial fallout from Breakingviews columnists across the globe.

Reuters reporters and editors around the world are investigating the response to the coronavirus pandemic.

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Top Stories

As the clock ticks toward the U.S. presidential election in November, state election officials are devoting more time - and money - to educating voters about the dangers of disinformation while reassuring them that the system is fundamentally sound.

On a recent Zoom call, Ohio Secretary of State Frank LaRose, the state’s top election official, ran through slides showing altered Facebook photographs, misleading tweets from the last presidential election and photographs of Russian hackers.

As President Donald Trump’s support in the U.S. suburbs erodes amid concerns about his handling of the coronavirus pandemic, he has returned to a familiar campaign theme: trying to scare voters away from backing Democrat Joe Biden in November.

From deploying federal agents to confront protesters in cities such as Portland, Oregon, to releasing ads portraying a lawless and dangerous America under a Biden presidency, Trump has positioned himself as the candidate who will keep the country safe.

China’s ambassador to London said on Thursday that the United States was trying to trigger a new Cold War with the Communist state because it was searching for a scapegoat ahead of the U.S. presidential election in November.

“It is not China (that has) become assertive. It’s the other side of the Pacific Ocean who want to start new Cold War on China, so we have to make response to that,” China’s ambassador to London Liu Xiaoming told reporters. “We have no interest in any Cold War, we have no interest in any war.”

COVID Science

Johnson & Johnson on Thursday kicked off U.S. human safety trials for its COVID-19 vaccine after releasing details of a study in monkeys that showed its best-performing vaccine candidate offered strong protection in a single dose.

When exposed to the virus, six out of six animals who got the vaccine candidate were completely protected from lung disease and five out of six were protected from infection as measured by the presence of virus in nasal swabs, according to the study published in the journal Nature.

CanSino Biologics, one of many companies worldwide trying to develop a coronavirus vaccine, needs to conduct late-stage trials overseas if it is to stay in the race, experts say, but it has yet to announce another country willing to help.

With other countries pushing ahead with their own tests and deepening tensions with the United States posing a challenge to international collaboration, time is not on its side.