By Syndication Washington Post, Bloomberg · Laura Davison
Unemployed people claiming federal benefits won’t see a one-week gap in their payments despite the delay in President Donald Trump signing the program extension into law, according to the Department of Labor.
States are implementing the provisions as quickly as possible, and the Labor Department doesn’t anticipate that claimants will miss a week of benefits due to the timing of the new law’s enactment, a spokesman for the Department said in a statement Tuesday.
Trump signed a bipartisan stimulus and government funding bill, which included an 11-week extension of unemployment benefits, into law on Sunday, a day after benefits expired. That prompted concern that jobless Americans would lose out on benefits for the last week of December. Trump held off signing the bill for several days as he demanded bigger stimulus payments for individuals and action on two unrelated issues involving election security and removing a liability shield for technology companies.
The pandemic relief law provides a $300-a-week payment for jobless individuals and extends benefits for self-employed and gig workers through mid-March. The $300 federal payments are on top of benefits that state unemployment offices provide. The state benefits vary by income and jurisdiction, but the average state payment was $378 a week, according to Labor Department data.
The measure largely extends programs with few changes, meaning that existing guidance will continue to apply, making it easier for the states to implement, the Labor Department spokesman said.
“Millions of jobless workers will be able to breathe a sigh of relief, knowing that they will not lose a week’s worth of income,” Oregon Sen. Ron Wyden, the top Democrat on the Senate Finance Committee, said in a statement. “Now, Donald Trump’s needless delay in signing the relief bill still means unnecessary administrative headaches and late payments, but workers will not lose income.”
About 14 million Americans have been receiving benefits under the Pandemic Unemployment Assistance and Pandemic Emergency Unemployment Compensation programs extended in the law.
The uninterrupted jobless benefits could help bolster the economy that has struggled as consumer spending has been falling and unemployment claims remain at elevated levels.
Consumer spending, which accounts for a majority of the economy, dropped 0.4% in November — the first decline since April, according to Commerce Department data. Personal income decreased 1.1%, reflecting the winding down of several pandemic aid programs.
By Syndication Washington Post, Bloomberg · Christopher Condon
The Federal Reserve has delayed the termination of the Main Street Lending Program to Jan. 8, from Dec. 31, in order to finish processing loans submitted by a Dec. 14 deadline to tap its funds.
The extension was approved by the secretary of the Treasury, the Fed said in a statement Tuesday.
The Treasury Department provoked controversy in November when it ordered the Fed to close Main Street and some other emergency pandemic lending programs by Dec. 31. Secretary Steven Mnuchin said the order was driven by lawmakers’ intent when they crafted the Cares Act in March, legislation that provided taxpayer money to support the programs. The Fed had asked that they all be extended into 2021.
Main Street has struggled to live up to its initial promise, although borrowing picked up somewhat as the deadline approached and stood at $14.5 billion as of Dec. 23. The program was designed to provide as much as $600 billion in credit to mid-sized U.S. companies damaged by covid-19.
Brexit deal offers scant solace to City of London under threat
InternationalDec 30. 2020The City of London. MUST CREDIT: Bloomberg photo by Jason Alden
By Syndication Washington Post, Bloomberg · Viren Vaghela
The trade deal that both sides of the English Channel say reflects a new era of cooperation is essentially a sideshow for the City of London, which is still awaiting its own seal of approval from the European Union.
EU officials must rule separately that British financial regulations and oversight are strong enough to create a level playing field. Without that, a steady leakage of business – already underway in some areas – may become a daily reality for the U.K.’s finance industry.
Boris Johnson has already said in an interview with the Sunday Telegraph that, when it comes to financial services, the treaty “perhaps does not go as far as we would like.” Chancellor of the Exchequer Rishi Sunak said that discussions with Brussels over access for financial services will continue.
While there’s been progress in preventing Brexit from upending financial markets in the short term, there’s little consensus on the ultimate nature of the U.K. finance industry’s relationship with the EU, just days before it loses much of its longstanding access to the bloc.
“The dangerous bit is that you are seeing people moving assets, moving trading books to other locations,” Howard Davies, chairman of NatWest Group Plc, said in a Bloomberg Television interview this month. “The risk is that as that happens, then the staff follow over time.”
The hope among British bankers, regulators and politicians is that the trade deal helps unlock a separate agreement for finance. The industry is a key pillar of the U.K. economy, employing more than 1 million people and accounting for more than a tenth of all tax revenue.
“While a deal is welcome, financial and related professional services are clear-eyed about the need for both sides to continue to develop the relationship in services,” said Miles Celic, chief executive officer of TheCityUK, representing Britain’s finance hub.
Likewise, bankers in Europe are eager for clarity. The Association for Financial Markets in Europe, one of the region’s biggest industry lobby groups, called for an agreement on “equivalence” decisions which would smooth cross-border financial market access.
“We hope that this lays the foundation for further cooperation on financial services,” said Adam Farkas, AFME’s CEO. “It is important that the EU and the U.K. now urgently put in place outstanding equivalence decisions to mitigate disruption at the end of the transition period and ensure a smooth adaptation to the new relationship.”
Still, even the most optimistic financiers concede that the status quo, with London as the financial hub for an entire continent, is unlikely to hold.
European Commission President Ursula von der Leyen has vowed “all will change” in the City of London’s relationship with the EU. And in a sign of what’s to come, Bank of France Governor Francois Villeroy de Galhau warned Europe’s banks in October to prepare for a longer term shift away from using London clearinghouses, which underpin the multi-trillion dollar derivatives markets.
It goes “back to this core and fundamental question of where Europe wants to have its center of financial activity,” Mairead McGuinness, European commissioner for financial services, told Euronews in December. “It certainly will not, in the long term, continue to be the City of London.”
The Goldman Sachs offices in London. MUST CREDIT: Bloomberg photo by Jason Alden
With Britain suffering its worst recession in more than three centuries, it can ill afford damage to the finance sector that paid about 75 billion pounds ($100 billion) in tax in 2018.
Despite that, financial services garnered little of the attention bestowed on fishing in the trade talks, even though every fisherman in the U.K. could fit in the City of London’s latest office tower.
“Nothing against fishermen, and I eat a lot of fish, but nonetheless the financial sector is a larger share of the economy than the fishing sector and yet we hear nothing,” Davies said in an October interview.
Companies including JPMorgan Chase & Co. and Goldman Sachs Group Inc. have recently started to shift more business to the bloc. The moves, which for JPMorgan included 200 billion euros ($230 billion) in assets and 200 staff, are just the “first wave,” Dorothee Blessing, the head of the firm’s Frankfurt unit, said in September.
Non-German lenders are in the process of moving 397 billion euros of holdings to Germany, taking their combined balance sheet there to 675 billion euros at the end of the year, the Bundesbank said in a presentation to reporters at the start of November. The European Central Bank has said banks have agreed to ultimately move a total of 1.3 trillion euros of assets to the euro area.
Elsewhere, more than half of stock trading in London is in shares of European companies and may migrate to EU venues. Last month, The 300-year-old London Stock Exchange Group Plc joined other trading venues in opening a platform in the EU because of the absence of a deal for finance.
For now, London has hardly been hollowed out and it holds formidable advantages that will take years, if not decades, to erode. Plenty see an opportunity for the City of London, whose global stature is testament to its long history of adaptation.
“London will reinvent itself to remain a hub,” said Ali Jamal, founder of wealth manager Azura, which has an office in Mayfair and manages about $3 billion. “No city in Europe can compete with London on three factors: language, legal system and infrastructure.”
Still, it has been hard preparing for a future that is both murky and very complex. The government arranged a webinar for finance firms in October, with a pre-recorded speech and slides on topics such as accounting, emblazoned with the branding “U.K.’s new start, let’s get going,” according to one attendee who asked not to be named. The content was too general to be useful, the person said.
The trade deal offers some certainty to the broader economy, which will indirectly help the banks. “Reaching a trade deal is important for our corporate clients as they will want to avoid the impacts of tariffs on cross border trade in goods,” said James Bardrick, head of the U.K. at Citigroup Inc.
And the deal may also help unlock what Bardrick and his peers want most: an EU declaration that U.K. regulations are robust, known as equivalence. This ruling would enable business to continue largely as usual – but it’s in the hands of the EU, which can also withdraw equivalence at short notice.
Over the long haul, much will depend on the course of political horse-trading for finance and what regulators and supervisors expect, according to Citigroup’s Bardrick. “We and the rest of the industry may need to evolve our plans and staffing levels to serve our clients in Europe effectively,” he said.
It’s that lingering uncertainty that is set to define the City of London’s future even as the U.K. begins to negotiate trade accords in earnest.
“Four years ago a nation decided to shoot itself in the foot and see if it could run a race,” said Michael Mainelli, executive chairman of finance consultancy Z/Yen, who was elected sheriff of the City of London in 2019. “Brexit is an unnecessary distraction. Nobody has shown me a single advantage economically in any shape or form.”
IPOs in Japan enjoy popularity not seen since the dot-com bubble
InternationalDec 30. 2020Visitors look at an electronic ticker at the Tokyo Stock Exchange on Oct. 29, 2020. MUST CREDIT: Bloomberg photo by Kiyoshi Ota
By Syndication Washington Post, Bloomberg · Shoko Oda, Ayaka Maki
In a surprisingly strong year for initial public offerings globally, Japan’s 2020 market debutantes enjoyed their best opening share performances since the dot-com bubble era, helped by a groundswell of retail investors hungry for tech issues.
The average initial pop for IPOs in the Japanese market this year was nearly 130%, the most since 1999. The best performer was artificial-intelligence systems firm Headwaters Co., which jumped 1,090% in its first trade. Image-recognition software maker Ficha Inc. came second with an 806% gain, followed by internet-of-things developer Tasuki Corp., which rose 655%.
Backed by easy-money policies and growth in individual investing, new listing markets have been frothy this year despite the coronavirus market turmoil, as seen in the dramatic gains of Airbnb Inc. and DoorDash Inc. in U.S. debuts earlier this month. Stay-at-home tech plays and cloud computing upstarts especially found 2020 to be the perfect time to tap the public markets.
“The reason for the large opening gains is that there were many IPOs of stocks that were relevant to the times,” such as Japan’s digitalization push, said Hideyuki Suzuki, a general manager at SBI Securities Co. With low interest rates expected to continue for some time, the IPO market should continue to attract funds, he said.
Japanese stocks overall lagged in the pandemic recovery, with the Topix not erasing its year-to-date loss until November, months after U.S. and Asian peers. The Tokyo Stock Exchange’s Mothers Index of start-ups was a notable exception, with a gain of around 30% on the year, thanks to its heavy weightings of biotech and Internet names, as well as the surge in retail investing.
A total of 94 companies went public in Japan in 2020, up by four from the previous year, even with a pandemic-driven drought from early April to late June. About 70% were listed on Mothers. The overall value was small, with firms raising a total of $3.3 billion, and no single deal worth more than half a billion dollars. That compares with $181 billion raised in the U.S. and $51 billion in Hong Kong.
Toshiba Corp.-affiliated chipmaker Kioxia Holdings Corp. in September decided to postpone what would have been Japan’s largest offering of the year, at up to $2.9 billion, due to market uncertainty amid U.S.-China trade friction. That made mushroom cultivator Yukiguni Maitake Co., which raised $409 million, the biggest Tokyo IPO of 2020, followed by musical instruments maker Roland Corp. and business consulting provider Direct Marketing Mix Inc.
In the absence of blockbuster deals with international appeal, local retail traders helped pick up the slack. Individuals accounted for 20% of total trading value on the Tokyo Stock Exchange this year, up from about 16% in 2019.
“IPOs have helped drive retail investor turnover,” said Shoichi Arisawa, an analyst at Iwai Cosmo Securities Co. “It’s helped money come back to growth stocks and given life to the start-up market.”
In 2021, investors will be watching whether Kioxia decides to try its luck again. So far one company has announced IPO plans for next year, with laser-based chip solutions firm QD Laser Co. planning to list in February.
Doctors and nurses across Britain are sounding the alarm as confirmed cases of covid-19 reach record highs, with experts urging the government to implement a stricter lockdown to prevent the health system from being overwhelmed.
Simon Stevens, chief executive of the National Health Service (NHS) in England, told reporters on Tuesday that hospitals were “back in the eye of the storm” as new cases surged across Europe and Britain. He said more must be done to ease the burden on health-care workers.
Some health-care workers are issuing their own public warnings, detailing how hospitals in London and the southeast of England are already setting up tents to increase their capacity. They say ambulances are waiting outside hospitals for hours because there is no space inside.
“Our control room staff are having to make incredibly difficult decisions to decide who gets an ambulance first and who they are going to ask to wait,” paramedic Will Broughton told Sky News on Tuesday.
Samantha Batt-Rawden, president of the Doctors’ Association UK and an NHS critical care doctor, used Twitter to hit back at those who said health-care workers were exaggerating. “Try holding an iPad for a patient to say goodbye to their family. Or having to . . . ventilate a colleague,” she wrote Monday.
Government figures suggest that the virus is surging in Britain, despite restrictions already in place in most of the country. On Tuesday, 53,135 confirmed cases were reported across Britain, marking the second record day in a row and a number far higher than any single day increase in the first wave.
More widespread testing may account for the new record in confirmed cases, but another number cannot be explained away: NHS England said Monday that a record 20,426 people were being treated for the virus in hospitals in England.
The previous peak number for those hospitalized was set during the first surge in cases in April at a little under 19,000.
Much of Britain, including London, is already under the highest level of lockdown: Tier 4 in the U.K. system. One senior adviser to the government said Tuesday that more of the country should be brought to this level “or higher” to “prevent a catastrophe in January and February.”
“I think we are entering a very dangerous new phase of the pandemic,” Andrew Hayward, an epidemiologist at University College London, told BBC Radio 4.
Health Secretary Matt Hancock is expected to announce any changes to restrictions Wednesday, the BBC reported. Hancock tweeted Tuesday that the pressure on the NHS was now “unprecedented,” and he asked everyone to work to suppress the virus during “these difficult times.”
Earlier this month, officials in Britain voiced concern over the spread of a new variant of the coronavirus that appears to spread more easily. The variant was first identified by British scientists this month, but it has since been found in a variety of countries.
More than 2.3 million cases of covid-19 have been confirmed in Britain since the virus first appeared in the country. More than 70,000 people have died, giving Britain one of the worst death tolls in the world.
Although there have been medical advances in treatment for covid-19, and the British government was the first in the world to begin a widespread immunization program of a fully tested vaccine, the virus appears to be spreading faster than lockdown measures can restrict it.
After almost a full year of fighting the pandemic, the toll is particularly hard on health workers. “This has probably been the toughest year that most of us can remember,” Stevens told reporters.
Simon Walsh, deputy chairman of the British Medical Association’s U.K. Consultants Committee, told the Press Association news agency that hospitals in the worst-hit areas of London were using the same sort of protocols expected in a “major incident.”
“They’re having crisis meetings; they’re calling on staff to come in to work if they’re able to on their days off,” Walsh said.
Health workers quoted in the media suggested that the government has mismanaged its staffing. During the first wave of the virus, the government used empty event spaces to build seven emergency Nightingale hospitals at a cost of 220 million pounds ($297 million).
However, the Daily Telegraph reported that the facilities have remained mostly empty during the new wave of the virus and that some were being dismantled because of shortages in staffing.
Health-care workers also complained that they were not being prioritized for vaccines, which are largely going to the elderly and those with underlying health problems at this stage of the British government’s rollout.
Batt-Rawden wrote Monday that many medical workers are getting sick from the new variant and that some hospitals are tweeting out messages asking for medical students to work in intensive care units.
“This is not a drill. Please believe us,” she tweeted, adding a hands-praying emoji.
By Syndication Washington Post, Bloomberg · Jan Bratanic, Jasmina Kuzmanovic
Croatia suffered its strongest earthquake in 140 years – for the second time in 2020 – with the tremor killing at least five people, devastating the city at its epicenter and rattling Europeans as far away as Rome and Vienna.
The temblor, measured at 6.3 by the European-Mediterranean Seismological Centre on Tuesday, was larger than both a 5.2 quake on Monday and a 5.3 tremor that caused $6 billion in damage when it hit the capital of Zagreb in March.
The earthquake brought down buildings near its epicenter in the town of Petrinja, where it killed a girl who was about 13 years old, according to police. Four more people, including a father and son, were killed nearby in Glina, the town’s deputy mayor said, according to the Hina news agency.
Most buildings in Petrinja were total losses, Prime Minister Andrej Plenkovic said at the scene. Authorities were evacuating the hospital in the nearby city of Sisak, and the tremor damaged structures in Zagreb, where people left their homes to wait out potential aftershocks.
“2020 has brought us tragedy after tragedy,” Plenkovic said in comments on N1 Television. The broadcaster reported that at least 20 people had been hospitalized with injuries, with two in serious condition.
The disaster adds to an already difficult year for the Adriatic European Union member state, which is repairing 20,000 buildings from the March quake while tackling one of the bloc’s worst surges in coronavirus cases and a record economic recession.
The quake was also felt in Rome, Budapest and Vienna. It was more powerful than one in 1963 that hit near the former Yugoslav town of Skopje, now the capital of North Macedonia, that killed more than 1,000 people and destroyed 80% of the city.
“This is horrible,” President Zoran Milanovic said while observing the damage in Petrinja. “Pure horror. The army is here, coming to help evacuate people.”
In Petrinja, a city of about 25,000 people that was almost destroyed in the bloody 1991-1995 breakup of Yugoslavia, video footage showed demolished houses and fallen roofs that resembled the damage from the war.
Deputy Prime Minister Davor Bozinovic said the government was lifting a ban on traveling between counties imposed earlier this month to stop a spike in new cases of coronavirus so people whose homes were destroyed could stay with relatives.
The quake also triggered the automatic shutdown of Slovenia’s Krsko nuclear power plant, with that country’s infrastructure minister saying initial checks showed no damage.
European Commission President Ursula von der Leyen said on Twitter that she had spoken with Plenkovic and that the bloc was ready to provide support.
China is struggling to get the world to trust its vaccines
InternationalDec 30. 2020Vials of Sinovac Biotech’s CoronaVac SARS-CoV-2 vaccine on Sept. 24, 2020 in Beijing. MUST CREDIT: Bloomberg photo by Nicolas Bock.
By Syndication Washington Post, Bloomberg · Iain Marlow, Faseeh Mangi, Kari Soo Lindberg
Of all the developing countries testing China’s covid-19 vaccines, few are friendlier to Beijing than Pakistan. In the years leading up to the pandemic, China financed nearly $70 billion across the South Asian nation on roads, railways and power stations, and Pakistan now has two Chinese clinical trials underway, with even senior government officials being inoculated.
Yet interviews with people in Karachi, the nation’s biggest city — as well as in other developing nations from Indonesia to Brazil, together with surveys and official comments — show that China has failed to assure the millions of people who may have to rely on its vaccines.
“I won’t take it,” said Farman Ali Shah, a motorcycle driver in Karachi for local ride-hailing app Bykea, as local shops closed early ahead of an 8 p.m. virus-induced curfew. “I don’t trust it.”
That mistrust, and the reliance of dozens of poorer nations on China to inoculate their populations could set the stage for a major global political headache if citizens offered the Chinese vaccine feel they are being given an inferior product.
China’s vaccines were meant to score a clear diplomatic win for Beijing, shoring up ties with dozens of poorer nations amid an anticipated shortage of Western-developed shots. But there has been little information about how the Chinese versions have fared in final-stage clinical trials, with just the United Arab Emirates and China itself endorsing the vaccines for emergency use so far. Meanwhile, some U.S. and European companies have published data on the safety and efficacy of their shots and started to deploy them.
That uncertainty presents another roadblock in China’s efforts to extend its political influence across Asia, Africa and South America. Through its seven-year-old Belt and Road Initiative, Beijing spent billions on loans and projects and cultivated local elites to buttress its political and economic power — efforts that have often backfired because of poor management and heavy-handed implementation. The mistrust was compounded by China’s exports early in the pandemic of subpar tests and personal protective equipment.
“China has a great opportunity to do vaccine diplomacy and distribute a life-saving product,” said Jorge Guajardo, a senior director for McLarty Associates, who was Mexico’s ambassador to China for six years. “In my experience, every time they’ve engaged in diplomacy, they screw it up — they manage to upset the countries on the receiving end of their aid.”
Missteps could undermine President Xi Jinping’s claims that China’s ruling Communist Party has handled the virus better than western democracies. China, which saw the first known cases of covid-19 a year ago, used its authoritarian system to virtually eliminate the virus, mass testing millions of people when cases emerged, shutting its borders and locking down parts of the country to snuff out infections. That approach has seen China’s economy begin to recover even as countries such as the U.S. and U.K. struggle to control outbreaks.
Bolstered by its virus success, Beijing sparred with the U.S., U.K. and Australia over everything from the origins of the virus to crackdowns in Hong Kong and Xinjiang. The pain of the pandemic also hardened the stance of the U.S. and China in wider economic disputes, including American efforts to stop countries from adopting the next-generation communications technology of China’s Huawei Technologies Co.
“The key thing I am looking out for is if they come in with offers for a vaccine in exchange for a countries’ commitment to using Huawei 5G telecommunication lines, or to allowing China to invest in key sectors,” said Guajardo. “Given that they have a history of this behavior, it wouldn’t surprise me if they did it again.”
China has made a global effort to reassure governments and populations about the efficacy and safety of its vaccines. In October, a group of ambassadors and diplomats representing 50 African countries toured a Sinopharm Group Co. facility amid a publicity blitz touting China’s promise to deliver vaccines to Africa. “When the coronavirus vaccine completes research and is put into use, we are willing to prioritize benefiting African countries,” said Liu Jingzhen, chairman of Sinopharm.
In response to questions from Bloomberg, China’s Foreign Ministry said Chinese companies developing vaccines strictly comply with the law and clinical trials in the first two phases showed the shots were safe and effective. The Chinese government has administered more than one million emergency vaccine doses since July, it said, and “we have haven’t found any serious adverse reactions.”
Foreign Ministry spokesman Zhao Lijian said in a tweet on Monday that Chinese-made vaccines may be the “only choice” for governments that haven’t secured supplies since “wealthy countries” had booked three quarters of the estimated 12 billion vaccines set for production next year. He separately told a briefing that the inactive Chinese vaccines can be distributed more widely than others using existing cold chain systems, and China would provide them to developing countries “on a priority basis including by donation and free aid.”
“We should stand against seeking self-interest at the expense of others or hoarding or monopolizing supplies,” Zhao said in Beijing. “In particular, we must reject vaccine nationalism.”
On China’s side is mathematics. The challenge of manufacturing, distributing and administering billions of doses means many developing nations may have little choice but to use Chinese vaccines for at least part of their populations. Many don’t have enough facilities to store Pfizer Inc.’s shot, which needs to be stored at -70 degree Celsius.
China has also agreed to supply its vaccine to Covax, a World Health Organization-backed effort to provide a coronavirus vaccine to developing nations. AstraZeneca Plc, the other main Covax partner, is still waiting to gain approval. Britain’s drug regulator could clear its shot for use as early as this week, according to a person familiar with the matter.
Ironically, Chinese vaccine makers were initially at the forefront of the research, but China’s rapid control of the contagion left them scrambling to find places to carry out the vital third-stage clinical trials as U.S. rivals leapt ahead.
Chinese companies now have third-phase trials running in at least 16 nations, with state-backed China National Biotec Group Co. testing from Argentina to Morocco; Sinovac Biotech Ltd. enlisting Brazil, Turkey and the Philippines among others; and CanSino Biologics Inc. testing in Pakistan, Mexico and Saudi Arabia. Authorities at Brazil’s Butantan Institute, which is helping conduct clinical trials for the Sinovac vaccine, said on Dec. 23 the shot was more than 50% effective, meeting a minimum standard set by U.S. regulators for emergency authorization of covid vaccines. It did not provide details, citing Sinovac’s request to reconcile data across different trials.
The Brazil trial is Sinovac’s biggest so far with some 13,000 participants. A trial in Turkey indicated the vaccine is more than 91 percent effective, though it’s considered inconclusive as it was calculated from only 29 cases, compared with the 170 found in Brazil. Vaccines from Pfizer and Moderna Inc. have produced results well over 90%.
“In a country where the Chinese vaccine is the only one available, you either accept it or not,” said Yanzhong Huang, a senior fellow for global health at the New York-based Council on Foreign Relations. “But when you have choices between different vaccines, people are rational. They’re certainly going to choose Western-made vaccines because they’re the No. 1 choice, the data is already available, and they’re safe. China, so far, they haven’t had any systematic data available.”CNBG and CanSino didn’t respond to Bloomberg’s requests for comment. A spokesman at Sinovac referred to recent press conferences in Beijing where health officials said the inactivated shots undergoing phase III trials and approved for emergency use have been found to be safe, with only mild side effects, and that there is a mechanism in place to follow up with those who get the shots. A Sinovac spokesman separately said the company could only disclose efficacy data after they are reviewed by Chinese regulators.
Few places have seen the issue become more politicized than Brazil, South America’s largest economy and the third-most infected country after the U.S. and India.
Brazilian President Jair Bolsonaro, known as the “Trump of the Tropics,” has repeatedly attacked “Made in China” vaccines, even as political opponent Joao Doria, governor of Sao Paulo, endorsed the Brazilian-Chinese effort by Sinovac and the Butantan Institute.
“We won’t buy it from China, it’s my decision,” Bolsonaro said in a radio interview in October. “It’s a matter of credibility — there are other vaccines that are more trustworthy.”
The government later backtracked on his statement. On Dec. 21, Doria said Sao Paulo would receive 5.5 million doses of the Sinovac vaccine within days.
Still, a survey by polling institute Datafolha earlier in the month showed that half of Brazilians wouldn’t take the Sinovac-Butantan shot, the highest refusal rate among all the vaccines. Some 36% of respondents said they’d also reject a Russian vaccine, while 23% said they wouldn’t take a U.S. shot.
The politics and public concern translate into hard economics for China’s drugmakers. When Brazil’s Health Ministry delivered a national immunization plan to the Supreme Court, it included a total of 300 million doses from AstraZeneca, Pfizer and Covax, according to the newspaper O Estado de S. Paulo. Sinovac’s vaccine wasn’t mentioned.
“Our regulatory agency is going to evaluate the data for efficacy and safety, but this needs to be well communicated to the population,” said Natalia Pasternak Taschner, a microbiologist and founder of Instituto Questão de Ciência, a Brazilian non-profit that promotes science in policymaking. “It’s quite a challenge to do so when the president and the federal government are the ones raising issues about the vaccine being made in China.”
China may also be overestimating its ability to simultaneously vaccinate its own 1.4 billion population and meet the demand of hundreds of millions more in populous developing nations, said Huang at the Council on Foreign Relations, who has testified before U.S. congressional committees. CNBG said it is capable of making 1 billion doses of its inactivated vaccines, while Sinovac can produce 600 million doses, based on existing facilities and ones set to be completed soon. CanSino said it could make 200-300 million doses of its viral vector vaccines.
If Chinese vaccines aren’t available, developing nations will turn to other suppliers “and China will lose leverage,” Huang said. “We’re not just talking about the economic loss — diplomatic and strategic gains will also will be undermined.”
For the more than 6 billion people who live in developing nations, access to a vaccine soon could help reverse the devastating economic impact, particularly for the poor and those in the informal economy. Some national leaders are trying to reassure citizens about getting inoculated.
“I will be vaccinated first,” Indonesian President Joko Widodo said in a statement in mid-December. “This is to give people the trust and confidence that the vaccine we use is safe.” Indonesia has ordered 125.5 million doses from Sinovac, as well as 30 million from Maryland-based Novavax Inc. and is developing 57.6 million of its own shots. It’s also seeking doses from Covax, AstraZeneca and Pfizer.
Sheikh Mohammed Bin Rashid Al Maktoum, the prime minister of the United Arab Emirates and ruler of Dubai, received the Sinopharm vaccine on Nov. 3. “We wish everyone safety and great health, and we are proud of our teams who have worked relentlessly to make the vaccine available in the UAE,” he wrote on Twitter alongside a photo of him receiving the vaccine.Such official endorsements may be enough to persuade some people to accept any inoculation if it receives approval.
“I would be glad to receive a vaccine, regardless of whether it’s Chinese-made or otherwise, so long as it’s proven to be safe, effective and to have no long-term side effects,” said Francis Chung, a 29-year old finance manager who works for a Malaysian plantation company. “It should also be endorsed by the relevant authorities.”
But many others remain skeptical. A survey in Kenya reinforced the concern that not all vaccines are equal. Africa-focused polling company TIFA Research found that respondents were least likely to take vaccines made in China and Russia, preferring vaccines from the U.K. or U.S.
If global leaders fail to persuade their citizens that all the vaccines they approve for use are equally safe, they could face a backlash among those who believe they are being given a second-rate option. Even in Hong Kong, where China has expanded its grip on power this year, leader Carrie Lam reversed course on Dec. 23 and said residents can choose whether to take the Pfizer, Sinovac or AstraZeneca vaccines.
“Transparency is needed in order to support more general public acceptance of the covid-19 vaccines,” said Nicholas Thomas, an associate professor in health security at the City University of Hong Kong. “Absent such data, it is all too easy to see a two-tier perception of vaccines emerging.”
Biden calls Trump pandemic effort a ‘travesty’ and vows extensive federal effort to blunt virus spread
InternationalDec 30. 2020Patricia Cummings gives Vice President-elect Kamala Harris the Moderna coronavirus vaccine at the United Medical Center in Washington on Tuesday, Dec. 29, 2020. MUST CREDIT: Photo for The Washington Post by Evelyn Hockstein
By The Washington Post · John Wagner, Amy B Wang, Chelsea Janes
WASHINGTON – President-elect Joe Biden on Tuesday called President Donald Trump’s handling of the coronavirus pandemic a “travesty” and vowed to fully use the federal government’s powers once inaugurated to speed the production and dispersal of vaccines and protective equipment.
Biden said he would invoke the Defense Production Act to ramp up production of coronavirus vaccines. The law, enacted in 1950, gives the president the power to compel companies to produce and distribute supplies.
In the earliest weeks of the pandemic, Trump was criticized for not using the law to counter the country’s shortage of ventilators and personal protective equipment for front-line health workers. Trump later invoked the act to require General Motors to manufacture ventilators and to order meat processing plants to stay open.
Biden said Trump’s vaccine distribution efforts were falling far behind what had been promised and said he would “move heaven and earth” to bring an end to the coronavirus pandemic. But he also warned Americans that the worst of the coronavirus assault – “maybe the toughest of this entire pandemic” – remained ahead of them, despite early rounds of vaccinations underway.
With domestic air travel hitting record highs over the holiday weekend, Biden said he anticipated that infections now would produce increased cases in January and increased deaths in February.
“I can see a return to normalcy in the next year,” Biden said, but he warned that the country might not see improvements until well into March. “I know it’s hard to hear, but it’s the truth.”
He said the nation needed not only more vaccines and protective equipment but also a massive increase in testing to stem outbreaks that by now are occurring nationwide.
“After 10 months of the pandemic, we still don’t have enough testing,” he said. “It’s a travesty.”
As he has for months, Biden encouraged people to continue wearing masks, social distancing and practicing other measures to slow the spread of the virus. His remarks were his most extensive comments on the coronavirus since early this month, when he outlined a plan for his first 100 days in office that included imploring all Americans to wear masks.
“My ability to change the direction of this pandemic starts in three weeks,” Biden said.
Earlier Tuesday, Vice President-elect Kamala Harris became the latest high-profile politician to be vaccinated in a bid to build public trust in the process.
The setting for her shot was calculated: the United Medical Center in Washington, which serves the predominantly Black communities of the city’s Southeast quadrant and the southern part of Prince George’s County, Md. Harris said she hoped she could allay the mistrust that many Black Americans are expressing about the vaccine by getting hers in a hospital that serves Black neighborhoods.
Biden’s chief medical adviser, Anthony Fauci, said earlier that the nation was suffering a surge of cases “that has just gotten out of control in many respects.”
Fauci, appearing on CNN, lamented what he expects to be a post-holiday increase in cases and the strong possibility than January’s caseload will exceed even that of December.
“You just have to assume it’s going to get worse,” he said.
Fauci also acknowledged that the rollout of vaccines was not reaching as many Americans as quickly as the 20 million the Trump administration had pledged by the end of the month.
“We certainly are not at the numbers that we wanted to be at the end of December,” said Fauci, director of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases. “We are below where we want to be.”
But Fauci expressed hope that by “showing leadership from the top,” Biden could make an impact – comments that appeared to be an implicit criticism of Trump, who has said little publicly about the crisis since Election Day.
“What he’s saying is that let’s take at least 100 days and everybody, every single person, put aside this nonsense of making masks be a political statement or not,” Fauci said of Biden. “We know what works. We know social distancing works. We know avoiding congregant settings works. For goodness’ sakes, let’s all do it, and you will see that curve will come down.”
In his remarks earlier this month, Biden also pledged to distribute 100 million vaccine shots in his first 100 days in office and said he wanted to open as many schools safely during the period as possible. He has also promised to sign an executive order requiring masks to be worn on federal property. He reiterated those pledges Tuesday.
About 200,000 new coronavirus cases have been reported daily in recent weeks, with a record high of 252,431 on Dec. 17.
The nation’s overall caseload surpassed 19 million on Sunday, even as the holidays were expected to cause a lag in reporting. Hospitalizations have exceeded 100,000 since the start of December and hit a peak of 119,000 on Dec. 23. Deaths are averaging more than 2,000 a day, with the most reported to date – 3,406 – on Dec. 17.
Harris chatted with her nurse, Patricia Cummings, as she received her first dose of the Moderna vaccine Tuesday, an event broadcast on live television.
Calling her “Nurse Patricia,” Harris thanked Cummings, the daughter of immigrants from Guyana who has been a nurse for a decade and a half, for her work and chatted with her about her day.
If Harris had any reaction to the shot, it was hidden by the two masks she was wearing, and she told Cummings afterward that “that was easy” and that she “barely felt anything.”
“I want to encourage everyone to get the vaccine. It is relatively painless, it happens really quickly, and it’s safe,” Harris told a dozen or so reporters who had gathered for the event.
“We have hospitals and medical centers and clinics like this all over the country that are staffed by people who understand the community, who often come from the community, and who administer all year round trusted health care,” she said. “I want to remind people that right in your community is where you will take the vaccine . . . by folks you may know who have been working in the same hospital where your children were born.”
Biden received his first shot of the coronavirus vaccine last week.
On her way out of the room, Harris was asked for her thoughts on the House passing legislation to bump upcoming stimulus checks from $600 to $2,000. Harris referenced a bill she introduced with Sens. Bernie Sanders, I-Vt., and Ed Markey, D-Mass., in May recommending $2,000 monthly stimulus checks.
“I urge Mitch McConnell to put my bill on the floor for a vote,” Harris said, referring to the Republican Senate majority leader from Kentucky.
Biden on Tuesday called the deal a “down payment” and vowed to push for more coronavirus relief as soon as he takes office next month.
Trump lashes out at ‘weak and tired’ Republican congressional leadership
InternationalDec 30. 2020President Donald Trump arrives in an auditorium at the White House complex before signing an executive order on vaccines earlier this month. MUST CREDIT: Washington Post photo by Jabin Botsford.
By The Washington Post · John Wagner
President Donald Trump on Tuesday lashed out at fellow Republicans who lead his party on Capitol Hill both for not fully embracing his unfounded claims of election fraud and for allowing an override of his veto of a $741 billion defense authorization bill to advance.
“WE NEED NEW & ENERGETIC REPUBLICAN LEADERSHIP. This can not stand,” Trump said in a string of morning tweets in which he continued to air grievances about the election, including baseless claims of fraud in Pennsylvania, one of the battleground states Trump lost to President-elect Joe Biden.
Trump did not single out any Republican leaders by name, but Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell, R-Ky., appeared to be among those he was targeting. Two weeks ago, McConnell recognized Biden as the president-elect. He has also discouraged GOP senators from participating in challenges to the electoral college votes when Congress meets to certify the results next week.
“Can you imagine if the Republicans stole a Presidential Election from the Democrats – All hell would break out,” Trump said in one of his tweets, which Twitter noted made “disputed” claims about election fraud.
“Republican leadership only wants the path of least resistance,” Trump continued. “Our leaders (not me, of course!) are pathetic. They only know how to lose! P.S. I got MANY Senators..and Congressmen/Congresswomen Elected. I do believe they forgot!”
Earlier, Trump also took aim at members of his own party, protesting the House’s vote on Monday to override his veto of the defense bill. The 322-87 vote was comfortably more than the two-thirds of the House that was needed to pass the measure.
“Weak and tired Republican ‘leadership’ will allow the bad Defense Bill to pass,” Trump wrote.
“Negotiate a better Bill, or get better leaders, NOW! Senate should not approve NDAA until fixed!!!” Trump added, referring to the bill by its title, the National Defense Authorization Act, an annual measure authorizing funds for everything from overseas military operations to pay increases for service members.
A few hours after Trump’s tweet, McConnell signaled during a speech on the Senate floor that his chamber would override Trump’s veto Wednesday.
“Soon this important legislation will be passed into law,” McConnell said. “I would urge my colleagues to support this legislation one more time when we vote tomorrow.”
Trump made good on repeated threats to veto the legislation last week, when he sent the bill back to Congress with a laundry list of objections.
Among the president’s complaints were that it ordered the Pentagon to change the names of military installations commemorating Confederate generals; restricted his ability to pull U.S. troops out of Germany, South Korea and Afghanistan; and did not repeal an unrelated law giving liability protections to technology companies.
Later Tuesday, Trump sought to raise the stakes for Senate Republicans as they consider increasing stimulus payments to eligible recipients from $600 to $2,000, as he has advocated.
“Unless Republicans have a death wish, and it is also the right thing to do, they must approve the $2000 payments ASAP,” he tweeted shortly after McConnell declined to hold an immediate vote on the issue. “$600 IS NOT ENOUGH!”
Trump also again urged Republicans to address the law related to liability protections for technology companies and said his fellow party members should not “let the Democrats steal the Presidential Election.”
WASHINGTON – Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell, R-Ky., on Tuesday blocked consideration of a House bill that would deliver $2,000 stimulus payments to most Americans – spurning a request by President Donald Trump even as more Senate Republicans voiced support for the dramatically larger checks.
McConnell’s move was just the beginning of a saga that is likely to engulf the Senate for the rest of the week. Democrats are pushing for an up-or-down vote on the House bill, while more Republicans acknowledge a need for larger stimulus checks.
Tension within the Republican party spilled into public view on Tuesday, with Trump leveling pointed attacks at GOP leaders for failing to act, accusing them of being “pathetic” and suggesting they had a “death wish.”
New proponents of the $2,000 checks include Georgia’s two embattled Republican senators – David Perdue and Kelly Loeffler – who find themselves in tough re-election battles that will decide the fate of the chamber next week. GOP Sen. Deb Fischer of Nebraska also lent support Tuesday, declaring that “people are hurting and we need to get them more aid.”
Before adjourning the Senate Tuesday, McConnell began the process of bringing up both the House-passed bill as well as a new bill combining larger checks with the establishment of a commission to study election fraud and a repeal of liability protections for the technology companies and other firms.
While McConnell’s move does not guarantee that either measure will get voted on, it could be a prelude to a “side-by-side” deal between Senate leaders that would secure votes on both bills with the understanding that neither is likely to garner the necessary 60 votes. All of these issues could lead to a showdown on the Senate floor on Friday.
This sort of hesitancy is what has led Trump to escalate his blistering attacks on GOP leaders in recent days, something he continued Tuesday.”WE NEED NEW & ENERGETIC REPUBLICAN LEADERSHIP,” he wrote.
He also said there would be consequences for the party if they didn’t act.
“Unless Republicans have a death wish, and it is also the right thing to do, they must approve the $2000 payments ASAP,” Trump wrote. “$600 IS NOT ENOUGH! Also, get rid of Section 230 – Don’t let Big Tech steal our Country, and don’t let the Democrats steal the Presidential Election. Get tough!”
The shifting Senate winds come a day after the House passed a bill to increase stimulus checks with a bipartisan 275-to-134 vote. That proposal, called the Caring for Americans with Supplemental Help (Cash) Act, aims to boost the $600 payments authorized in the massive year-end spending-and-relief package that Trump signed Sunday by another $1,400 and expand eligibility for them.
After McConnell spoke Tuesday, Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer, D-N.Y., made a request to take up the House-passed bill.
“There’s a major difference in saying you support $2,000 checks and fighting to put them into law,” he said. “The House bill is the only way to deliver these stimulus checks before the end of session. Will Senate Republicans stand against the House of Representatives, the Democratic majority in the Senate and the president of their own party to prevent these $2,000 checks from going out the door?”
McConnell objected without making further comment.
Despite the new pressure from Trump, some other Senate Republicans expressed reservations about voting for a bill with the larger payments. Some of them cited the rising debt and pointed to the extraordinary amount of federal aid that Congress had already approved.
“This is all funny money, borrowed money at this point, and that’s another consideration,” Sen. John Cornyn, R-Texas, said Tuesday. “I mean, (we’re) being just frivolous about the way we spend money and rack up debt. I think people are willing to do what we need to do if they feel like it’s an immediate need and it’s an emergency, which we have already done and we’ll probably continue to do.”
Still, the addition of new Republican support further intensified the political pressure on the Republican leader, who now must navigate a path that addresses the president’s concerns without exposing his party to additional political attacks one week before the pair of Georgia special elections determines the Senate majority.
The debate has created strange political bedfellows, aligning Trump with his Democratic foes in Congress, who have sought larger stimulus payments for months amid signs that the economy has worsened.
The Georgia senators joined Sen. Josh Hawley, R-Mo., one of the earliest GOP proponents for sizable checks; Sen. Marco Rubio, R-Fla., who endorsed the idea on Monday; and Sen. Lindsey Graham, R-S.C., who helped persuade Trump to sign the bill by backing a push for larger checks.
“Absolutely, we need to get relief to Americans now, and I will support that,” Loeffler said on Fox News. Perdue, meanwhile, tweeted hours later that he backs “this push for $2,000 in direct relief for the American people.”
Fischer would not say if she would vote for the House bill but said she opposes combining the question of larger payments with other issues: “I don’t like everything rolled in together. I think you end up with bad policy.”
Both Loeffler and Perdue have taken public credit in their campaigns for delivering the $600 checks in the signed bill. But they had not weighed in on the $2,000 checks before Tuesday, while their Democratic opponents – Raphael Warnock and Jon Ossoff, respectively – have both enthusiastically embraced the larger amounts for days.
The new wave of Republican support left Hawley convinced Tuesday that the Senate had the necessary 60 votes to advance the proposal, adding in a tweet: “Let’s vote today.”
But the Senate now appears to be in a holding pattern. An emboldened Sen. Bernie Sanders, I-Vt., who pushed for bigger checks for weeks, issued his own ultimatum Tuesday, blocking a planned Wednesday vote to override Trump’s veto of the annual defense policy bill unless McConnell relents and allows a stand-alone vote on the House checks bill.
“I don’t know what he has in mind, but the House passed, to their credit, a simple straightforward bill,” Sanders told reporters. “Let’s not muddy the waters: Are you for $2,000 or are you not?”
Sanders’s threat scrambled a tight timeline for the final days of the current Congress, which will end on Sunday when the new class of lawmakers is sworn in. Without unanimous agreement, the Senate cannot vote on the veto override until Friday at the earliest – raising the prospect that the two Georgia senators would have to spend several unexpected days in Washington amid the closing week of their reelection campaigns.
The House voted overwhelmingly to override the veto Monday. Speaking on the floor Tuesday, McConnell left little doubt about the final outcome once the Senate vote is taken: “Soon this important legislation will be passed into law,” he said of the defense bill.
Acceding to Sanders and Democrats is not an easy choice for the majority leader: There is still major opposition to the larger checks among Senate Republicans, who insisted for months than any pandemic relief measure following on the March Cares Act cost taxpayers no more than $1 trillion.
Adding $2,000 checks to the roughly $900 billion package that Trump signed Sunday would add $464 billion to the cost of the legislation – a staggering price tag for many Republicans who have spent years fretting publicly about a growing national debt.
As McConnell acknowledged, Trump’s demands are not limited to larger checks. In a Sunday statement released after he signed the massive stimulus bill, Trump said the Senate would “start the process for a vote that increases checks to $2,000, repeals Section 230, and starts an investigation into voter fraud.”
“Section 230” is a reference to a 1996 federal law that broadly indemnifies tech platforms such as Facebook, Twitter and Google for the actions of their users. Trump has railed against the tech companies as they have started to crack down on his unfounded postings alleging voter fraud in the November election, as well as much more aggressive actions targeting postings made by his supporters containing threats and disinformation.
Graham said in an interview Monday that there would be a vote on the checks and on the law governing tech companies, but he did not know if those votes would be held before the current Congress adjourns.
He predicted that if there was a stand-alone vote on the $2,000 checks, it would pass the Senate with the necessary 60 votes.
“What drove (Trump’s) thinking was, I’m not going to give in until I get a vote on the checks in the Senate, and I’m not going to sign this bill until we finally address section 230,” he said. “I don’t know how Mitch is going to do it.”
The City of London. MUST CREDIT: Bloomberg photo by Jason Alden
Visitors look at an electronic ticker at the Tokyo Stock Exchange on Oct. 29, 2020. MUST CREDIT: Bloomberg photo by Kiyoshi Ota
Vials of Sinovac Biotech’s CoronaVac SARS-CoV-2 vaccine on Sept. 24, 2020 in Beijing. MUST CREDIT: Bloomberg photo by Nicolas Bock.
Patricia Cummings gives Vice President-elect Kamala Harris the Moderna coronavirus vaccine at the United Medical Center in Washington on Tuesday, Dec. 29, 2020. MUST CREDIT: Photo for The Washington Post by Evelyn Hockstein
President Donald Trump arrives in an auditorium at the White House complex before signing an executive order on vaccines earlier this month. MUST CREDIT: Washington Post photo by Jabin Botsford.
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