By The Washington Post · William Booth, Karla Adam
LONDON – Britain on Wednesday became the first country to grant approval for a homegrown coronavirus vaccine from the University of Oxford and the British-Swedish pharmaceutical firm AstraZeneca, adding a second shot to the fight against a surging outbreak, driven here by a new, highly infectious variant of the virus.
British Health Minister Matt Hancock said clinical trials have proved the new vaccine is safe and effective, but he did not say how effective.
Although Hancock called the Oxford-AstraZeneca vaccine a “game-changer,” Britain’s Medicines and Healthcare products Regulatory Agency (MHRA), which approved the vaccine for distribution, did not immediately present its data.
Researchers from the Oxford-AstraZeneca team earlier this month published interim results from clinical trials that showed their vaccine was 62% effective for volunteers who were given two full doses and 90% effective for a smaller subgroup who received a half dose followed by a full dose.
Doubts have been raised over how robust the half-dose data is. The Oxford scientists said they were studying why the different regimens produced such different results.
Britain badly needs another vaccine to meet its ambitious goal to inoculate most of the country’s population by the spring.
With the virus spreading rapidly, and two-thirds of Britain now in near-lockdown, Hancock said Wednesday that the goal is to inject as many people as possible, as quickly as possible, with the first dose of AstraZeneca vaccine. A second dose will be given later, within three months. The idea is that the first dose provides enough protection to warrant waiting longer than the usual 21 days between shots.
“In the data, the scientists and the regulators have found the immunity comes from around two weeks after the first dose, and then the second dose should be taken up to 12 weeks later to give you that long-term protection,” Hancock said.
“This means we can spend the first three months vaccinating people with the first doses, getting them that immunity, getting people protection quicker than we possibly could have done otherwise,” he said.
Hancock said having two vaccines means the government now has “a very high degree of confidence that we can be out of this by spring.”
Britain earlier this month approved the coronavirus vaccine from pharmaceutical giant Pfizer and the German company BioNTech, becoming the first Western country to authorize mass inoculations.
The United Kingdom has injected some 600,000 people with the Pfizer vaccine, but experts say the government must ramp up quickly, to inoculate 2 million people a week – 10 times the current rate – if it wants to beat back the pandemic quickly.
Britain has ordered 100 million doses of the AstraZeneca vaccine. The company says it can deliver 40 million doses by the end of March, with a million doses arriving almost immediately.
The government plans to start inoculating people with the AstraZeneca vaccine on Monday, with residents of nursing homes, health-care workers and people over 80 at the front of the line. There are plans to deliver the vaccine in mass immunization centers, such as sporting arenas and convention halls.
“Today is an important day for millions of people in the U.K. who will get access to this new vaccine,” said Pascal Soriot, chief executive of AstraZeneca. “It has been shown to be effective, well-tolerated, simple to administer and is supplied by AstraZeneca at no profit.”
Soriot told BBC Radio that his company can deliver 2 million doses a week and that the vaccine produces a “good level of protection” after the first of two doses.
If Britain gives the second dose two to three months after the first, “that enables us to protect many more people,” Soriot said.
He said scientists believe the AstraZeneca vaccine will be effective against the new variant detected in Britain. Clinical trials, however, were carried out before new mutation was established in the population.
Public health officials say there is much to recommend the new vaccine, as it costs as little as $3 a dose, is relatively easy to manufacture at huge scale and does not require special handling or deep freezers to store or transport.
The Pfizer vaccine is 95% effective but requires special handling and must be kept in special freezers and dry ice at extremely low temperatures.
The health secretary conceded that the need to keep the Pfizer-BioNTech vaccine in special freezers has “made it more challenging to get out, especially to some of the smaller care homes, and those limitations aren’t there for this Oxford-AstraZeneca vaccine.”
Prime Minister Boris Johnson said the approval of the new vaccine was “truly fantastic news – and a triumph for British science,” adding that “we will now move to vaccinate as many people as quickly as possible.”
The news comes amid a spike in coronavirus cases driven by the new variant of the virus, which appears to be 50% more transmissible. British hospitals currently have more coronavirus patients than they did when the first wave gripped the country in April.
On Tuesday, Britain recorded more than 53,000 cases – the highest in a single day. Over 40% of the population is living under the highest tier of restrictions, and the government is expected to announce new restrictions later in the day.
Andrew Pollard, director of the Oxford Vaccine Group, told the BBC that the pandemic this year was “like being in a blizzard.”
“We’ve been really struggling uphill through snow drifts with this icy wind in our faces, and I think this morning we do have some respite with this good news and the warmth that that brings,” he said.
By Syndication Washington Post, Bloomberg · Jasmina Kuzmanovic, Jan Bratanic
Rescuers raced to search for survivors amid strong aftershocks after Croatia’s worst earthquake in 140 years killed seven people and devastated cities and towns in one of the nation’s poorest regions.
The 6.3-magnitude tremor on Tuesday damaged most of the buildings near its epicenter in Petrinja, a town of 25,000 people, rendering them unusable and their inhabitants homeless, authorities said.
The victims included a 13-year-old girl and a father and son who died together. Twenty-six people were injured, Prime Minister Andrej Plenkovic said.
The temblor, which rattled Europeans as far away as Rome and Vienna, was more powerful than both a 5.2 quake on Monday and a similar-sized tremor that caused $6 billion in damage when it hit the capital of Zagreb in March.
Aftershocks, including two measuring 4.8 and 4.6, hit the area before dawn on Wednesday, according to the European-Mediterranean Seismological Centre.
“This morning we were hit by the third, if not the fourth earthquake,” Petrinja Mayor Darinko Dumbovic said on state TV’s Good Morning show. “Everything that has not yet fallen is falling from the ruins of Petrinja.”
The disaster adds to an already difficult year for the Adriatic European Union member state, which is still busy repairing the 20,000 buildings damaged during the March quake while also tackling one of the bloc’s worst surges in coronavirus cases and a record economic recession.
Plenkovic vowed the government will repair the damage, the extent of which hasn’t been estimated yet. While the government abolished a virus-triggered ban on movement between counties so those whose homes were destroyed could stay with relatives, he urged people to continue following social-distancing guidelines.
“We are appealing to people to stick to epidemiological measures,” Plenkovic told reporters. “We still have a problem with the coronavirus pandemic.”
Authorities evacuated the damaged hospital in the nearby city of Sisak, the region’s largest, taking patients to Zagreb. Buildings were also damaged in the capital, about 50-kilometers away.
Petrinja was demolished in the 1991-1995 war for independence from former Yugoslavia. The damage on Tuesday resulted in collapsed facades and caved-in roofs that resembled the damage from the war, as many citizens spent the night by open fires outside.
The U.S. Geological Survey said the temblor was the nation’s strongest since the advent of modern seismic instrumentation, which began to gain prevalence in the 1880s.
The government set aside an initial 120 million kuna ($19.4 million) in relief funds, Plenkovic said. Both Hungary and Slovenia said they were sending support, while Janez Lenarcic, the EU’s commissioner for disaster relief, will arrive in Croatia on Wednesday. He said the bloc was sending help today including winter tents, electric heaters, sleeping bags, and pre-made housing.
A coronavirus model is displayed next to boxes for vaccines at an exhibit by Chinese pharmaceutical firm Sinopharm in Beijing on Sept. 5. (Mark Schiefelbein/AP)
By The Washington Post · Lily Kuo
TAIPEI, Taiwan – A coronavirus vaccine developed by Chinese drugmaker Sinopharm is 79.3% effective in protecting people from covid-19, according to interim data released by the company on Wednesday, paving the way for millions of Chinese vaccines to enter the global market.
China National Biotec Group (CNBG), a subsidiary of state-owned Sinopharm, said the results were based on interim analysis from Phase 3 trials. In a brief statement posted on the website of the CNBG unit, Beijing Institute of Biological Products, the company did not give key details, including the sample size tested or number of infections in the trial.
The company said the two-shot vaccine proved “safe” and that those who received it produced a high level of antibodies against the virus.
As coronavirus cases continue to surge globally, a massive emergency vaccination drive is underway with drug developers and governments racing to get their vaccines approved. On Wednesday, the British government said its regulator had approved a vaccine developed by the University of Oxford and AstraZeneca for emergency use.
The Sinopharm vaccine appears to be less effective than those developed by Moderna and Pfizer-BioNTech, which have shown an efficacy rate of 95%. The rate announced by Sinopharm is also lower than the 86% efficacy reported by officials in the United Arab Emirates after clinical trials of the vaccine conducted there.
The development bolsters China’s public health diplomacy drive. China has held up its vaccines as a key part of its partnerships with developing countries, many of which have struggled to buy supplies of other newly released vaccines.
“China’s attention is not on ‘vaccine race,’ let alone so-called ‘vaccine diplomacy,’ but on the common interests of all humanity,” the state-run Global Times said in a Dec. 14 editorial.
The Sinopharm vaccine uses an inactivated version of the virus to trigger an immune response, unlike the mRNA vaccines developed by Pfizer and Moderna that use new technology. It does not need to be frozen, making for easier storage and distribution.
Sinopharm has another vaccine in late-stage trials. Despite the lack of regulatory approval, its vaccines have already been used on hundreds of thousands of Chinese citizens under an emergency use program for high-risk groups since July.
Officials plan to vaccinate 50 million people in the country by the middle of next month, before the Lunar Near Year holiday when hundreds of millions crisscross the country.
Chinese state media reported last week that drug regulators had formally accepted an application from the company for use of its vaccine among the general public. Sinopharm submitted an application for regulatory approval in November.
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.”
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.
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