Down by nearly 11% at one point during the night, oil has now pared most of its losses.
Russia and Saudi Arabia are “very, very close” to a deal on production cuts, said Kirill Dmitriev, CEO of Russia’s sovereign wealth fund RDIF.
“I think the whole market understands that this
deal is important… and to bring stability in a world that is about to
see probably the greatest recession ever.”
Dmitriev and Energy Minister Alexander Novak were
Russia’s top negotiators in the initial output cut deal with OPEC that
expired on March 31.
FEMA will be sending 500 additional ventilators to
New Jersey, 200 to Louisiana, 300 to Michigan, 600 to Illinois and 100
to Massachusetts, President Trump said at the White House coronavirus
task force briefing.
The state of Washington has returned 400 ventilators.
It will also be setting up a federal medical
station in Washington, DC, to help the city deal with the coronavirus
pandemic, he said.
The U.S. has purchased “a lot of hydroxychloroquine,” he said. “We have purchased and stockpiled 29M pills (doses).”
Update at 7:18 PM: Trump said he’ll take care of the airplane and airline industries.
“We’re starting to see light at the end of the tunnel. Things are starting to happen,” he said.
Today was the first day that the deaths from COVID-19 are fewer than the previous day — “perhaps that’s a good sign.”
7:20 PM: He adds that the
legislation to provide relief to individuals and business is very
successful. “We may have to make it larger.”
7:25 PM: S&P 500 futures are up 1.6%.
Worldwide, there are 1.27M confirmed cases
of COVID-19 and 69,309 deaths, according to Johns Hopkins University;
in the U.S., there are 335,524 confirmed cases and 9,562 deaths.
7:30 PM: Rear Admiral John
Polowczyk said that the government is directing supplies to impacted
areas’ public , VA and private hospitals, and nursing homes and acute
care facilities.
“We’re also working to push out millions of doses” of hydroxychloroquine to impacted areas, he said.
VA hospitals will make hospital beds at its facilities available to some of the hardest hit areas.
7:35 PM: “We’ve seen a trend of
some leveling” in talking with governors, Vice President Mike Pence
said. “We’re beginning to see losses and cases and hospitalizations
beginning to stabilize.”
7:43 PM: Speaking about
health-care workers who are facing great risks, “we’re talking about
doing something for them,” Trump said, but he wants to wait until “this
is over.”
(Some people have suggested that health-care workers should get hazard pay.)
7:54 PM: Dr. Deborah Birx, the
White House coronavirus task force response coordinator, said she’s seen
another model where the number of deaths in the U.S. comes closer to
100K; about a week ago, models were projecting 100K-240K deaths.
8:00 PM: Trump said he would
impose tariffs on foreign oil if he had to to save the U.S. oil
industry. “Yeah, I’d do tariffs, very substantial tariffs,” he said.
8:04 PM: Part of the reason Trump would like to do an infrastructure plan is because interest rate are almost zero, he said.
He also said he likes the idea of additional stimulus checks.
8:10 PM: Pence said there are about 18,000 machines already around the country that that can conduct the Abbott Laboratories (NYSE:ABT) 15-minute coronavirus tests; FEMA has purchased 1,200 of the devices, which will be distributed across the country, he said.
8:18 PM: When asked how the task
force warning that this week will be one of the worst weeks in terms of
coronavirus deaths squares with seeing a “light at the end of the
tunnel,” Dr. Anthony Fauci, director of the National Institute of
Allergy and Infectious Diseases, explains that there’s a lag between
cases leveling off and the number of deaths.
What happens this week reflects what was happening about two weeks ago, he said.
U.S. stock futures rose on Sunday night as Wall Street tried to
recover from another decline last week while investors shook off rising
tensions between Saudi Arabia and Russia.
Dow Jones Industrial Average futures traded more than 200 points
higher, or 1.1%. S&P 500 and Nasdaq 100 futures also climbed more
than 1%.
Last week, the major averages posted their third weekly decline in
four. The Dow slid 2.7% while the S&P 500 lost 2.1%. The Nasdaq
Composite closed last week down 1.7%. Stocks are also deep in
bear-market territory as concerns over the coronavirus outbreak have
virtually shut down the global economy and have dampened sentiment
around corporate profits.
However, some on Wall Street think the market could start to turn a corner soon.
Bill Ackman, founder of Pershing Square Capital Management, said in a
series of tweets he is “beginning to get optimistic.” He said cases in
New York, a hot spot for the coronavirus in the U.S., “appear to be
peaking” while some treatments “appear to help.”
“If this is true, the severity and death rate could be much lower
than anticipated, and we could be closer to herd immunity than
projected,” Ackman also said. “While it is hard to be positive when we
know that tens of thousands more will die and many more will get
severely sick, I have no choice but to be more optimistic about the
intermediate future based on the data and facts I have seen recently.”
Last month, Ackman called for the U.S. to completely shut down for 30 days as a way to curb the coronavirus outbreak. “Hell is coming,” Ackman told CNBC’s “Halftime Report” on March 18.
The number of coronavirus-related hospitalizations has fallen
slightly in New York while discharges are up, Gov. Andrew Cuomo said
Sunday. Italy also reported Sunday its smallest daily increase in deaths
in two weeks.
To be sure, the number of coronavirus cases continues to increase
sharply. More than 1.2 million coronavirus cases have been confirmed,
according to Johns Hopkins University. The U.S. is by far the country
with the most cases at over 330,000. On Saturday, Trump warned “there
will be a lot of death,” noting the U.S. faces its “toughest week” in
its fight against the virus.
Marc Chaikin, CEO of Chaikin Analytics, advises investors to remain cautious.
“Until the spread of the COVID-19 virus peaks and we are closer to a
reopening of the U.S. economy, sell rallies and sit on your cash,” said
Chaikin. “If we are fortunate to see an effective treatment there will
be plenty of capital gains opportunities. For me, capital preservation
is more important than capital gains.”
Stock futures shook off a massive decline in oil prices as a key meeting between major oil producing countries was delayed. U.S. crude fell more than 8% to $26.04 per barrel.
The meeting between OPEC and Russia was scheduled for Monday, but sources familiar with the matter told CNBC it will “likely” take place Thursday. The delay comes after President Donald Trump told CNBC last week he expected both countries to cut production by up to 15 million barrels.
Trump’s comments helped U.S. crude post its biggest-ever weekly gain.
West Texas Intermediate futures rallied 12% last week. WTI also jumped
24% on Thursday for its best day on record, lifting equity prices that
day as concern about financial and job losses in the energy sector
eased.
Crude has taken a beating this year as Saudi Arabia-led OPEC and
Russia failed to reach a deal on production cuts while the global spread
of the coronavirus dampens the demand outlook for oil. Year to date,
WTI has lost more than half of its value. https://www.cnbc.com/2020/04/05/stock-market-futures-open-to-close-news.html
UK-based biopharma company Izana Bioscience said it was testing its
antibody therapy namilumab for the treatment of patients with rapidly
worsening COVID-19 at the Humanitas Research Hospitals in Bergamo and
Milan in Italy.
Namilumab is a monoclonal antibody therapy currently in late-stage
clinical development for the treatment of rheumatoid arthritis and
ankylosing spondylitis.
It targets a white cell growth factor called GM-CSF, which has been
found in higher levels in COVID-19 patients, according to recent data
from China, Izana Bioscience said. Early intervention could therefore be
beneficial for patients with COVID-19, the disease caused by the new
coronavirus.
Chief executive and co-founder Someit Sidhu said: “The role of GM-CSF
in immune-mediated diseases is backed by a strong body of evidence and
our growing understanding of COVID-19.
“Evidence suggests that anti GM-CSF therapy has the potential to
change the way patients’ immune systems respond to the virus, and
therefore to reduce dangerous inflammation and support recovery.”
The compassionate use programme is led by Professor Carlo Selmi,
Izana said, while research services are being provided by Ergomed.
Japan’s Takeda has a strategic equity stake in Izana. https://www.reuters.com/article/us-health-coronavirus-therapy-izana/uks-izana-bioscience-tests-rheumatoid-arthritis-drug-in-covid-19-patients-idUSKBN21N0Z9
National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases Director Anthony Fauci said Sunday that it is likely the coronavirus will become a seasonal occurrence.
The infectious diseases expert told CBS’s “Face the Nation” that it’s
likely the virus “will assume a seasonal nature” because it is unlikely
to be contained around the world this year.
“Unless we get this globally under control, there is a very good chance that it’ll assume a seasonal nature,” he said.
“We need to be prepared that since it will be unlikely to be
completely eradicated from the planet that as we get into next season we
may see the beginning of a resurgence,” he added.
The possibility of a resurgence is why the federal government is
working “so hard” to improve its preparedness, including developing a
vaccine and completing clinical trials on therapeutic interventions.
“Hopefully, if in fact we do see that resurgence, we will have
interventions that we did not have in the beginning of the situation
that we’re in right now,” he said.
Fauci also said on the Sunday morning show that it would be “a false statement” to say the U.S. government has the coronavirus pandemic under control.
The infectious disease expert last month warned that the U.S. needs to prepare for the coronavirus to be cyclical.
The U.S. has counted more than 321,000 cases of the coronavirus, leading to at least 9,132 deaths, according to data from Johns Hopkins University. https://thehill.com/homenews/sunday-talk-shows/491239-fauci-says-its-likely-coronavirus-will-be-seasonal
In 2009 the U.S. government launched a program to hunt for unknown
viruses that can cross from animals to humans and cause pandemics. The
project, called PREDICT, was funded by the U.S. Agency for International
Development, and it worked with teams in 31 countries, including China.
It was just one part of an emerging global network for
infectious-disease surveillance.
Despite this network and the efforts of thousands of scientists
working to ward off dangerous new outbreaks, the coronavirus behind
COVID-19 was unidentified when it launched into an unprepared world at
the end of 2019. How did the virus slip by disease detectives looking
for exactly this type of threat?
Experts say that like a fishing net with many holes, the surveillance
network had numerous gaps, with too little money and manpower to be
truly effective. “We’ve been gutting surveillance for too long,” says
Michael Buchmeier, a virologist and associate director of the Center for
Virus Research at the University of California, Irvine. “And by doing
that, we’re creating blind spots in our ability to identify and contain
threats of infectious disease in the world.” Indeed, in September 2019,
just months before the COVID-19 pandemic began, USAID announced it would
end funding for PREDICT. The agency claims it has plans for a successor
effort, but it has not provided any additional details, and many worry
that critical momentum is being lost.
An estimated 600,000 unknown viruses, possibly more, have the ability
to jump from animals to people. To find such “spillover” microbes,
researchers look in disease hotspots where wildlife and humans
intermingle, such as forests that are razed for development or
agriculture or markets that sell bushmeat. Sampling tends to focus on
species with high viral loads, such as bats, rats and monkeys. And
scientists run laboratory tests to find out if newly discovered viruses
can infect human cells. Investigators also try to look at the various
ecological and social drivers that can bring disease-carrying wild
animals and humans together.
Researchers were well aware that coronaviruses, one of which caused
severe acute respiratory syndrome (SARS), could be a recurring threat.
That pathogen, SARS-CoV, first surfaced in China in 2002 and spread to
nearly 30 countries before the outbreak died down the following year. In
2007 researchers from the University of Hong Kong published a paper
stating that the presence of many other SARS-CoV-like viruses in bats
made this type of pathogen a “time bomb.” In southern China there was a
culture of eating exotic animals that could pick up such viruses from
the bats, they noted, and this practice made it easier for them to make
the jump to people. Several other groups of scientists later echoed
their fears, and the virus that causes COVID-19 turned out to be so
similar to the 2002–2003 microbe that it was named SARS-CoV-2.
Kevin Olival is a disease ecologist at the EcoHealth Alliance, a New
York City–based nonprofit research group that was part of PREDICT. He
says that EcoHealth researchers and their partners, including a team at
the Wuhan Institute of Virology in China, had identified numerous
SARS-related coronaviruses in bats and were following up with laboratory
experiments on several of them. But, he adds, how and where the
SARS-CoV-2 spillover occurred is not known for certain. There was an
early suspicion that the initial outbreak could have started at the
Huanan Seafood Wholesale Market in Wuhan, which was closed on January 1.
But “we don’t know if the spillover happened outside the market and
then began spreading after it was brought there,” Olival says. It is
also unclear if there was an intermediate animal host between the
disease-carrying bats and humans.
Getting a better grasp on animal-human exchanges is critical to
predicting these spillovers. According to Olival, what is needed is
detailed knowledge of local ecology, maps of species distributions, an
understanding of people’s behavioral interactions with other species and
an awareness of the “cultural and economic drivers of the animal
trade.” If these analyses sound complicated, that is because they are:
Olival says such assessments take a lot of scientists and facilities, as
well as training and money. As a result, they are only being carried
out at a handful of sites around the world. Yet the information they
provide is essential for protecting local communities. High-risk markets
where wildlife is cut up and sold as food can be closed, for instance.
Or people can be alerted when virus-shedding bats are more active around
human food sources, such as fruit trees, so individuals can minimize
their contact with the animals.
Rohit Chitale, an epidemiologist at the Defense Advanced Research
Projects Agency, says the explosion of COVID-19 reflects a global
failure to adequately invest in prevention. “There’s too much emphasis
on treating infectious diseases after the fact,” argues Chitale, who is
program manager of DARPA’s surveillance effort, called Preventing
Emerging Pathogenic Threats (PREEMPT). Early detection efforts, in
contrast, “are very poorly funded,” he says. Olival notes that PREDICT
received approximately $200 million dollars over its decade-long life
span—which is a tiny fraction of the $2 trillion in emergency-relief
spending authorized by Congress as a response to COVID-19 last week.
He says that USAID may launch a new detection-and-prevention program
called Stop Spillovers. An agency spokesperson, when asked to comment,
said a new project should start in August, but gave no details on the
project size or level of financial support. Yet even if a new effort
picks up PREDICT’s work, funding gaps have led to an “unfortunate break
in continuity” and disrupted field work, Olival says. In a late January
letter to USAID, senators Angus King of Maine and Elizabeth Warren of
Massachusetts demanded to know why PREDICT was being shuttered and
expressed concern that even as COVID-19 “threatens public health in the
U.S. and abroad, programs like PREDICT are winding down rather than
winding up.” King and Warren requested answers to their questions by “no
later than February 13,” but as of April 1, the agency had not written
back to them. (The University of California, Davis, which is a PREDICT
partner, said at the end of March that the program got a six-month
emergency extension.)
Thomas Inglesby, who directs the Center for Health Security at the
Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health, says that in the
future, these surveillance efforts need to be better integrated with
studies of infected patients in local hospitals. Too many people in
disease hotspots wind up being vaguely diagnosed and treated with
broad-spectrum antibiotics for infections that “may actually be new
types of viral syndromes,” he says. “At the same time that we’re
collecting data from animals, we need more data on what’s really making
people sick.”
Inglesby is optimistic, however, that the next few years will bring
an influx of new resources, because of the devastation unfolding in
front of our eyes today. “We’re going through a seismic experience,” he
says. “Policy makers, scientists and funders will all be talking about
how we can prevent this from ever happening again.”
The University of Washington’s Institute for Health Metrics and
Evaluation has created a model to project future cases of COVID-19 in
the United States.
The study has not yet been peer reviewed and should not be used to guide clinical practice.
Projections are based on the assumption that full social distancing measures will be observed through at least May 2020.
A new model predicts coronavirus deaths will peak in the United States on April 16, though the research is a preprint, meaning
it has not yet been peer reviewed. The peer review process is a vital
part of assessing new medical research and identifies weaknesses in its
assumptions, methods and conclusions.
Full updated results are available here: COVID-19 Projections.
When a state is chosen under the drop down menu, the infographic
projects how many hospital beds, ICU beds, bed shortage (if any) and
ventilators may be necessary in each state to address patient need.
Local mandates and travel restrictions are reported as well.
So, why release the estimate if it is a preprint? The University of
Washington’s Institute for Health Metrics and Evaluation (IHME) said
colleagues asked them to develop the models at the university’s school
of medicine and soon heard from other hospital systems and state
governments.
“Ultimately, these forecasts were developed to provide hospitals,
health care workers, policymakers, and the public with crucial
information about what demands COVID-19 may place on hospital capacity
and resources, so that they could begin to plan,” the IHME wrote.
The model, published online by IHME, predicts the peak use of
hospital resources, including beds, ICU beds and invasive ventilators,
for COVID-19 patients in each state. The study used data on confirmed
coronavirus deaths from the Word Health Organization (WHO) and local and
national governments as well as data on hospital capacity and
utilization for each of the states.
While peak dates vary from state to state, the IHME forecasts the
national peak for hospital resource use will be on April 15, assuming
that current social distancing measures are observed through May 2020.
The next day, according to the model, will be the peak in deaths for the
nation.
The earliest peak date for hospital resource use is predicted to be
April 8 in New Jersey, while the latest is predicted for May 21 in
Missouri. For COVID-19 deaths, the earliest peak date was March 23 in
Vermont, the day before the state issued its stay at home order, while
the latest is predicted to be May 20, in Virginia, where a stay at home
order was put in place on March 30.
The model also estimates the total number of deaths in each state by
August 4. New York is projected to have the most deaths at 16,261, with
Florida in second at 6,897 deaths.
After a week of daily updates, the IHME wrote in an update
on April 2 that the model has done well in predicting daily deaths. The
model has also been updated as stay at home orders are issued across
the country and new data becomes available. While the initial estimate
for total COVID-19 deaths in the U.S. was 81,114, the IHME estimate has
increased to 93,531. This table was last updated April 2:
