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Science

Axiom Space unveils AX-1 crew for fully-private SpaceX mission to ISS

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SpaceX’s Crew Dragon Endeavour seen docked with the International Space Station on July 1, 2020.

NASA

A pair of investors are joining the first fully-private flight to the International Space Station — not as financial backers, but as the passengers flying along.

Houston-based start-up Axiom Space on Tuesday unveiled that real estate investor Larry Connor and Canadian investor Mark Pathy will fly on its upcoming AX-1 mission. The pair join former NASA astronaut Michael López-Alegría, who will be the commander of the flight, and former Israeli fighter pilot Eytan Stibbe. Connor will be the mission’s pilot, which will make him the first private spaceflight pilot.

Axiom last year signed a deal with SpaceX for the mission. Elon Musk’s company is scheduled to launch the all-private crew no earlier than January 2022, using a Crew Dragon capsule to carry them to the space station. The mission comes at a steep price — $55 million per person — but will net them an eight-day stay on the space station.

“Never has an entire crew been non-professional astronauts,” López-Alegría told CNBC. “This is really groundbreaking, and I think it’s very important that the mission be successful and safe because we’re really paving the way for lots of things to happen after us.”

López-Alegría flew to space four times for NASA as a professional astronaut but now works for Axiom. He will lead them through about 15 weeks of training starting in the fall, command the spacecraft and make sure the other three crew members “have a safe and productive time,” he said.

AX-1 was originally scheduled for October 2021, but slid to early 2022. Axiom wants to fly “a couple of these missions per year,” López-Alegría added, so future missions are on deck. Speculation abounded that AX-1 would feature actor Tom Cruise, as last year NASA announced that it is working with Cruise to film a movie on the ISS.

Connor has lead The Connor Group since 2003, building the Ohio-based real estate investment firm to more than $3 billion in assets. Pathy, who is set to become the 11th Canadian astronaut, is the CEO and chairman of family office fund MAVRIK Corp, as well as chairman of the board at publicly-traded Montreal-based music company Stingray Group.

Stibbe would be the second Israeli astronaut — the first was Ilan Ramon, a payload specialist on board Space Shuttle Columbia, who was killed in February 2003 when Columbia broke apart during re-entry. Stibbe was a close friend of Ramon’s.

AX-1 is ‘100% not a vacation’

While space tourism is an emerging sub-sector of the space industry, Axiom’s private passengers do not put themselves in that category.

“We absolutely do not believe that we’re space tourists,” Connor told CNBC.

López-Alegría similarly emphasized that the 10-day mission “is 100% not a vacation for these guys.”

“They’re really focused on having this be a mission to promote a benefit to society, so they each are working on flight programs,” Lopez-Alegria said. “They’re teaming up with various institutions, hospitals and other research entities, as well as to do outreach while they’re up there.”

Each of three have research missions they will be conducting on behalf of other organizations. Connor is collaborating with the Mayo Clinic and Cleveland Clinic. Meanwhile, Pathy is working with the Canadian Space Agency and the Montreal Children’s Hospital. Finally, Stibbe is working on behalf of the Ramon Foundation and Israeli Space Agency.

“I’ve volunteered myself to be a test subject,” Connor said. “We’re not going there to be spectators; we’re going there to do research and hopefully add some value for people.”

Connor and Pathy together witnessed SpaceX’s first astronaut launch, the Demo-2 mission in May, which was the first rocket launch either had seen in person.

The private ride to space

The Crew Dragon Resilience spacecraft in the hangar ahead of the Crew-1 mission

SpaceX

SpaceX developed Crew Dragon through heavy NASA funding, with the spacecraft built to fly astronauts to-and-from the ISS in low Earth orbit. SpaceX has launched two astronaut crews for NASA so far, including the first operational mission called Crew-1 in November.

Although NASA contributed to its development, Musk’s company owns and operates the spacecraft and rocket — with Axiom managing the mission and preparing the astronauts to launch.

The AX-1 crew has yet to begin its formal training, but Connor said they have stopped by SpaceX’s headquarters in Los Angeles for a spacesuit fitting and to see the spacecraft.

“The Crew Dragon capsule, in terms of quality and professionalism, is just outstanding,” Connor said. “And you can tell that, [as a group SpaceX is] exceptionally talented and committed to the mission.”

Connor emphasized that “NASA and SpaceX have nothing short of a remarkable safety record,” which he said he reviewed with his family when considering the risk of flying to space.

“We got to the point where we’re not only confident but comfortable that we can do both a valuable mission and a safe one,” Connor said.

NASA’s SpaceX Crew-1 crew members seated in the company’s Crew Dragon spacecraft during training. From left to right: NASA astronauts Shannon Walker, Victor Oliver and Mike Hopkins, and JAXA astronaut Soichi Noguchi.

SpaceX

AX-1 is expected to use SpaceX’s Crew Dragon spacecraft “Resilience” after it returns from its current Crew-1 mission. While the company regularly lands and reuses its Falcon 9 rocket boosters and its Cargo Dragon capsules, AX-1 would likely be the first time reuse is introduced to a Crew Dragon spacecraft.

“I’m very comfortable with that,” López-Alegría said. “Reusability is something that has been always made sense in human spaceflight.”

An expensive endeavor

The uncrewed SpaceX Crew Dragon spacecraft at the International Space Station with its nose cone open revealing its docking mechanism while approaching the station.

NASA

At $55 million a seat, it’s unsurprising that the first private space crew includes high net worth individuals like Connor and Pathy. The former said that it’s “a fair question and concern” that some might criticize private spaceflight as only for the ultra rich.

“We have lots of domestic problems and challenges, as well as international, but does that mean we should forget about the future?” Connor asked. “And, if you really think about the future, my view is that space is the next great frontier, so shouldn’t we be trying to explore and in some regards try to pioneer that?”

López-Alegría characterized the mission as “the first crack in the door toward democratization of space,” following closely on the heels of NASA’s decision in 2019 to allow private missions to visit the ISS. NASA will charge each person $35,000 per day while on board, as compensation for the services needed such as food and data usage.

“It’s not a very democratic demographic right now because of the cost of the flights, but we fully anticipate that the costs will start coming down,” López-Alegría said. “At some point we’ll be able to offer these to the man-on-the-street. It’s going to be a while but that’s the goal, and you have to start somewhere.”

For Connor’s part, he asked that critics of private spaceflight “think long term” to 25 or more years from now.

“Will it be that uncommon for people to go into space? I think and I hope the answer is going to be no. So somebody has to start it, somebody has to do the exploration and set the standards and so hopefully people will will look at it in that way,” Connor said.

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World

Pfizer and AstraZeneca take heat as vaccine delays threaten Europe’s recovery

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AstraZeneca will not be able to deliver as many doses of its vaccine as promised, according to EU officials, putting government rollout plans at risk. The news comes after Pfizer said it had delivered fewer doses of its vaccine than expected last week.

EU Health Commissioner Stella Kyriakides on Monday expressed dissatisfaction on talks with AstraZeneca and said conversations would continue. She said the drugmaker “intends to supply considerably fewer doses in the coming weeks than agreed and announced.”

European Commission President Ursula von der Leyen turned up the heat on the pharmaceutical companies on Tuesday, saying the bloc “means business.”

“Europe invested billions to help develop the world’s first Covid-19 vaccines, to create a truly global common good. And now the companies must deliver. They must honor their obligations,” she said during a virtual meeting of the World Economic Forum.

EU countries counting on the vaccines to rein in the health crisis and jumpstart their economies are now being forced to modify their plans. Italian Deputy Health Minister Pierpaolo Sileri told TV channel Rai 1 on Sunday that people over 80 years old would be vaccinated four weeks later than planned as a result of the delays. The country is threatening legal action against the drugmakers.

“By the [fall] we could vaccinate up to 45 million Italians, but I don’t believe in these companies,” Sileri said. “I want to see the vaccines.”

Unexpected delays

The European Union has ordered 300 million doses of the AstraZeneca vaccine, which could be approved for use as soon as this week, with an option to purchase an additional 100 million.

The company said that production has been hampered by a manufacturing issue.

“While there is no scheduled delay to the start of shipments of our vaccine should we receive approval in Europe, initial volumes will be lower than originally anticipated due to reduced yields at a manufacturing site within our European supply chain,” AstraZeneca said in a statement. “We will be supplying tens of millions of doses in February and March to the European Union, as we continue to ramp up production volumes.”

The news has sent the bloc reeling, just as it was racing to assess the impact of delays announced by Pfizer. The US company said on Jan. 15 that it would deliver fewer doses than planned last week while it upgraded its manufacturing facility in Puurs, Belgium.

The drugmaker said it would still be able to meet first quarter targets, and as a result of the changes to its Belgium plant would be able to churn out 2 billion doses by the end of 2021. That’s up from the 1.3 billion it had originally estimated.

Pfizer said Monday it would return to its original schedule of deliveries for the European Union this week.

European governments are demanding answers, pointing out that the success of their vaccination efforts is dependent on the private sector.

“On the one hand we can only welcome the result of science, and on the other hand they have a monopoly and we are totally dependent,” Belgian Health Minister Frank Vandenbroucke said on Saturday. “There may be production issues, but these uncertainties and announcements make it very difficult to organize the campaign.”

Kyriakides said on Monday that the bloc would now demand “full transparency concerning the export of vaccines” from the European Union.

“In the future, all companies producing vaccines against Covid-19 in the EU will have to provide early notification whenever they want to export vaccines to third countries. Humanitarian deliveries are of course not affected by this,” she said on Twitter.

How bad is it?

Supply chain experts are much more concerned by the news from AstraZeneca than Pfizer, given the latter company’s commitment to increase output soon. AstraZeneca’s vaccine, developed with Oxford University, is also much easier to distribute because it can be stored at higher temperatures than the Pfizer alternative.

A delay for a week or two “is not a big problem,” said Burak Kazaz, a professor of supply chain management at Syracuse University. “[Though] I certainly understand that a delay means lives.”

The scope of the problems facing AstraZeneca, which appear more serious, would become clear in the coming weeks, he said.

Delays from both firms are a sign that there are still kinks in the supply chain that need to be ironed out as distribution ramps up, according to Prashant Yadav, a medical supply chain expert and senior fellow at the Center for Global Development.

“We will have more of these ups and downs until we get to a stable process,” Yadav said.

Given the rocky attempts to get up to speed — and concentration of production at just a few manufacturing sites — the public should expect monthly manufacturing capacity to fluctuate for the time being, he added.

Richard Wilding, a professor of supply chain strategy at Cranfield University in England, noted that there are at least 50 items necessary to run vaccination sites, from alcohol wipes and syringes to personal protective equipment. Supply chains for those items need to run smoothly, too.

Crucially, the delays aren’t just a problem for Europe.

“The price will be paid by developing countries who don’t have access yet, because their deliveries may be delayed further down the line,” Yadav said.

— James Frater, Chris Liakos, Amanda Sealy and Stephanie Halasz contributed reporting.

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World

Biden walking a high wire with Russia ahead of Putin call

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WASHINGTON (AP) — President Joe Biden has been quickly thrown into a high-wire balancing act with Russia as he seeks to toughen his administration’s stance against Vladimir Putin while preserving room for diplomacy in a post-Donald Trump era.

The relationship is sure to be different than the one Putin enjoyed with Trump, who was enamored of the Russian leader and sought his approval, casting doubt on Russian interference in the 2016 elections and involvement in a massive hack last year. Despite this conciliatory approach, his administration toed a tough line against Moscow, imposing sanctions on the country, Russian companies and business leaders for issues ranging from Ukraine to energy supplies and attacks on dissidents.

Unlike his immediate predecessors, Biden has not held out hope for a “reset” in relations with Russia but has instead indicated he wants to manage differences with the former Cold War foe without necessarily resolving them or improving ties. And, with a heavy domestic agenda and looming decisions needed on Iran and China, a direct confrontation with Russia is not something he seeks.

When Biden first speaks with Putin, he’s expected to call Putin out for the arrest of opposition figure Alexei Navalny and the weekend crackdown on his supporters, raise charges that Russian security services were behind the recent massive cybersecurity breach, and press allegations that Russia offered the Taliban bounties to kill American troops in Afghanistan.

At the same time, Biden must be mindful of his own proposal to extend for five years the last remaining U.S.-Russia arms control treaty that is due to expire in early February.

On Monday, Biden told reporters that he had not yet decided how to respond to the Navalny situation but expressed hope that the U.S. and Russia could cooperate in areas where both see benefit.

“I find that we can both operate in the mutual self-interest of our countries as a New START agreement and make it clear to Russia that we are very concerned about their behavior, whether it’s Navalny, whether it’s SolarWinds or reports of bounties on heads of Americans in Afghanistan,” Biden said.

Biden has already ordered the intelligence community to launch reviews of each of those issues, according to the White House, which on Friday said the U.S. proposal to extend New START would be accompanied by a reckoning on the other matters.

That approach has met with approval from some former U.S. diplomats who have dealt with Russia and are looking forward to how Biden’s team, including national security adviser Jake Sullivan and his nominee to be the No. 3 at the State Department, Victoria Nuland, delineate the contours of Russia policy.

Nuland, in particular, is reviled by Putin and his aides for her support of pro-Western politicians in Ukraine and held the Europe portfolio at the State Department in President Barack Obama’s second term. She and Sullivan are said to share opinions about how to deal with Moscow, taking a tough line on human rights and Russia’s intentions in eastern and central Europe while keeping an open channel to the Kremlin on other matters.

But their starting position is complicated, they say, particularly given Putin’s experience in dealing with Trump, who frequently undercut his own administration’s hawkish stance on Russia by privately trying to cozy up to the Russian leader.

“It’s hard but it’s doable,” said Daniel Fried, a U.S. ambassador to Poland and assistant secretary of state for European affairs in the George W. Bush administration. “They’re going to have to figure this out on the fly, but it’s important to pursue New START without hesitation and push back on the Navalny arrest and other issues without guilt.”

“They need to do both and not let Putin tell them he won’t accept New START unless they drop Navalny, SolarWinds or Afghanistan,” said Fried, who is now with the Atlantic Council. “You have to push back and you can’t let Putin set the terms.”

Putin, however, may be cautious given his uncertain domestic standing in the aftermath of the pro-Navalny protests that took place in more than 100 cities over the weekend.

Biden’s team has already reacted strongly to the crackdown on Navalny supporters over the weekend in which more than 3,700 people were arrested at the demonstrations across Russia, including more than 1,400 in Moscow.

Navalny, an anti-corruption campaigner and Putin’s fiercest critic, was arrested Jan. 17 as he returned to Russia from Germany, where he had spent nearly five months recovering from nerve-agent poisoning that he blames on the Kremlin. Russian authorities deny the accusations.

White House press secretary Jen Psaki and State Department spokesman Ned Price have urged the immediate and unconditional release of Navalny, as well as those who were detained in the crackdown.

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Business

Apollo CEO Leon Black to Step Down Following Review of Jeffrey Epstein Ties

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Leon Black plans to step down as chief executive of Apollo Global Management Inc. after an independent review revealed larger-than-expected payments to disgraced financier Jeffrey Epstein that it nevertheless deemed justified.

The monthslong review by Dechert LLP found no evidence that Mr. Black was involved in the criminal activities of the late Epstein, who was indicted in 2019 on federal sex-trafficking charges involving underage girls, according to a copy of the law firm’s report that was viewed by The Wall Street Journal.

In its report, Dechert found the fees that the billionaire had paid Epstein were for legitimate advice on trust- and estate-tax planning that proved to be of significant value to Mr. Black and his family. Mr. Black paid Epstein a total of $148 million, plus a $10 million donation to his charity—far more than was previously known.

Mr. Black wrote in a letter to Apollo’s fund investors that he would cede the role of CEO to co-founder Marc Rowan on or before his 70th birthday on July 31 while retaining the role of chairman. In the letter, a copy of which was viewed by the Journal, Mr. Black detailed other governance changes he is recommending to the board, including the appointment of more independent directors and the elimination of Apollo’s dual-class share structure.

Mr. Black also pledged to donate $200 million of his family’s money to women’s initiatives.

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Science

NBA plans for private equity investments in teams

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NBA Commissioner Adam Silver addresses the media prior to the game of the Miami Heat against the Los Angeles Lakers in Game one of the 2020 NBA Finals as part of the NBA Restart 2020 on September 30, 2020 at AdventHealth Arena at ESPN Wide World of Sports Complex in Orlando, Florida.

Garrett Ellwood | National Basketball Association | Getty Images

Ownership accoutrements.

It’s the phrase National Basketball Association commissioner Adam Silver used in 2019 to help frame the attraction of becoming a sports owner. And Silver suggested the NBA could incentivize those looking to join its club, even on a minority level.  

The NBA’s plan to lure private equity money is in motion, and it’s betting on the allure of owning limited partnerships in its clubs will pay off.

With valuations in clubs rising to astronomical levels, the NBA joined the private equity chase when owners approved a plan to allow investment firms to own stakes in teams. NBA executive J.B. Lockhart is one the individuals who oversees this strategy and the league picked Dyal Capital as its partner.

They way it works: The NBA rounds up stakes in clubs and sells them to private equity firms like Dyal, who can then technically sell the limited partnerships (LPs) to private investors. Last May, Barron’s reported Dyal was seeking to raise $2 billion to purchase the LPs.

Some in the private equity space praise the NBA’s move, and even attempt to connect it to a more global play down the line.

The pros and cons of PE

By turning to private equity, the NBA solicits more capital for its league, can strike quicker deals to assist with liquidity and finance its future endeavors.

Also, NBA valuations are skyrocketing. The average price of a club is now over $2 billion, and its last two franchises (Brooklyn and Utah) sold for an average of $2.45 billion when considering Nets owner Joseph Tsai paid $1 billion for the Barclays Center in Brooklyn in a separate deal.

Hence, the league needed to expend its investor base as even minority stakes are getting expensive.

“This provides the NBA, its member teams, its entire infrastructure with financial optionality,” said Chris Lencheski, the chairman of private equity consulting company Phoenicia and adjunct professor at Columbia University.

Allowing private equity investments will also help minority owners looking to sell and exit ownership groups. On the majority side, owners who want to recover from Covid-19 losses by can sell shares and benefit, too.

Lencheski, who also serves as CEO of Granite Bridge Partners’ Winning Streak Sports, sees the NBA’s global “economic moat” as a draw for investors as there’s unlikely to be any viable competition for high-level professional basketball. Plus the league is backed by global licensing, merchandise, sponsorship and approximately $2.5 billion in annual media rights income, which runs through the 2024-25 season.

But the move is not risk-free.

Addressing the NBA’s ratings slide at the 2019 Sports Business Journal Dealmakers conference, Silver described cable television model as “broken” and added league’s young viewers “are tuning out traditional cable.”

So should its media rights drop in price as cable subscribers continue to cut the cord, valuations could drop and investors can lose money on LPs. One sports banker pointed to 2009 when valuations dropped due to a bad economy as proof the NBA isn’t immune to a decline due to economic turmoil, either.

And few foreseen the abrupt stop to its estimated 40% in revenue due to the pandemic.

But it could have help from the public’s allure.

Anthony Davis #3 of the Los Angeles Lakers shoots the ball against the Miami Heat during Game Four of the NBA Finals on October 6, 2020 at AdventHealth Arena in Orlando, Florida.

Nathaniel S. Butler | National Basketball Association | Getty Images

The SPAC play

Dyal and investment firm Owl Rock merged with Altimar Acquisition Corporation, a $275 million special purpose acquisition company (SPAC) currently trading on the New York Stock Exchange, allowing the combined firms to go public. The new firm is called Blue Owl, and public investors will soon be able to invest in it under the ticker symbol “OWL” on the NYSE later this year.

And one of its attractions will be its NBA fund.

Dyal did not respond to a CNBC request for comment, but managing partner Michael Rees spoke about the firm’s NBA strategy on a Dec. 23 U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission call announcing the plan to launch Blue Owl.

“We’re proud to be a partner, an exclusive partner, with the NBA, the National Basketball Association, where we’re the only approved buyer of a portfolio of minority equity stakes in the 30 teams in the NBA,” said Rees, according to the call’s transcript. “That business is just being launched, and we’re hoping to have our first closing in the not-too-distant future.”

“We think we can grow certainly a very attractive basketball strategy off of this platform, but also possibly expand to a broader sports business that could have tremendous upside,” added Rees, who will also serve as one of the co-presidents of Blue Owl.

It’s not clear what Blue Owl’s overall sports strategy is, nor how it expects to make a return on NBA LPs. A person close to their planning told CNBC it would purchase stakes in some clubs, not all 30 teams.

When discussing the NBA’s private equity play, a Wall Street CEO said the firms make no money on fiduciary capital until it sells something. The person requested to remain anonymous due to the sensitivity of discussing the matter publicly.

The CEO, who has an extensive history in private equity, also questioned how private firms would make any return on $2 billion. A long-time sports executive, who also requested anonymity, noted NBA teams can redistribute annual profits to new investors.

So, if a private firm is betting on sports teams as a long-term play, it could earn on clubs revenue while holding on to the LPs through dividends. Then, it could sell the LPs at a higher price.

And with the NBA such a global product, billionaires around world looking for an entry point into U.S. sports could be potential consumers of NBA accoutrements.

Paris Saint-Germain’s Qatari president Nasser Al-Khelaifi arrives for a training session at the Luz stadium in Lisbon on August 22, 2020 on the eve of the UEFA Champions League final football match between Paris Saint-Germain and Bayern Munich.

Miguel A. Lopes | AFP | Getty Images

Foreign investment an option?

Private firms can purchase the LPs and then sell them on the secondary market. If the NBA goes the private equity route, there will be guidelines in place, but it will lose some control on who the LPs are sold to.

Foreign investors could be a way for firms to make money on the LPs.

There is chatter that points to Middle East investors as future buyers of the minority shares. The NBA prohibits sovereign state investment in its teams, but investors from Abu Dhabi, Dubai and Qatar have been linked to the league before. In 2010, it was rumored investors were interested in purchasing the Detroit Pistons.

Lencheski added the NBA could also use the private equity investment vehicle to examine individuals who could look to buy majority positions in teams at a later date. The sports executive used Tsai’s entry as an example. He paid Russian billionaire Mikhail Prokhorov $1 billion for a 49% stake in the Brooklyn Nets in 2018 before taking full control.

Lencheski pointed to David Tepper’s entry into the National Football League as another example.

“One of the many factors that certainly helped Charlotte’s ownership in the NFL was the minority interest initially in the Pittsburgh Steelers,” he said. “If David Tepper doesn’t see the way the Steelers organization operates, understands what a best-in-class organization looks like when he goes to his NFL colleagues and says, ‘I want to buy a team,’ he has the funds, but more importantly for the NFL, he understands the culture of a winning community-focused sports organization.”

The NBA appears bullish on its product. Live sports still keeps the cable model from shattering. The league continues to produce international superstars to protect its economic moat — $8.3 billion in revenue. And the NBA’s credit is in good standing.

The NBA’s new focus is expanding the list of those seeking ownership accoutrements via private equity.

“You get some of the benefits of being a team owner,” Silver told SBJ, according to SportsPro. “So it’s not just a pure, ‘What’s my return financial investment?’ Not that that’s not important, but try to come closer to some of the same reasons that traditional franchise owners buy into teams.

“Part of it is financial,” Silver said, “but part of it is the amenities, and the cachet, and the desire to be directly involved with these leagues.”

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Health

In ambulances, an unseen, unwelcome passenger: COVID-19

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In ambulances, an unseen, unwelcome passenger: COVID-19

By STEFANIE DAZIO

January 25, 2021 GMT

LOS ANGELES (AP) — It’s crowded in the back of the ambulance.

Two emergency medical technicians, the patient, the gurney — and an unseen and unwelcome passenger lurking in the air.

For EMTs Thomas Hoang and Joshua Hammond, the coronavirus is constantly close. COVID-19 has become their biggest fear during 24-hour shifts in California’s Orange County, riding with them from 911 call to 911 call, from patient to patient.

They and other EMTs, paramedics and 911 dispatchers in Southern California have been thrust into the front lines of the national epicenter of the pandemic. They are scrambling to help those in need as hospitals burst with a surge of patients after the holidays, ambulances are stuck waiting outside hospitals for hours until beds become available, oxygen tanks are in alarmingly short supply and the vaccine rollout has been slow.

EMTs and paramedics have always dealt with life and death — they make split-second decisions about patient care, which hospital to race to, the best and fastest way to save someone — and now they’re just a breath away from becoming the patient themselves.

They gown up, mask up and glove up, “but you can only be so safe,” Hammond said. “We don’t have the luxury of being 6 feet apart from the patient.”

Full Coverage:  Photography

Statistics on COVID-19 cases and deaths among EMTs and paramedics — especially ones employed by private companies — are hard to find. They are considered essential health care workers but rarely receive the pay and protections given to doctors and nurses.

Hammond and Hoang work for Emergency Ambulance Service Inc., a private ambulance company in Southern California. They, like so many others, have long fostered goals of becoming first responders to serve their communities.

Hoang is attending nursing school. Hammond is one test away from becoming a paramedic. Both were called to a life in the medical field after traumatic experiences: Hammond had to call 911 after his mother had an allergic reaction, and Hoang witnessed a young bicyclist get hit by a car.

Yet as COVID-19 infections surge and the risks increase, they wonder: Is it worth risking your life — and the lives of your loved ones at home — for a small paycheck and a dream?

“It’s really hard to justify it beyond ‘I really want to help people,’” said Hammond, 25. “Is that worth the risk?”

For now, yes.

“I do want to do my part in helping people get better, in a sense,” said Hoang, 29.

And so their day starts at 7 a.m.

Wearing masks, Hoang and Hammond clean their ambulance and equipment, wiping down every surface even if the previous crew scrubbed it already. They take no chances during their daylong shift covering the Orange County city of Placentia.

The 911 calls come in with limited information: a broken bone, chest pain, difficulty breathing, stomachache, fever. Every patient is a potential carrier of the coronavirus, whether they know it or not.

Sometimes, people know they’re infected and tell 911 dispatchers before the EMTs arrive. Other times, the symptoms themselves — fever, shortness of breath — signal a possible case. But Hammond remembers one woman, suffering from hip pain, who didn’t tell him or his partner about her coronavirus diagnosis.

He only found out afterward, saying it reinforced the importance of treating every patient as if they have tested positive.

“That was definitely a call where we learned a lot,” Hammond said.

Unlike doctors and nurses, first responders must go inside homes. They walk into hot zones where everyone in a household is sick, where the virus is in the air. They lift immobile patients onto gurneys, their masked faces just inches apart.

They race to hospitals already overwhelmed with sick people, sometimes only to wait hours outside before their patient can be admitted. And then they do it all again when the next 911 call comes in.

“We don’t know the end result,” Hoang said. “We only know the beginning to the hospital.”

Then there are those who direct the EMTs where to go. In Los Angeles County, 20 miles (32 kilometers) northwest from Hoang and Hammond, three young women stood before six screens apiece recently, talking into headsets with clear, clipped voices, marshaling other ambulance crews around a territory stretching from the mountains to the sea.

Ashley Cortez, Adreanna Moreno and Jaime Hopper work 12-hour shifts as dispatchers for Care Ambulance Service Inc. If the EMTs are the front lines, these women are the scouts.

They play chess with ambulances all day. When one gets stuck at a hospital for eight, 10 or 12 hours, the dispatchers must reposition the others to cover its area. When an EMT reports a positive COVID-19 test, the dispatchers must find a way to cover the ambulance’s calls if the whole crew must quarantine. When one household has multiple coronavirus patients requiring two ambulances, the dispatchers have to plug the hole.

Their greatest fear is what’s called a “level zero” — when there are no ambulances left to send to an emergency. In Los Angeles County, one of the nation’s hardest-hit counties during the pandemic, the fear becomes a regular reality.

For Moreno, 28, the anxiety begins the night before her shift.

“I lay there and know I’m going to come in, and I know I’m going to have no units to run these calls,” she said.

On Christmas weekend, Cortez watched as call after call piled up on her screen — with no ambulances available. Typically, it takes 30 seconds to send one out. That weekend, it took up to 15 minutes. And this was even before ambulances started languishing outside hospitals for hours.

“I was just in disbelief,” said Cortez, 26.

There’s not much more the dispatchers can do. They watch those screens. They listen to radio chatter. They rearrange the crews to cover the most territory possible. And they wonder what fresh horror awaits in a virus-ravaged world where the dangers are too many and the ambulances are too few.

“What if something happens to my daughter,” Cortez said, “and there was nobody to send for her?”



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Business

Merck ends its vaccine development; Google offers its offices for vaccination sites

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CVS completes first round of vaccination at 8,000 U.S. nursing homes

A CVS pharmacy manager prepares a coronavirus disease (COVID-19) vaccine dose at the Soldiers’ Home in Holyoke, Massachusetts, December 29, 2020.

Hoang ‘Leon’ Nguyen | The Republican | Pool | via Reuters

CVS Health completed administering the first round of Covid-19 vaccination at roughly 8,000 U.S. nursing facilities, Reuters reports.

Administration of second doses was underway and expected to be completed within four weeks.

CVS Pharmacy has administered nearly 2 million doses to date but has a capacity for 20 million to 25 million shots a month, the company told Reuters, adding that its long-term care vaccination effort remains on track.

—Terri Cullen

U.S. doesn’t know how much Covid vaccine it has, says CDC chief

The head of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention warned on Sunday that the federal government doesn’t know how much coronavirus vaccine there is available to the country, adding yet another complication to the new administration’s efforts to mitigate the crisis, reports CNBC’s Amanda Macias.

“I can’t tell you how much vaccine we have, and if I can’t tell it to you then I can’t tell it to the governors and I can’t tell it to the state health officials,” CDC director Dr. Rochelle Walensky told “Fox News Sunday.”

“If they don’t know how much vaccine they’re getting not just this week but next week and the week after they can’t plan. They can’t figure out how many sites to roll out, they can’t figure out how many vaccinators that they need, and they can’t figure out how many appointments to make for the public,” Walensky said.

President Joe Biden has set a goal for the country to administer 100 million vaccines in the president’s first 100 days.

—Fred Imbert

Merck ends its Covid vaccine program, citing inferior immune responses

A Merck sign in front of the company’s building in Summit, New Jersey.

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Merck said it will end development of its two Covid-19 vaccines, Reuters reports.

In early trials, two of the company’s vaccines generated immune responses that were inferior to those seen in people who had recovered from Covid-19, as well as those reported for other Covid-19 vaccines, according to Reuters.

The drugmaker said it plans to focus its pandemic research on treatments, with initial efficacy data on an experimental oral antiviral expected by the end of March, the wire service said.

—Terri Cullen

Google to open vaccine sites at its U.S. offices

American multinational technology company Google logo seen at Googleplex, the corporate headquarters complex of Google and its parent company Alphabet Inc.

Alex Tai | SOPA Images | LightRocket | Getty Images

Google will make some of its own facilities available to open new coronavirus vaccination sites in the U.S.

The company said it has partnered with health clinic chain One Medical and public health authorities to open vaccine sites in Los Angeles; San Francisco; Kirkland, Washington; and New York City. The tech giant also plans to open vaccine centers abroad.

Google also committed $100 million in advertising grants to the CDC Foundation, World Health Organization and nonprofits, as well as a $50 million investment aimed at helping public health agencies reach underserved communities with vaccine information.

Google said it will start including Covid-19 vaccination locations in Google Search and Maps in the coming weeks, starting with Arizona, Louisiana, Mississippi and Texas. The information will include details like whether an appointment or referral is required and if the location has a drive-thru.

—Ryan Browne

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Business

China’s Love of TikTok-Style Apps Powers $5 Billion IPO

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Kuaishou Technology has its eyes on the world’s biggest initial public offering in more than a year, seeking to raise about $5 billion from a Hong Kong share sale as short-video and live-streaming apps surge in popularity in China.

Kuaishou—which competes with ByteDance Ltd., the rival Chinese company behind TikTok and its sister app Douyin—started taking investor orders Monday. With the offering, which could value it at more than $60 billion, Kuaishou is joining a string of tech companies from China that have listed in Hong Kong.

Kuaishou, which means “fast hand” in Chinese, is backed by Tencent Holdings Ltd. It was co-founded by Su Hua and Cheng Yixiao, software engineers who previously worked for Google China and Hewlett Packard , respectively.

Both Kuaishou and ByteDance have capitalized on growing demand from younger Chinese people to watch and record short videos on their smartphones. Its namesake short-video platform is the world’s second-largest, according to data cited in its prospectus, and there were 305 million average daily active users of its apps and mini-programs in China for the nine months as of September.

With a minimum deal size of $4.95 billion, the IPO would be the largest in the world since late 2019, when state-controlled Saudi Arabian Oil Co., commonly known as Aramco, raised $29.4 billion, Dealogic figures show.

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Business

Renewable energy surpassed fossil fuels for European electricity in 2020

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The report, which has been tracking EU’s power sector since 2015, found that renewables delivered 38% of electricity last year, compared to 37% delivered by fossil fuels.

The shift comes as other sources, such as wind and solar power, have risen in the European Union. Both sources have nearly doubled since 2015, and as of last year accounted for one-fifth of electricity generation in EU countries, the report found. It’s also the reason why coal power declined 20% last year, making up only 13% of electricity generated in Europe.

“Rapid growth in wind and solar has forced coal into decline, but this is just the beginning,” said Dave Jones, senior electricity analyst for Ember and lead author on the report, in a statement. “Europe is relying on wind and solar to ensure not only coal is phased out by 2030, but also to phase out gas generation, replace closing nuclear power plants, and to meet rising electricity demand from electric cars, heat pumps and electrolysers.​”

Last year’s Covid-19 lockdown measures resulted in less demand for electricity across the globe. European demand decreased by 4% in 2020, according to the report, which said Covid trends had no effect on the growth of renewable energy sources. Since 2015, Europe’s electricity emissions recorded a historic decline, becoming 29% cleaner, the report noted.

The milestone follows commitments from EU leaders last month to cut greenhouse gas emissions by 55% from 1990 levels by 2030. In the United States, renewable energy overtook coal consumption in recent years. Last May, renewable energy sources generated more power than coal for the first time since 1885.

“Post-pandemic economic recovery must not slow down climate action,” said Patrick Graichen, director of Agora Energiewende, in a statement. “We therefore need strong climate policy — such as in the Green Deal — to ensure steady progress.”

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World

Dutch police clash with anti-lockdown protesters in 2 cities

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URK, Netherlands (AP) — Rioters set fires in the center of the southern Dutch city of Eindhoven and pelted police with rocks Sunday at a banned demonstration against coronavirus lockdown measures, while officers responded with tear gas and water cannons, arresting at least 30 people.

Police in the capital of Amsterdam also used a water cannon to disperse an outlawed anti-lockdown demonstration on a major square ringed by museums. Video showed police spraying people grouped against a wall of the Van Gogh Museum.

It was the worst violence to hit the Netherlands since the pandemic began and the second straight Sunday that police clashed with protesters in Amsterdam. The country has been in a tough lockdown since mid-December that is due to continue at least until Feb. 9.

In Eindhoven, 125 kilometers (78 miles) south of Amsterdam, a central square near the main railway station was littered with rocks, bicycles and shattered glass. The crowd of hundreds of demonstrators also was believed to include supporters of the anti-immigrant group PEGIDA, which had sought to demonstrate in the city.

Eindhoven police said they made at least 30 arrests by late afternoon and warned people to stay away from the city center amid the clashes. Trains to and from the station were halted and local media reported plundering at the station.

There were no immediate reports of injuries.

The violence came a day after anti-curfew rioters torched a coronavirus testing facility in the Dutch fishing village of Urk.

Video from Urk, 80 kilometers (50 miles) northeast of Amsterdam, showed youths breaking into the coronavirus testing facility near the village’s harbor before it was set ablaze Saturday night.

The lockdown was imposed by the Dutch government to rein in the spread of the more transmissible variant of the coronavirus.

Police said they fined more than 3,600 people nationwide for breaching the curfew that ran from 9 p.m. Saturday until 4:30 a.m. Sunday and arrested 25 people for breaching the curfew or for violence.

The police and municipal officials issued a statement Sunday expressing their anger at rioting, “from throwing fireworks and stones to destroying police cars and with the torching of the test location as a deep point.”

“This is not only unacceptable, but also a slap in the face, especially for the local health authority staff who do all they can at the test center to help people from Urk,” the local authorities said, adding that the curfew would be strictly enforced for the rest of the week.

On Sunday, all that remained of the portable testing building was a burned-out shell.

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Associated Press writer Mike Corder in Otterlo contributed.

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Follow all of AP’s pandemic coverage at:

https://apnews.com/hub/coronavirus-pandemic

https://apnews.com/hub/coronavirus-vaccine

https://apnews.com/UnderstandingtheOutbreak

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