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Sports

Nick Kyrgios pulls out of Tokyo Olympics citing empty stadiums and injury

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Games organisers announced on Thursday that Tokyo venues for the pandemic-delayed event will not host spectators due to the city’s coronavirus state of emergency.

The new state of emergency for the capital will run from July 12 to August 22 — covering the 16 days of the embattled Games in its entirety.

In a statement posted on Twitter, Kyrgios wrote: “It’s a decision I didn’t make lightly. It’s been my dream to represent Australia at the Olympics and I know I may never get that opportunity again.

“But I also know myself. The thought of playing in front of empty stadiums just doesn’t sit right with me. It never has.”

READ: Six years after his grandmother passed away, Nick Kyrgios grapples with demons

There are a total of 42 venues listed on the Tokyo 2020 website. Twenty-five are in Tokyo and the rest are in seven other prefectures.

However, three prefectures near Tokyo — Chiba, Kanagawa and Saitama — will not have spectators at Olympic competition venues, according to Tokyo 2020 President Seiko Hashimoto.

Miyagi, Fukushima, and Shizuoka prefectures have decided that venues can be filled to 50% of capacity with a maximum of 10,000 spectators, added Hashimoto.

‘I need to get my body right’

Kyrgios was originally named in the 11-member Australian Olympics tennis team, comprising six men and five women, at the end of June.

The 26-year-old, though, had already cast doubts about his participation at the Games after he retired with an abdominal injury during his Wimbledon third-round match with Felix Auger-Aliassime on Saturday.

“I wouldn’t want to take the opportunity away from a healthy Aussie athlete ready to represent the country,” Krygios added.

“I will also take all the time I need to get my body right.”

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Health

Citing the Delta Variant, Pfizer Will Pursue Booster Shots and a New Vaccine

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Pfizer and BioNTech announced on Thursday that they were developing a version of the coronavirus vaccine that targets Delta, a highly contagious variant that has spread to nearly 100 countries. The companies expect to begin clinical trials of the vaccine in August.

Pfizer and BioNTech also reported promising results from studies of people who received a third dose of the original vaccine. A booster given six months after the second dose of the vaccine increases the potency of antibodies against the original virus and the Beta variant by five- to tenfold, the companies said.

Vaccine efficacy may decline six months after immunization, the companies said in a news release, and booster doses may be needed to fend off virus variants.

The data have not been published, nor peer-reviewed. The vaccine makers said they expected to submit their findings to the Food and Drug Administration in the coming weeks, a step toward gaining authorization for booster shots.

But the companies’ assertions contradict other research, and several experts pushed back against the claim that boosters will be needed.

“There’s really no indication for a third booster or a third dose of an mRNA vaccine, given the variants that we have circulating at this time,” said Dr. Céline Gounder, an infectious disease specialist at Bellevue Hospital Center in New York. “In fact, many of us question whether you will ever need boosters.”

Federal agencies also sounded a dubious note on Thursday night. Generally, Americans who have been fully vaccinated do not need a booster shot at this time, the F.D.A. and the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention said in a joint statement.

“We are prepared for booster doses if and when the science demonstrates that they are needed,” the agencies said.

The Delta variant, first identified in India, is believed to be about 60 percent more contagious than Alpha, the version of the virus that tore through Britain and much of Europe earlier this year, and perhaps twice as contagious as the original coronavirus.

The Delta variant is now driving outbreaks among unvaccinated populations in countries like Malaysia, Portugal, Indonesia and Australia. Delta is also now the dominant variant in the United States, the C.D.C. reported this week.

Until recently, infections in the United States had plateaued at their lowest levels since early in the pandemic. Hospitalizations and deaths related to the virus have continued to decline, but new infections may be rising.

It’s not yet clear to what extent the variant is responsible; a slowing vaccination drive and swift reopenings also are playing roles.

Citing data from Israel, Pfizer and BioNTech suggested their vaccine’s efficacy “in preventing both infection and symptomatic disease has declined six months post-vaccination.” Noting the rise of Delta and other variants, the companies said that “a third dose may be needed within 6 to 12 months after full vaccination.”

Health officials in Israel have estimated that full vaccination with the Pfizer-BioNTech offers only 64 percent efficacy against the Delta variant. (Efficacy against the original virus is greater than 90 percent.)

But Israel’s estimates have been contradicted by a number of other studies finding that the vaccine is highly effective at preventing infection — against all variants. One recent study showed, for example, that the mRNA vaccines like Pfizer’s trigger a persistent immune reaction in the body that may protect against the coronavirus for years.

“Pfizer looks opportunistic by hanging an announcement on the back of very early and undigested data from Israel,” said John Moore, a virologist at Weill Cornell Medicine in New York. “When the time is right for using boosters here, the decision isn’t theirs to make.”

The companies described their plan to develop a new vaccine against Delta as a sort of backup effort in case boosters of the original vaccine should fail. The new vaccine will target the entirety of the spike protein, as opposed to one part, and the first batch has already been produced.

The Delta variant does pose challenges to the immune system. In the journal Nature, French researchers reported on Thursday new evidence that the Delta variant can partly sidestep the body’s immune response because of alterations to the spike protein on its surface that make it more difficult for antibodies to attack.

The team analyzed blood samples from 59 people after they had received the first and second doses of the vaccines. Blood samples from just 10 percent of people immunized with one dose of the AstraZeneca or the Pfizer-BioNTech vaccines were able to neutralize the Delta and Beta variants in laboratory experiments.

“A single dose of Pfizer or AstraZeneca was either poorly or not at all efficient against Beta and Delta variants,” the researchers concluded. Data from Israel and Britain broadly support this finding, although those studies also suggested that one dose of vaccine was still enough to prevent hospitalization or death from the virus.

But a second dose boosted efficacy to 95 percent. There was no major difference in the levels of antibodies elicited by the two vaccines.

“If you receive two doses of an mRNA vaccine, you are very well protected against severe disease, hospitalization and death with respect to any of the variants,” Dr. Gounder said.

The researchers also looked at blood samples from 103 people who had been infected with the coronavirus. Delta was much less sensitive than Alpha to samples from unvaccinated people in this group, the study found.

One dose of vaccine significantly boosted the sensitivity, suggesting that people who have recovered from Covid-19 still need to be vaccinated to fend off some variants.

Taken together, the results suggest that two doses of vaccine are powerfully protective against all variants, as is one dose for people who have recovered from Covid-19 and have some natural immunity.

Some experts also questioned discussions about boosters for Americans while much the world is yet to receive even a single dose.

“It’s impossible to ignore the global situation,” said Natalie Dean, a biostatistician at Emory University in Atlanta. “It’s hard for me to imagine getting a third dose when there are frontline workers treating Covid patients who still haven’t been vaccinated.”

Every unvaccinated person offers the virus additional opportunities to mutate into dangerous variants, Dr. Gounder noted.

“If we’re worried about variants,” she said, “our best protection is to get the rest of the world vaccinated, not to hoard more doses to give third doses of mRNA vaccines to people here in the U.S.”

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Entertainment

Britney Spears’ longtime manager Larry Rudolph resigns, citing singer’s desire to retire

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A source with knowledge of the situation confirmed the news to CNN.

Rudolph’s letter of resignation was sent to Spears’ father Jamie Spears and to the conservator of her person, Jodi Montgomery.

“It has been over 2 1/2 years since Britney and I last communicated, at which time she informed me she wanted to take an indefinite work hiatus,” Rudolph wrote in the letter first obtained by Deadline. “Earlier today, I became aware that Britney had been voicing her intention to officially retire.”

CNN has reached out to Spears’ publicist for comment on her potential plans to make her work hiatus permanent.

The letter went on to say, “As you know, I have never been a part of the conservatorship nor its operations, so I am not privy to many of these details. I was originally hired at Britney’s request to help manage and assist her with her career. And as her manager, I believe it is in Britney’s best interest for me to resign from her team as my professional services are no longer needed.

“Please accept this letter as my formal resignation.

“I will always be incredibly proud of what we accomplished over our 25 years together. I wish Britney all the health and happiness in the world, and I’ll be there for her if she ever needs me again, just as I always have been.”

Rudolph began working with the singer in 1995. A rise to global fame followed for Spears with her breakout smash, “Baby One More Time” in 1998. Rudolph has also managed other artists, including Miley Cyrus, Toni Braxton and Justin Timberlake.

The news comes after Spears’ bombshell hearing on June 23 in which she called her nearly 13-year conservatorship “abusive.” She went on to claim that she had been forced to perform and take medication against her will.

The next court hearing is scheduled for July 14.

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World

BBC’s John Sudworth Leaves China, Citing Growing Risks

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At times, the propaganda campaign zeroed in on Mr. Sudworth, a longtime BBC correspondent who won a George Polk Award last year for his reporting on the internment camps in Xinjiang. The Foreign Correspondents’ Club of China said on Wednesday that Chinese state media had posted videos of Mr. Sudworth online using footage obtained from police cameras.

Last month, The Global Times, a state-backed nationalist tabloid, published a widely circulated article attacking Mr. Sudworth for his Xinjiang reporting and accusing him of being an “anti-China” journalist backed by “foreign forces,” including the United States.

“In the past few years, the BBC and their China correspondent, John Sudworth, have been doing their best to demonize China as a cruel country without human rights by distorting the situation in Xinjiang,” said the article. “But today, their ‘crazy’ distortions have been exposed — the truth is that they are the clowns who violate human rights.”

Before the recent propaganda campaign, Mr. Sudworth had been repeatedly issued shortened journalist visas of as little as one month for nearly three years, part of an ongoing effort by the Chinese government to punish news organizations for coverage it perceives to be overly critical. Most resident foreign journalists are typically granted one-year visas.

In September, two Australian journalists fled China following a five-day diplomatic standoff that began when Chinese state security officers paid them unannounced visits, prompting fears that they would be detained. Australian news outlets now no longer have any correspondents on the ground in China at a time of fast-deteriorating relations between the two countries.

The Foreign Correspondents’ Club of China, whose members include many journalists working there, voiced concerns on Wednesday about the “increasing frequency of erroneous claims by Chinese state and state-controlled entities that foreign correspondents and their organizations are motivated by anti-China political forces to produce coverage that runs counter to the Communist Party’s official line.”

“Alarmingly, Chinese authorities have also shown a greater willingness to threaten journalists with legal measures, proceedings that could subject them to exit bans, barring them from leaving China,” the club added.

Amy Chang Chien contributed reporting.



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Health

Advanced Cancers Are Emerging, Doctors Warn, Citing Pandemic Drop in Screenings

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Yvette Lowery usually gets her annual mammogram around March. But last year, just as the pandemic was gaining a foothold and medical facilities were shutting down, the center where she goes canceled her appointment. No one could tell her when to reschedule.

“They just said keep calling back, keep calling back,” said Ms. Lowery, 59, who lives in Rock Hill, S.C.

In August, Ms. Lowery felt a lump under her arm but still couldn’t get an appointment until October.

Eventually, she received a diagnosis of Stage 2 breast cancer, started chemotherapy in November and had a double mastectomy this month.

“I’ve been seeing a lot of patients at an advanced stage,” said Dr. Kashyap B. Patel, one of Ms. Lowery’s doctors and the chief executive of Carolina Blood and Cancer Care Associates. If her cancer had been detected last May or June, it would have probably been caught before it had spread, Dr. Patel said.

Months of lockdowns and waves of surging Covid cases throughout last year shuttered clinics and testing labs, or reduced hours at other places, resulting in steep declines in the number of screenings, including for breast and colorectal cancers, experts have said.

Numerous studies showed that the number of patients screened or given a diagnosis of cancer fell during the early months of the pandemic. By mid-June, the rate of screenings for breast, colon and cervical cancers were still 29 percent to 36 percent lower than their prepandemic levels, according to an analysis of data by the Epic Health Research Network. Hundreds of thousands fewer screenings were performed last year than in 2019, according to the network data.

“We still haven’t caught up,” said Dr. Chris Mast, vice president of clinical informatics for Epic, which develops electronic health records for hospitals and clinics.

Another analysis of Medicare data suggested that as Covid cases spiked during certain periods in 2020, cancer screenings fell. The analysis — conducted by Avalere Health, a consulting firm, for Community Oncology Alliance, which represents independent cancer specialists — found that testing levels in November were about 25 percent lower than in 2019. The number of biopsies, used to diagnose cancer, decreased by about one-third.

While it is too early to assess the full impact of the delays in screenings, many cancer specialists say they are concerned that patients are coming in with more severe disease.

“There’s no question in practice that we are seeing patients with more advanced breast cancer and colorectal cancer,” said Dr. Lucio N. Gordan, the president of the Florida Cancer Specialists & Research Institute, one of the nation’s largest independent oncology groups. He is working on a study to see if, over all, these missed screenings resulted in more patients with later-stage cancers.

And even though the numbers of mammograms and colonoscopies have rebounded in recent months, many people with cancer remain undiagnosed, doctors are reporting.

Some patients, like Ms. Lowery, could not easily get an appointment once clinics reopened because of pent-up demand. Others skipped regular testing or ignored worrisome symptoms because they were afraid of getting infected or after losing their jobs, they couldn’t afford the cost of a test.

“The fear of Covid was more tangible than the fear of missing a screen that detected cancer,” said Dr. Patrick I. Borgen, the chair of surgery at the Maimonides Medical Center in Brooklyn who also leads its breast center. His hospital treated such large numbers of coronavirus patients early on that “we’re now associated as the Covid hospital,” he said, and healthy people stayed away to avoid contagion.

Even patients at high risk because of their genetic makeup or because they previously had cancer have missed critical screenings. Dr. Ritu Salani, the director of gynecologic oncology at the UCLA Health Jonsson Comprehensive Cancer Center said one woman, who was at risk for colon cancer, had a negative test in 2019 but didn’t go for her usual screening last year because of the pandemic.

When she went to see her doctor, she had advanced cancer. “It’s just a devastating story,” Dr. Salani said. “Screening tests are really designed when patients aren’t feeling bad.”

Ryan Bellamy felt no hurry last spring to reschedule a canceled colonoscopy, even though the presence of blood in his stool had prompted him to look up symptoms. “I really didn’t want to go to the hospital,” Mr. Bellamy said. He decided it was unlikely he had cancer. “They’re not following up with me so I’m OK with Googling,” he told himself.

A resident of Palm Coast, Fla., Mr. Bellamy said that after his symptoms worsened, his wife insisted that he go for testing in December, and he had a colonoscopy in late January. With a new diagnosis of Stage 3 rectal cancer, Mr. Bellamy, 38, is undergoing radiation treatment and chemotherapy.

Colon screening remained significantly lower in 2020, declining about 15 percent from 2019 levels, according to the Epic network data, although overall screenings were down 6 percent. The analysis looked at screenings for more than 600 hospitals in 41 states.

Lung cancer patients have also delayed seeking appropriate care, said Dr. Michael J. Liptay, chairman of cardiovascular and thoracic surgery at Rush University Medical Center in Chicago. One patient had imaging that showed a spot on his lung, and he was supposed to follow up, just as the pandemic hit. “Additional work-up and care was deferred,” Dr. Liptay said. By the time the patient was fully evaluated, the cancer had increased in size. “It wasn’t a good thing to wait 10 months,” Dr. Liptay said, although he was uncertain whether earlier treatment would have changed the patient’s prognosis.

Just as previous economic recessions led people to forgo medical care, the downturn in the economy during the pandemic has also discouraged many people from seeking help or treatment.

“We know cancers are out there,” said Dr. Barbara L. McAneny, the chief executive of New Mexico Oncology Hematology Consultants. Many of her patients are staying away, even if they have insurance, because they cannot afford the deductibles or co-payments. “We’re seeing that, particularly with our poorer folks who are living on the edge anyway, living paycheck to paycheck,” she said.

Some patients ignored their symptoms as long as they could. Last March, Sandy Prieto, a school librarian who lived in Fowler, Calif., had stomach pain. But she refused to go to the doctor because she didn’t want to get Covid. After having a telehealth visit with her primary care doctor, she tried over-the-counter medications, but they didn’t help with the pain and nausea. She continued to decline.

“It got to the point where we didn’t have a choice,” said her husband, Eric, who had repeatedly urged her to go to the doctor. Jaundiced and in severe discomfort, she went to the emergency room at the end of May and was given a diagnosis of Stage 4 pancreatic cancer. She died in September.

“If it wasn’t for Covid and we could have gotten her some place earlier, she would still be with us today,” said her sister, Carolann Meme, who had tried to persuade Ms. Prieto to go to an academic medical center where she might have gotten into a clinical trial.

When patients like Ms. Prieto are not seen in person but treated virtually, doctors may easily miss important symptoms or recommend medication rather than tell them to come in, said Dr. Ravi D. Rao, the oncologist who treated Ms. Prieto. Patients may downplay how sick they feel or neglect to mention the pain in their hip, he said.

“In my mind, telemedicine and cancer don’t travel together,” Dr. Rao said. While he also made use of telemedicine during the height of the pandemic, he says he worked to keep his offices open.

Other doctors defended the use of virtual visits as a critical tool when office visits were too hazardous for most patients and staff. “We were grateful to have a robust telemedicine effort when people simply couldn’t come into the center,” said Dr. Borgen of Maimonides. But he acknowledged that patients were frequently reluctant to discuss their symptoms during a telehealth session, especially a mother whose young children could be listening to what they were saying. “It’s not private,” he noted.

Some health networks say they took aggressive steps to try to counteract the effects of the pandemic. During the initial stay-at-home order last year, Kaiser Permanente, the large California-based managed care outfit, spotted a declining number of breast cancer screenings and diagnoses in the northern part of the state. “Doctors immediately got together” to begin contacting patients, said Dr. Tatjana Kolevska, medical director for the Kaiser Permanente National Cancer Excellence Program.

Kaiser also relies on its electronic health records to make appointments for women who are overdue for their mammograms when they book an appointment with their primary care doctor or even want to get a prescription for new glasses.

While Dr. Kolevska says she is waiting to see data for the system as a whole, she has been encouraged by the number of patients in her practice who are now up to date with their mammograms.

“All of those things put in place have helped tremendously,” she said.

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Business

Texas electricity firm files for bankruptcy citing $1.8 billion in claims from grid operator

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The New York Times

This Drug Gets You High and Is Legal (Maybe) Across the Country

Texas has one of the most restrictive medical marijuana laws in the country, with sales allowed only by prescription for a handful of conditions. That has not stopped Lukas Gilkey, chief executive of Hometown Hero CBD, based in Austin. His company sells joints, blunts, gummy bears, vaping devices and tinctures that offer a recreational high. In fact, business is booming online as well, where he sells to many people in other states with strict marijuana laws. But Gilkey said that he is no outlaw and that he is not selling marijuana, just a close relation. He is offering products with a chemical compound — Delta-8-THC — extracted from hemp. It is only slightly chemically different from Delta 9, which is the main psychoactive ingredient in marijuana. Sign up for The Morning newsletter from the New York Times And that small distinction, it turns out, may make a big difference in the eyes of the law. Under federal law, psychoactive Delta 9 is explicitly outlawed. But Delta-8-THC from hemp is not, a loophole that some entrepreneurs say allows them to sell it in many states where hemp possession is legal. The number of customers “coming into Delta 8 is staggering,” Gilkey said. “You have a drug that essentially gets you high but is fully legal,” he added. “The whole thing is comical.” The rise of Delta 8 is a case study in how industrious cannabis entrepreneurs are pulling apart hemp and marijuana to create myriad new product lines with different marketing angles. They are building brands from a variety of potencies, flavors and strains of THC, the intoxicating substance in cannabis, and of CBD, the nonintoxicating compound that is often sold as a health product. With Delta 8, entrepreneurs also believe they have found a way to take advantage of the country’s fractured and convoluted laws on recreational marijuana use. It is not quite that simple, though. Federal agencies, including the Drug Enforcement Administration, are still considering their options for enforcement and regulation. “Dealing in any way with Delta-8-THC is not without significant legal risk,” said Alex Buscher, a Colorado lawyer who specializes in cannabis law. Still, experts in the cannabis industry said Delta 8 sales had indeed exploded. Delta 8 is “the fastest-growing segment” of products derived from hemp, said Ian Laird, chief financial officer of New Leaf Data Services, which tracks the hemp and cannabis markets. He estimated consumer sales of at least $10 million, adding, “Delta 8 has really come out of nowhere over the past year.” Marijuana and hemp are essentially the same plant, but marijuana has higher concentrations of Delta-9-THC — and, as a source of intoxication, it has been a main focus of entrepreneurs as well as state and federal lawmakers. Delta 8, if discussed at all, was an esoteric, less potent byproduct of both plants. That changed with the 2018 Farm Bill, an enormous piece of federal legislation that, among other things, legalized widespread hemp farming and distribution. The law also specifically allowed the sale of the plant’s byproducts; the only exception was Delta 9 with a high-enough level of THC to define it as marijuana. Because the legislation made no mention of Delta 8, entrepreneurs leapt into the void and began extracting and packaging it as a legal edible and smokable alternative. Precisely what kind of high Delta 8 produces depends on whom you ask. Some think of it as “marijuana light,” while others “are pitching it as pain relief with less psychoactivity,” said David Downs, senior content editor for Leafly.com, a popular source of news and information about cannabis. Either way, Delta 8 has become “extremely ascendant,” Downs said, reflecting what he calls “prohibition downfall interregnum,” where consumer demand and entrepreneurial activity are exploiting the holes in rapidly evolving and fractured law. “We’re getting reports that you can walk into a truck stop in prohibition states like Georgia where you’re looking at what looks like a cannabis bud in a jar,” Downs said. The bud is hemp sprayed with high-concentration Delta 8 oil. Joe Salome owns the Georgia Hemp Co., which in October started selling Delta 8 locally and shipping nationally — about 25 orders a day, he said. “It’s taken off tremendously,” Salome said. His website heralds Delta 8 as “very similar to its psychoactive brother THC,” giving users the same relief from stress and inflammation, “without the same anxiety-producing high that some can experience with THC.” Salome said that he did not need to buy an expensive state license to sell medical marijuana because he felt protected by the farm bill. “It’s all right there,” he said, explaining it is now legal to “sell all parts of the plant.” The legal landscape is contradictory at best. Many states are more permissive than the federal government, which under the Controlled Substances Act considers marijuana an illegal and highly dangerous drug. In 36 states, marijuana is legal for medicinal use. In 14 states, it is legal for recreational use. But in a flip, under the farm bill, the federal government opened the door for the sale of hemp products even in states that have not legalized the recreational use of marijuana. Only a few states, like Idaho, ban hemp altogether, but in others, entrepreneurs of Delta 8 are finding a receptive market. Lawyers for Gilkey believe the farm bill is on their side. “Delta 8, if it is derived from hemp or extracted from hemp, that is considered hemp,” said Andrea Steel, co-chair of the cannabis business group at Coats Rose, a Houston law firm. She emphasized that the legality also depends on whether Delta 9 exceeds legal limits. Steel noted that when making a Delta 8 product, it can be hard, if not impossible, to filter out all the Delta 9 from hemp. “Adding another wrinkle,” she said, “a lot of labs do not have the capability of delineating between Delta 8 and Delta 9.” Lisa Pittman, the other co-chair of the cannabis business group at Coats Rose, said that in her reading of the issue, the authors of the farm bill may not have contemplated the consequences of the law. Pittman said that the ultimate question of a product’s legality may be dependent on other factors, including how the Delta 8 is produced and sourced. Specifically, the lawyers said, the DEA’s rule on the issue seems to suggest that Delta 8 could be illegal if it is made “synthetically” rather than derived organically. There are currently lawsuits pending over interpretation of the DEA rule. Gilkey said he had paid upward of $50,000 in legal fees to make sure that he will not run afoul of the law. A veteran of the U.S. Coast Guard, Gilkey worked in a counternarcotics unit on boats out of San Diego. He “saw some really tough stuff,” he said, and “wasn’t happy about the war on drugs.” He wound up running a business in Austin that sold e-liquid for vaping devices. Then in 2019, he started his current business focused on selling CBD. Late last spring, he said, he started getting calls from customers about Delta 8. “I said, please explain to me what that is,” he recalled. Gilkey, whose company supplies other retail shops around the country with products, saw a huge opportunity. After checking with the lawyers, he started full-scale packaging gummies and vape pens and other products using Delta 8 he said he got from a major hemp supplier. “It’s about to go mainstream,” he said. And it is just the beginning. “There’s a Delta 10 in the works,” Gilkey said. This article originally appeared in The New York Times. © 2021 The New York Times Company

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US

Pentagon clears out advisory boards, citing concerns over last-minute Trump picks

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Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin has dismissed every member of the Pentagon’s advisory boards in a sweeping move fueled by concern that the Trump administration had rushed through a series of last-minute appointments, Pentagon officials said Tuesday.

The move affects several hundred board members who sit on about 40 advisory boards, including dozens of people who had been named to the posts in the closing days of former President Donald Trump’s tenure.

Among those dismissed are highly partisan figures such as Corey Lewandowski, Trump’s 2016 presidential campaign manager, David Bossie, a former Trump deputy campaign manager, former Republican House speaker Newt Gingrich and retired Brig. Gen. Anthony Tata. But instead of singling out Trump appointees, the move applies to all board members, including those appointed before the Trump presidency.

“I am directing the immediate suspension of all advisory committee operations until the review is completed unless otherwise directed by myself or the deputy secretary of defense,” Austin said in a memo released Tuesday.

The advisory boards offer guidance to the Pentagon on policy, science, business and numerous other topics and the members are not paid. To make way for new appointees, the Trump White House in some cases removed some longtime board members and replaced them with pro-Trump loyalists.

“There is no question that the frenetic activity that occurred to the composition of so many boards, in just the period of November to January, deeply concerned the secretary and certainly helped to drive him to this decision,” Pentagon press secretary John Kirby told reporters.

Austin decided that dismissing all members of the advisory boards and asking for a full review of their activity was the most equitable, effective way of addressing the matter, two Defense officials told reporters in an earlier briefing.

Apart from ordering all board members to resign by Feb. 16, Austin temporarily suspended the activity of the boards and ordered an elaborate review of all the Defense Department advisory boards to examine the role, utility and composition of those panels, according to a memo released by the Pentagon.

The Wall Street Journal first reported the decision.

Dan De Luce is a reporter for the NBC News Investigative Unit. 

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World

German officials say AstraZeneca vaccine shouldn’t be given to over-65s, citing lack of data

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The Standing Committee on Vaccination (STIKO) at Germany’s Robert Koch Institute (RKI), the country’s main public health authority, found there is insufficient data on the effectiveness of the vaccine, developed by AstraZeneca and the University of Oxford, for this age group, according to a statement from the interior ministry on Thursday.

“Due to the small number of study participants in the age group ≥65 years, no conclusion can be made regarding efficacy and safety in the elderly. This vaccine is therefore currently recommended by STIKO only for persons aged 18-64 years,” the panel said in its recommendation.

Responding to the announcement, an AstraZeneca spokesperson said “latest analyses of clinical trial data for the AstraZeneca/Oxford Covid-19 vaccine support efficacy in the over 65 years age group.” The drugmaker is awaiting a regulatory decision by the European Union medicines regulator, the spokesperson added.

Thursday’s announcement by the German Interior Ministry came amid an ongoing dispute between the European Union and AstraZeneca over delays to the delivery of its coronavirus vaccine to the bloc.

AstraZeneca has said it can’t deliver as many doses as the EU expected, citing production challenges. But the European Commission, which ordered the vaccine on behalf of EU member states, says this is unacceptable, and the drugmaker must find a way to increase supply.

The United Kingdom, whose regulator approved the Oxford/AstraZeneca vaccine nearly a month ago, has been administering doses to people older than 65.
In its report, UK regulator MHRA, said there was “limited information available on efficacy in participants aged 65 or over, although there is nothing to suggest lack of protection.”

Responding the German announcement, MHRA Chief Executive Dr. June Raine said “current evidence does not suggest any lack of protection against Covid-19 in people aged 65 or over.”

“The data we have shows that the vaccine produces a strong immune response in the over-65s. More data is continually becoming available for this age group and our Public Assessment Report, available on our website, will be updated to reflect this,” her statement added.

The EU has ordered 300 million doses of the AstraZeneca vaccine — which could be approved for use by the European Medicines Agency (EMA) as soon as Friday — with an option to purchase an additional 100 million doses.

AstraZeneca’s chief executive, Pascal Soriot, said in an interview with Italy’s la Repubblica newspaper Tuesday that “the issue with the elderly data is not so much whether it works or not. It’s that we have today a limited amount of data in the older population.”

Soriot said this was because the Oxford scientists running the vaccine trials did not want to recruit older people until they had “accumulated a lot of safety data” for those aged 18 to 55.

“Essentially, because Oxford started vaccinating older people later, we don’t have a huge number of older people who have been vaccinated. So that’s what the debate is,” he said. “But we have strong data showing very strong antibody production against the virus in the elderly, similar to what we see in younger people. It’s possible that some countries, out of caution, will use our vaccine for the younger group.”

Stephen Evans, professor of pharmacoepidemiology at the London School of Hygiene and Tropical Medicine, stressed that the German decision was “not a regulatory decision, but draft advice on usage” in comments to the UK’s Science Media Centre.

It was “well known that the clinical data for this vaccine were limited for those aged 70 and over,” he said, because AstraZeneca recruited older age groups later than younger age groups, allowing less time for cases to accrue.

“There is no reason at all for anyone in the UK or elsewhere to think that this Oxford/AstraZeneca vaccine is ineffective at any age,” Evans said. “Its ability to be delivered to people in GP surgeries and care homes makes it a vital component in the attempts to reduce hospitalisation and deaths, especially in the elderly.”

Jim Naismith, director of the Rosalind Franklin Institute and professor of structural biology at the University of Oxford, also sought to allay concerns, noting that German scientists had concluded that the vaccine was safe and effective for under-65s.

“Their assessment is that effectiveness is not yet demonstrated for over 65s. They have not said the vaccine is ineffective for over 65s,” he told the Science Media Centre.

“Good faith discussions about what evidence is needed for vaccine effectiveness are really important. Experimental evidence and reasoned debate, not over heated rhetoric, will resolve this issue.”

EU-AstraZeneca dispute

As the dispute between the EU and AstraZeneca over vaccine delays rumbled on, Belgian health authorities — at the request of the European Commission — conducted “an inspection” of the UK-Swedish drugmaker’s Belgian production facility Wednesday. The purpose was “to ensure that the delay in the delivery of the vaccines is indeed due to a production problem at the Belgian site,” France Dammel, a spokeswoman for Belgian Health Minister Frank Vandenbroucke, said in a statement.

“Belgian experts are looking into the elements obtained during this inspection visit, together with Dutch, Italian and Spanish experts,” Dammel said, adding that the report is expected in a few days.

The German government expects the country to face shortages in its supply of the coronavirus vaccine for at least another 10 weeks, Health Minister Jens Spahn said Thursday amid backlash over the pace of the government’s vaccine rollout program.

Meanwhile, the number of coronavirus infections per 100,000 residents across seven days in Germany has fallen below the critical threshold of 100 for the first time in three months, to 98, the RKI said Thursday.

German Chancellor Angela Merkel has outlined the government’s plan to reduce the incidence rate to less than 50 new infections per 100,000 residents within seven days in order to be able to track and trace infections.

CNN’s Nadine Schmidt and Claudia Otto reported from Berlin and Laura Smith-Spark wrote from London.

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Business

Godiva to close all 128 chocolate stores in North America, citing decline in shoppers due to pandemic

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Chocolatier Godiva will be shuttering its 128 store and café locations across North America at the end of March, the company announced Sunday, citing a decrease in demand for in-person shopping during the pandemic.

Godiva’s sweet treats will still be available online and inside partnering retail and grocery stores across the continent going forward, the company said. It will maintain in-store operations across Europe, the Middle East and Greater China.

“We have always been focused on what our consumers need and how they want to experience our brand, which is why we have made this decision,” CEO Nurtac Afridi said in a statement.

The Belgian chocolate-maker did not disclose the number of employees who will be affected by the North American decision.

“They lost between half their business which is done due to tourists, the other 25 percent of the business which is done due to special occasion, and another 25 percent which is done to impulse,” Marshal Cohen, chief retail analyst at the NPD Group market research company, told NBC News. “Where’s the business coming from? Everything moved to online with great ease.”

“If we’re not socializing as much as we did and we’re not having special events and special occasions, that’s going to impact the business to some degree,” he said.

Godiva is one of the hundreds of thousands of store closures that have come amid a massive decline in in-person shopping during the pandemic.

Other retailers to announce store closures since March include Macy’s, JCPenney, Bed Bath & Beyond, Victoria’s Secret, Francesca’s, Zara, Express and more.

Many retailers, including Godiva, have focused on leveraging their digital footprint in order to successfully reach customers.

“Online has leapfrogged forward three years,” Cohen said. “Consumers have clearly educated themselves on how to purchase basically anything from anywhere, at any time, at any price.”

According to Adobe Analytics, online shopping hit nearly $200 billion during the holiday shopping season alone.

Chocolate sales have also been on the rise since the pandemic hit. In 2020, Americans spent nearly $15 billion on chocolate, a 5 percent increase since 2019, while Canadians spent a little over $2 billion, a 7 percent jump.

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