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World

Chinese make travel plans as Beijing dismantles zero-COVID rules

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  • China to ease border restrictions from Jan. 8
  • Online searches for flights spike – travel platforms
  • COVID wave overwhelms hospitals, weighs on economy

BEIJING, Dec 27 (Reuters) – Chinese people, cut off from the rest of the world for three years by stringent COVID-19 curbs, flocked to travel sites on Tuesday ahead of borders reopening next month, even as rising infections strained the health system and roiled the economy.

Zero-COVID measures in place since early 2020 – from shuttered borders to frequent lockdowns – last month fuelled the Chinese mainland’s biggest show of public discontent since President Xi Jinping took power in 2012.

His subsequent abrupt U-turn on the curbs, which have battered the $17-trillion economy, the world’s second-largest, means the virus is now spreading largely unchecked across the country of 1.4 billion people.

Official statistics, however, showed only one COVID death in the seven days to Monday, fuelling doubts among health experts and residents about the government’s data. The numbers are inconsistent with the experience of much less populous countries after they re-opened.

Doctors say hospitals are overwhelmed with five-to-six-times more patients than usual, most of them elderly. International health experts estimate millions of daily infections and predict at least one million COVID deaths in China next year.

Nevertheless, Chinese authorities are determined to dismantle the last vestiges of their zero-COVID policies.

In a major step towards freer travel – cheered by global stock markets on Tuesday – China will stop requiring inbound travellers to go into quarantine from Jan. 8, the National Health Commission (NHC) said late on Monday.

“It finally feels as if China has turned the corner,” AmCham China Chairman Colm Rafferty said of the imminent lifting of the quarantine rule.

There are no official restrictions on Chinese people going abroad but the new rule will make it much easier for them to return home.

Travel platform Ctrip’s data showed that within half an hour of the news, searches for popular cross-border destinations had increased 10-fold. Macau, Hong Kong, Japan, Thailand and South Korea were the most sought-after, Ctrip said.

Data from Trip.com showed outbound flights bookings were up 254% early on Tuesday from the day before.

China’s National Immigration Administration said on Tuesday that it would resume processing passport applications of Chinese nationals seeking to travel abroad and approving visits of mainland residents to Hong Kong.

China will also resume the implementation of a policy allowing visa-free transit of up to 144 hours for travellers. The extension or renewal of foreigners’ visas will also be restored, the immigration administration added.

Shares in global luxury goods groups, which rely heavily on Chinese shoppers, rose on Tuesday on the easing of travel restrictions. China accounts for 21% of the world’s 350-billion euro luxury goods market.

Ordinary Chinese and travel agencies, however, suggested that a return to anything like normal would take some months yet, given worries about COVID and more careful spending because of the impact of the pandemic.

Separately, once the border with Hong Kong reopens next month, mainland Chinese will be able to take BioNTech-made mRNA vaccines, seen as more effective than the domestically-developed options available on the mainland.

‘GREAT PRESSURE’

China’s classification of COVID will also be downgraded to the less strict Category B from the current top-level Category A from Jan. 8, the health authority said, meaning authorities will no longer be compelled to quarantine patients and close contacts and impose lockdowns.

But for all the excitement of a gradual return to a pre-COVID way of life, there was mounting pressure on the healthcare system, with doctors saying many hospitals are overwhelmed while funeral parlours report a surge in demand for their services.

Nurses and doctors have been asked to work while sick and retired medical workers in rural communities were being rehired to help, state media reported. Some cities have been struggling to secure supplies of anti-fever drugs.

“Some places are facing great pressure at hospital emergency wards and intensive care units,” NHC official Jiao Yahui told reporters.

While the Chinese economy is expected to see a sharp rebound later next year, it is in for a rough ride in the coming weeks and months as workers increasingly fall ill.

Many shops in Shanghai, Beijing and elsewhere have closed in recent days with staff unable to come to work, while some factories have already sent many of their workers on leave for the late January Lunar New Year holidays.

“The concern of a temporary supply chain distortion remains as the labour force is impacted by infections,” JPMorgan analysts said in a note, adding that their tracking of subway traffic in 29 cities showed that many people were restricting their movements as the virus spreads.

Data on Tuesday showed industrial profits fell 3.6% in January-November from a year earlier, versus a 3.0% drop for January-October, reflecting the toll of the anti-virus curbs in place last month, including in major manufacturing regions.

Authorities said they would step up financial support to small and private businesses in the hard-hit catering and tourism sectors.

The lifting of travel restrictions is positive for the economy, but strong caveats apply.

Japan Prime Minister Fumio Kishida said his country would require a negative COVID test for travellers from mainland China. The government would also limit airlines increasing flights to China, he said.

“International travel … will likely surge, yet it may take many more months before volumes return to the pre-pandemic level,” said Dan Wang, chief economist at Hang Seng Bank China.

“COVID is still spreading in most parts of China, greatly disrupting the normal work schedule. Loss in productivity is significant.”

Reporting by Beijing and Shanghai bureaus and Chen Lin in Singapore; Writing by Marius Zaharia and Sumeet Chatterjee; Editing by Lincoln Feast, Robert Birsel and Frank Jack Daniel

Our Standards: The Thomson Reuters Trust Principles.

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World

China’s COVID cases overwhelm hospitals

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BEIJING, Dec 26 (Reuters) – In more than three decades of emergency medicine, Beijing-based doctor Howard Bernstein said, he has never seen anything like this.

Patients are arriving at his hospital in ever-increasing numbers; almost all are elderly and many are very unwell with COVID and pneumonia symptoms, he said.

Bernstein’s account reflects similar testimony from medical staff across China who are scrambling to cope after China’s abrupt U-turn on its previously strict COVID policies this month was followed by a nationwide wave of infections.

It is by far the country’s biggest outbreak since the pandemic began in the central city of Wuhan three years ago. Beijing government hospitals and crematoriums also have been struggling this month amid heavy demand.

“The hospital is just overwhelmed from top to bottom,” Bernstein told Reuters at the end of a “stressful” shift at the privately owned Beijing United Family Hospital in the east of the capital.

“The ICU is full,” as are the emergency department, the fever clinic and other wards, he said.

“A lot of them got admitted to the hospital. They’re not getting better in a day or two, so there’s no flow, and therefore people keep coming to the ER, but they can’t go upstairs into hospital rooms,” he said. “They’re stuck in the ER for days.”

In the past month, Bernstein went from never having treated a COVID patient to seeing dozens a day.

“The biggest challenge, honestly, is I think we were just unprepared for this,” he said.

Sonia Jutard-Bourreau, 48, chief medical officer at the private Raffles Hospital in Beijing, said patient numbers are five to six times their normal levels, and patients’ average age has shot up by about 40 years to over 70 in the space of a week.

“It’s always the same profile,” she said. “That is most of the patients have not been vaccinated.”

The patients and their relatives visit Raffles because local hospitals are “overwhelmed”, she said, and because they wish to buy Paxlovid, the Pfizer-made COVID treatment, which many places, including Raffles, are running low on.

“They want the medicine like a replacement of the vaccine, but the medicine does not replace the vaccine,” Jutard-Bourreau said, adding that there are strict criteria for when her team can prescribe it.

An employee works at the production line of a fever medicine at a Guizhou Bailing plant amid the coronavirus disease (COVID-19) outbreak, in Anshun, Guizhou province, December 24, 2022. cnsphoto via REUTERS

Jutard-Bourreau, who like Bernstein has been working in China for around a decade, fears that the worst of this wave in Beijing has not arrived yet.

Elsewhere in China, medical staff told Reuters that resources are already stretched to the breaking point in some cases, as COVID and sickness levels amongst staff have been particularly high.

One nurse based in the western city of Xian said 45 of 51 nurses in her department and all staff in the emergency department have caught the virus in recent weeks.

“There are so many positive cases among my colleagues,” said the 22-year-old nurse, surnamed Wang. “Almost all the doctors are down with it.”

Wang and nurses at other hospitals said they had been told to report for duty even if they test positive and have a mild fever.

Jiang, a 29-year-old nurse on a psychiatric ward at a hospital in Hubei province, said staff attendance has been down more than 50 percent on her ward, which has stopped accepting new patients. She said she is working shifts of more than 16 hours with insufficient support.

“I worry that if the patient appears to be agitated, you have to restrain them, but you cannot easily do it alone,” she said. “It’s not a great situation to be in.”

MORTALITY RATE “POLITICAL”

The doctors who spoke to Reuters said they were most worried about the elderly, tens of thousands of whom may die, according to estimates from experts.

More than 5,000 people are probably dying each day from COVID-19 in China, Britain-based health data firm Airfinity estimated, offering a dramatic contrast to official data from Beijing on the country’s current outbreak.

The National Health Commission did not immediately respond to a Reuters request for comment on the concerns raised by medical staff in this article.

China reported no COVID deaths on the mainland for the six days through Sunday, the Chinese Center for Disease Control and Prevention said on Sunday, even as crematories faced surging demand.

China has narrowed its definition for classifying deaths as COVID-related, counting only those involving COVID-caused pneumonia or respiratory failure, raising eyebrows among world health experts.

“It’s not medicine, it’s politics,” said Jutard-Bourreau. “If they’re dying now with COVID it’s because of COVID. The mortality rate now it’s political numbers, not medical.”

Additional reporting by the Beijing Newsroom. Editing by Gerry Doyle

Our Standards: The Thomson Reuters Trust Principles.

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World

Beijing, Shanghai residents back to work as China limps towards living with COVID

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  • Life limping back to normal in Shanghai, Beijing
  • Cities across China report large numbers of infections
  • China reports no COVID deaths for 6th consecutive day

BEIJING/SHANGHAI, Dec 26 (Reuters) – Mask-wearing Beijing and Shanghai commuters crowded subway trains on Monday as China’s two biggest cities edged closer to living with COVID-19 even as frontline medical workers scrambled to cope with millions of new infections.

After three years of harsh anti-coronavirus curbs, President Xi Jinping scrapped the country’s zero-COVID policy of lockdowns and relentless testing this month in the face of protests and a widening outbreak.

The virus is now spreading largely unchecked across the country, with doubts mounting among health experts and residents over China’s statistics, which show no new COVID deaths reported for the six days through Sunday.

Doctors say hospitals are overwhelmed with five-to-six-times more patients than usual, mostly elderly.

But after the initial shock of the policy U-turn, and a few weeks in which people in Beijing and Shanghai stayed indoors, either dealing with the disease or trying to avoid it, there are signs that life, at least for those able to cope with the disease, is on track to returning closer to normal.

Subway trains in Beijing and Shanghai were packed, while some major traffic arteries in the two cities were jammed with slow-moving cars on Monday as residents commuted to work.

“I am prepared to live with the pandemic,” said 25-year-old Shanghai resident Lin Zixin. “Lockdowns are not a long-term solution

This year, in an effort to prevent infections from spiralling out of control across the country, the 25 million people in China’s commercial hub endured two months of bitter isolation under a strict lockdown that lasted until June 1.

Shanghai’s lively streets were a sharp contrast with the atmosphere in April and May, when hardly anyone went outside.

An annual Christmas market held at the Bund, a commercial area in Shanghai, was popular with city residents over the weekend. Crowds thronged the winter festive season at Shanghai Disneyland and Beijing’s Universal Studios on Sunday, queuing up for rides in Christmas-themed outfits.

The number of trips to scenic spots in the southern city of Guangzhou this weekend increased by 132% from last weekend, local newspaper The 21st Century Business Herald reported.

“Now basically everyone has returned to a normal routine,” said a 29-year-old Beijing resident surnamed Han.

China is the last major country to move toward treating COVID as endemic. Its containment measures had slowed the $17 trillion economy to its lowest growth rate in nearly half a century, disrupting global supply chains and trade.

[1/5] Commuters ride a subway train during the morning rush hour amid the coronavirus disease (COVID-19) outbreak, in Shanghai, China December 26, 2022. REUTERS/Xihao Jiang

The world’s second-largest economy is expected to suffer further in the short-term, as the COVID wave spreads toward manufacturing areas and workforces fall ill, before bouncing back next year, analysts say.

Tesla suspended production at its Shanghai plant on Saturday, bringing ahead a plan to pause most work at the plant in the last week of December. The company did not give a reason.

‘OVERWHELMED’

The world’s most populous country has narrowed its definition for classifying deaths as COVID-related, counting only those involving COVID-caused pneumonia or respiratory failure, raising eyebrows among world health experts.

The country’s healthcare system has been under enormous strain, with staff being asked to work while sick and retired medical workers in rural communities being rehired to help, according to state media.

“The hospital is just overwhelmed from top to bottom,” doctor Howard Bernstein at the privately owned Beijing United Family Hospital said.

The provincial government of Zhejiang, a big industrial province near Shanghai with a population of 65.4 million, said on Sunday it was battling about a million new daily COVID-19 infections, a number expected to double in the days ahead.

Health authorities in the southeastern Jiangxi province have said infections would hit an apex in early January, adding that there could be other peaks as people travel next month for Lunar New Year celebrations, state media reported.

They warned that the wave of infections would last three months and that about 80% of the province’s 45 million residents could get infected.

The city of Qingdao, in the eastern Shandong province, has estimated that up to 530,000 residents were being infected each day.

Cities across China have been racing to add intensive-care units and fever clinics, facilities designed to prevent the wider spread of contagious disease in hospitals.

The Beijing municipal government has said the number of fever clinics in the city had increased from 94 to almost 1,300, state media said. Shanghai has 2,600 such clinics and has transferred doctors from less-strained medical departments to help out.

Worries remain about the ability of less-affluent cities in China to cope with a surge in severe infections, especially as hundreds of millions of rural migrant workers are expected to return to their families for Lunar New Year.

“I am worried the flow of people will be huge … (and) the epidemic will break out again,” said Lin, the Shanghai resident.

Reporting by the Beijing and Shanghai bureaus; Writing by Marius Zaharia; Editing by Gerry Doyle and Muralikumar Anantharaman

Our Standards: The Thomson Reuters Trust Principles.

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World

China’s stretched health system braces for peak in COVID infections

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  • COVID infections may peak next week – Chinese health official
  • China reports no new COVID deaths for 3rd day
  • China still ill-prepared for major outbreak – experts

BEIJING/SHANGHAI, Dec 23 (Reuters) – China is expecting a peak in COVID-19 infections within a week, a health official said, with authorities predicting extra strain on the country’s health system even as they downplay the disease’s severity and continue to report no new deaths.

In the face of a surging outbreak and widespread protests against its “zero-COVID” regime of lockdowns and testing, China began dismantling it this month, becoming the last major country to move towards living with the virus.

Its containment measures had slowed the economy to its lowest growth rate in nearly half a century, jamming global supply chains and trade. As Chinese workers increasingly fall ill, more disruption is expected in the short term before the economy bounces back later next year.

China reported less than 4,000 new symptomatic local COVID cases nationwide for Dec. 22, and no new COVID deaths for a third consecutive day. Authorities have narrowed the criteria for COVID deaths, prompting criticism from many disease experts.

Zhang Wenhong, director of the National Center for Infectious Diseases, was quoted in Shanghai government-backed news outlet The Paper on Thursday as saying China “is expected to reach the peak of infections within a week.”

“The peak infection will also increase the rate of severe disease, which will have a certain impact on our entire medical resources,” he said, adding the wave will last another one or two months after that.

“We must be mentally prepared that infection is inevitable.”

Nevertheless, Zhang said he had visited nursing homes around Shanghai, noticing the number of elderly dealing with severe symptoms was low.

Worries over the near-term impact of China’s COVID wave pushed stock markets in China (.SSEC), Hong Kong (.HSI) and elsewhere in Asia lower. The yuan also weakened.

Infections in China are likely to be more than a million a day with deaths at more than 5,000 a day, a “stark contrast” from official data, British-based health data firm Airfinity said this week.

A Shanghai hospital has estimated half of the commercial hub’s 25 million people would get infected by the end of next week. Experts say China could face more than a million COVID deaths next year.

UNPREPARED

China’s abrupt change in policy caught a fragile health system unprepared, with hospitals scrambling for beds and blood, pharmacies for drugs and authorities racing to build clinics.

More than a dozen global health experts, epidemiologists, residents and political analysts interviewed by Reuters identified the failure to vaccinate the elderly and communicate an exit strategy to the public, as well as excessive focus on eliminating the virus, as causes of the strain on China’s medical infrastructure.

[1/11] Medics move a patient into a fever clinic at a hospital as coronavirus disease (COVID-19) outbreaks continue in Beijing, December 23, 2022. REUTERS/Thomas Peter

A drive to vaccinate the elderly that began three weeks ago has yet to bear fruit. China’s overall vaccination rate is above 90% but the rate for adults who have had booster shots drops to 57.9%, and to 42.3% for people aged 80 and older, according to government data.

China spent big on quarantine and testing facilities over the past three years rather than bolstering hospitals and clinics and training medical staff, these people said.

“There is an incredible lack of preparation for the virus coming despite them having … ample warning,” said Leong Hoe Nam, an infectious diseases doctor at Rophi Clinic in Singapore.

China’s National Health Commission did not respond to requests for comment on the criticisms.

The country has nine domestically developed COVID shots approved for use, all seen as less effective than Western-made vaccines that use the new mRNA technology.

A shipment of 11,500 BioNTech (22UAy.DE) mRNA vaccines for German nationals in China have arrived at the German embassy in Beijing, an embassy spokesperson told Reuters on Friday.

The embassy hopes the first doses will be given out “as soon as possible”, the spokesperson said.

NO DATA

The World Health Organization has received no data from China on new COVID hospitalizations since Beijing lifted its zero-COVID policy. The WHO has said gaps in data might be due to Chinese authorities simply struggling to tally cases.

Amid mounting doubts about Beijing’s statistics, U.S. Secretary of State Antony Blinken on Thursday said all countries, including China, need to share information on their experiences with COVID.

As COVID rages through China, residents who previously faced long periods of isolation are now learning to live with the virus.

Chinese teacher Yang Zengdong, whose whole family is isolating in their downtown Shanghai apartment, mildly ill with COVID, welcomes the change in policy. Only weeks ago, they would have all been sent to a quarantine facility, and their building would have been locked down.

“When I think of this situation my feeling is just, wow, we are so lucky because now we can isolate at home,” Yang said.

“This wave is something we have to face, because it is impossible to stay closed forever.”

Reporting by Bernard Orr in Beijing, Casey Hall and David Stanway in Shanghai, Farah Master in Hong Kong and Chen Lin in Singapore; Writing by Marius Zaharia; Editing by Lincoln Feast.

Our Standards: The Thomson Reuters Trust Principles.

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World

First foreign COVID vaccines head to China from Germany

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  • Batch of BioNTech shots on the way to China
  • German citizens will get shot; Berlin pushes for wider use
  • Shipment comes after Scholz visit to China last month
  • Comes as infections spike in world’s No. 2 economy

BERLIN, Dec 21 (Reuters) – Berlin has sent its first batch of BioNTech (22UAy.DE) COVID-19 vaccines to China to be administered initially to German expatriates, a German government spokesperson said on Wednesday, the first foreign coronavirus vaccine to be delivered to the country.

No details were available on the timing and size of the delivery, although the spokesperson said Berlin is pushing for foreigners other than German nationals, estimated at about 20,000, to be allowed access to the shot if they want it.

The shipment comes after China agreed to allow German nationals in China to get the shot following a deal during Chancellor Olaf Scholz’s visit in Beijing last month, with the German leader pressing for Beijing to allow the shot to be made freely available to Chinese citizens as well.

In a letter to be sent to German citizens in mainland China, the government said it would offer basic immunisations and booster shots of vaccines approved for use in the European Union for free to anyone over 12 years of age.

Family members of other nationalities would not be included. Vaccinations for children under 12 may follow at a later date.

“We are working on the possibility that besides Germans also other foreigners can be vaccinated with BioNTech,” the spokesperson told journalists in Berlin.

The shots will be delivered to German companies in China as well as embassy locations and talks are underway with other EU governments about getting them to citizens of other nationalities, a source familiar with the situation said.

China would need to approve expanding access beyond German nationals, the source said.

In return, Chinese citizens in Europe can be vaccinated with China’s SinoVac (SVA.O), the spokesperson said.

The comment comes after a report earlier this month that Germany’s health ministry had granted a permit allowing China’s Sinovac COVID-19 vaccine to be imported to Germany to be given to Chinese citizens in that country.

The shot has not been approved for use by Europe’s drug regulator, but the World Health Organization has given its green light for its use.

Beijing has so far insisted on using only domestically produced vaccines, which are not based on the Western mRNA technology but on more traditional technologies.

The shipment comes amid Beijing dismantling its strict “zero-COVID” regime of lockdowns, which has led to a surge of cases that caught a fragile health system unprepared.

Experts predict that the country of 1.4 billion people could face more than a million COVID deaths next year.

Allowing German expats access to a Western shot is a big gesture to Berlin, reflecting Beijing’s effort to strengthen ties with EU’s biggest economy after years of tensions over trade and climate between the two countries.

Shares in BioNTech rose on news of the shipment, closing 2.3% higher in Frankfurt while Pfizer shares in New York were up 1.25% in late morning New York trade.

BioNTech was not immediately available to comment on the situation on Wednesday.

China is stuck between rising Covid-19 cases and stalled vaccination rates

NO WESTERN SHOTS

China has nine domestically developed COVID vaccines approved for use, more than any other country. But none has been updated to target the highly infectious Omicron variant, as Pfizer-BioNTech and Moderna (MRNA.O) have for boosters in many developed countries.

The two shots developed by Pfizer-BioNTech and Moderna are the most widely used around the world.

Early on in the pandemic, BioNTech struck a deal with Shanghai Fosun Pharmaceutical (600196.SS) with a view to supply the shots to greater China.

While the shots became available in Hong Kong, Macau and Taiwan, the regulatory review for mainland China has not been concluded. BioNTech has said that decision was up to Chinese regulators and has not given a reason for the delay.

China’s zero-COVID policy and lockdown measures have kept death and infection rates minimal over the past months but caused massive disruptions both domestically and in global trade and supply chains.

China uses a narrow definition of COVID deaths and reported no new fatalities for Tuesday, even crossing one off its overall tally since the pandemic began, now at 5,241 – a fraction of the tolls of many much less populous countries.

The National Health Commission said on Tuesday only deaths caused by pneumonia and respiratory failure in patients who had the virus are classified as COVID deaths.

Reporting by Thomas Escritt, Alexander Ratz and Christian Kraemer; additional reporting by Danilo Masoni in Milan and Amanda Cooper in London;
Writing by Miranda Murray;
Editing by Josephine Mason and David Evans

Our Standards: The Thomson Reuters Trust Principles.

Thomas Escritt

Thomson Reuters

Berlin correspondent who has investigated anti-vaxxers and COVID treatment practices, reported on refugee camps and covered warlords’ trials in The Hague. Earlier, he covered Eastern Europe for the Financial Times. He speaks Hungarian, German, French and Dutch.

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Business

Wall Street falls fourth straight day as recession worries nag

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  • Fed hikes, recession fears in focus
  • L3Harris slides after $4.7 bln Aerojet buyout Indexes down: Dow 0.49%, S&P 0.90%, Nasdaq 1.49%

Dec 19 (Reuters) – Wall Street closed lower on Monday for a fourth straight session with Nasdaq leading declines as investors shied away from riskier bets, worried the Federal Reserve’s tightening campaign could push the U.S. economy into a recession.

The three major U.S. stock indexes have been under pressure since Wednesday, when Fed Chair Jerome Powell took a hawkish tone while the central bank raised interest rates. Powell promised further rate increases even as data showed signs of a weakening economy.

The S&P 500 (.SPX), the Dow Jones industrials (.DJI) and the Nasdaq have sold off sharply for December and are on track for their biggest annual declines since the 2008 financial crisis.

While U.S. Treasury yields gained, investors ran from stocks, eyeing prospects of safer bets as they worried about the likelihood of a recession in 2023 according to Brian Overby, senior markets strategist at Ally.

“Investors are asking why do I want to take those risks going into 2023 with the Fed’s stance still aggressive when I can get such a good yield on the fixed income market place,” he said.

The lack of big earnings reports or economic data on Monday likely sharpened investors’ focus on economic fears and interest rates, according to Melissa Brown, Global Head of Applied Research at Qontigo in New York.

“It’s a knife edge between whether we’re going to teeter into a recession or have a soft landing. Is the Fed acting appropriately?” said Brown who also noted that moves may be exaggerated as many investors take vacation around the end-of-year holidays.

The Dow Jones Industrial Average (.DJI) fell 162.92 points, or 0.49%, to 32,757.54, the S&P 500 (.SPX) lost 34.7 points, or 0.90%, to 3,817.66 and the Nasdaq Composite (.IXIC) dropped 159.38 points, or 1.49%, to 10,546.03.

The biggest decliners among S&P industry sectors were communications services (.SPLRCL), which fell 2.2%, consumer discretionary (.SPLRCD), down 1.7% and technology (.SPLRCT), which lost 1.4%. Energy (.SPNY) outperformed, closing up 0.13% as the sole industry out of 11 to manage a gain.

Market heavyweights such as Apple Inc (AAPL.O), Microsoft Corp (MSFT.O) and Amazon.com Inc (AMZN.O) created some of the biggest drags on the market.

Trading in Tesla Inc (TSLA.O) was volatile with the electric carmaker closing down 0.24% after falling as much as 2.8% during the session. This was after a Twitter poll that showed a majority of respondents want Tesla Chief Executive Elon Musk to step down as CEO of the social media platform.

Meta Platforms (META.O) shares finished down 4.1% after the European Commission said it could impose a fine of up to 10% of the tech conglomerate’s annual global turnover if evidence showed an infringement of the EU’s antitrust laws.

L3Harris Technologies Inc (LHX.N) lost 3.6% after the U.S. defense contractor said it would buy hypersonic engine manufacturer Aerojet Rocketdyne Holdings Inc (AJRD.N) for $4.7 billion. Aerojet added 1.3%.

Shares of casino operators Melco Resorts & Entertainment tumbled just under 8% and Wynn Resorts (WYNN.O) lost 5.2% while Las Vegas Sands Corp (LVS.N) fell 2.3% after Macau said on Friday that six casino firms will invest around $15 billion as part of new 10-year contracts they signed to operate in the world’s biggest gambling hub.

Declining issues outnumbered advancing ones on the NYSE by a 2.80-to-1 ratio; on Nasdaq, a 2.63-to-1 ratio favored decliners.

The S&P 500 posted 5 new 52-week highs and 20 new lows; the Nasdaq Composite recorded 66 new highs and 456 new lows.

On U.S. exchanges 11.07 billion shares changed hands, compared with the 11.59 billion average for the last 20 trading days.

Reporting by Sinéad Carew, Sruthi Shankar, Shubham Batra, Johann M Cherian and Sruthi Shankar in Bengaluru; Editing by Saumyadeb Chakrabarty, Maju Samuel and David Gregorio

Our Standards: The Thomson Reuters Trust Principles.

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World

China’s COVID spike not due to lifting of restrictions, WHO director says

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  • WHO says China’s control measures were not stopping COVID-19
  • Countries should ask are the right people sufficiently vaccinated
  • Open channels between China and WHO – Ryan

GENEVA, Dec 14 (Reuters) – COVID-19 infections were exploding in China well before the government’s decision to abandon its strict “zero-COVID” policy, a World Health Organization director said on Wednesday, quashing suggestions that the sudden reversal caused a spike in cases.

The comments by the WHO’s emergencies director Mike Ryan came as he warned of the need to ramp up vaccinations in the world’s No. 2 economy.

Speaking at a briefing with media, he said the virus was spreading “intensively” in the nation long before the lifting of restrictions.

“There’s a narrative at the moment that China lifted the restrictions and all of a sudden the disease is out of control,” he said.

“The disease was spreading intensively because I believe the control measures in themselves were not stopping the disease. And I believe China decided strategically that was not the best option anymore.”

Beijing started pivoting away from its signature “zero-COVID” policy this month after protests against the economically damaging curbs championed by President Xi Jinping.

The sudden loosening of restrictions has sparked long queues outside fever clinics in a worrying sign that a wave of infections is building, even though official tallies of new cases have trended lower recently as authorities eased back on testing.

In its most recent COVID report for the week to Nov. 27, the WHO said China had reported increasing hospitalisations for four consecutive weeks.

“So the challenge that China and other countries still have is: are the people that need to be vaccinated, adequately vaccinated, with the right vaccines and the right number of doses and when was the last time those people had the vaccines,” said Ryan.

WESTERN VACCINE

The elation in China that met the changes in policy allowing people to live with the virus has quickly faded amid mounting concerns about surging infections because the population lacks “herd immunity” and has low vaccination rates among the elderly.

WHO’s senior epidemiologist Maria Van Kerkhove said the UN agency was providing technical advice to China and Ryan said there were open channels.

Among the first major announced deals in which a Western drugmaker will supply China with COVID therapies, China Meheco Group Co Ltd (600056.SS) said on Wednesday it would import and distribute Pfizer’s (PFE.N) oral COVID-19 treatment Paxlovid.

Earlier in the briefing, WHO chief Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus said he was “hopeful” that the pandemic, which has killed more than 6.6 million people since it emerged in Wuhan, China three years ago, will no longer be considered a global emergency some time next year.

Reporting by Emma Farge in Geneva;
Writing by Josephine Mason in London; Editing by Alison Williams, Raissa Kasolowsky, Alexandra Hudson

Our Standards: The Thomson Reuters Trust Principles.

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Business

Wall St rises after CPI data but Fed concerns persist

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  • Consumer prices rise moderately in November
  • Growth, real estate stocks climb as yields fall
  • Moderna surges on upbeat trial data
  • Dow up 0.3%, S&P 500 up 0.73%, Nasdaq up 1.01%

NEW YORK, Dec 13 (Reuters) – U.S. stocks rose on Tuesday after a unexpectedly small consumer price increase buoyed optimism that the Federal Reserve could soon dial back its inflation-taming interest rate hikes, but concerns remained the central back could stay aggressive.

The benchmark S&P 500 (.SPX) jumped as much as 2.76% to a three-month high early in the trading session on news that November U.S. consumer prices barely rose as gasoline and used cars cost less, leading to the smallest annual inflation increase in nearly a year at 7.1%.

Rising expectations for smaller and slower Fed rate hikes sent U.S. Treasury yields sharply lower and helped lift rate-sensitive gauges like the S&P 500 growth index (.IGX), up 1.18%, and the S&P 500 real estate index (.SPLRCR) up 2.04% to their highest intraday levels in nearly three months. The real estate sector notched its biggest daily percentage gain in two weeks as the best performing of the 11 major sectors.

Fed funds futures prices implied a better-than-even chance that the Fed will follow an expected half-point rate hike this week, with smaller 25-basis point hikes at its first two meetings of 2023, and stopping shy of 5% by March.

Morgan Stanley’s chief U.S. economist Ellen Zentner now sees even smaller Fed rate hikes, of 25 basis points at the central bank’s February meeting, and no further increases in March, leaving the peak fed funds rate at 4.625%.

Still, equities pared gains ahead of the Fed’s policy statement on Wednesday, in which the central bank is widely expected to announce a 50 basis point rate hike.

“There was some excitement early on that the CPI number was once again below expectations – it shows some sequential cooling – but once we saw that initial pop, stock investors kind of reassessed,” said Jason Ware, chief investment officer at Albion Financial Group in Salt Lake City, Utah.

“That probably took some of the steam out of the markets once investors realized tomorrow very well may be (Fed Chair) Jerome Powell throwing cold water on the rally today.”

The Dow Jones Industrial Average (.DJI) rose 103.6 points, or 0.3%, to 34,108.64, the S&P 500 (.SPX) gained 29.09 points, or 0.73%, to 4,019.65 and the Nasdaq Composite (.IXIC) added 113.08 points, or 1.01%, to 11,256.81.

[1/3] Screens display the trading information for ExxonMobil on the floor of the New York Stock Exchange (NYSE) in New York City, U.S., December 9, 2022. REUTERS/Brendan McDermid

Energy (.SPNY), up 1.77%, was among the best performing S&P sectors on the day as the softer-than-anticipated inflation data sent the dollar lower and boosted crude oil prices.

The consumer inflation numbers follow November’s producer prices report last week, which was slightly higher than expected but pointed to a moderation in the trend.

Still, some questioned whether the trend in prices could continue.

“Today’s CPI print is incrementally good, but it needs to be sustained,” said Venu Krishna, head of U.S. equity strategy at Barclays in New York.

“There is a big question mark whether we can really come to the 2% inflation (Fed target). Perhaps we live in a world in which it will be higher and that means rates will be higher and then multiples will certainly be lower.”

Moderna Inc (MRNA.O) surged 19.63% after the biotechnology firm’s experimental vaccine in combination with Merck & Co Inc’s (MRK.N) blockbuster drug Keytruda showed promising results in a skin cancer study. Merck shares advanced 1.78%.

Pinterest Inc (PINS.N) jumped 11.90% after Piper Sandler upgraded the social media platform’s stock to “overweight” from “neutral.”

Advancing issues outnumbered declining ones on the NYSE by a 2.83-to-1 ratio; on Nasdaq, a 1.49-to-1 ratio favored advancers.

The S&P 500 posted 18 new 52-week highs and 1 new lows; the Nasdaq Composite recorded 92 new highs and 212 new lows.

Reporting by Chuck Mikolajczak, additional reporting by Carolina Mandl; Editing by Richard Chang

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Business

Positive Moderna, Merck cancer vaccine data advances mRNA promise, shares rise

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CHICAGO, Dec 13 (Reuters) – An experimental cancer vaccine from Moderna Inc (MRNA.O) based on the messenger RNA (MRNA) technology used in successful COVID-19 vaccines has been shown to work against melanoma, sending Moderna shares more than 20% higher and driving up of other biotechs working on similar treatments.

A combination of Moderna’s personalized cancer vaccine and Merck & Co’s (MRK.N) blockbuster immunotherapy Keytruda cut the risk of recurrence or death of the most deadly skin cancer by 44% compared with Keytruda alone in a mid-stage trial, the companies said on Tuesday.

The result was considered a “statistically significant and clinically meaningful improvement,” the companies said.

Moderna shares were up nearly 23% at $202.80 on Tuesday, while Merck’s shares rose 1%. Shares of BioNTech SE (22UAy.DE), which also has successful mRNA vaccine technology, were up 6%, and tiny Gritstone Bio Inc (GRTS.O), which has a cancer vaccine in development, jumped 20% to $3.09.

The study is the first randomized trial to show that combining mRNA vaccine technology with a drug that revs up the immune response would offer a better result for melanoma patients and potentially for other cancers.

“It’s a tremendous step forward in immunotherapy,” Eliav Barr, Merck’s head of global clinical development and chief medical officer, said in an interview.

Paul Burton, Moderna’s chief medical officer, said in a separate interview that the combination “has the capacity to be a new paradigm in the treatment of cancer.”

The ongoing study involved 157 patients with stage III/IV melanoma whose tumors were surgically removed before being treated with either the drug/vaccine combo or Keytruda alone with the aim of delaying disease recurrence.

The combination was generally safe and demonstrated the benefit compared with Keytruda alone after a year of treatment. Serious drug-related side effects occurred in 14.4% of patients who received the combination compared with 10% with Keytruda alone.

A PROMISING FIELD

In October, Merck exercised an option to jointly develop and commercialize the treatment, known as mRNA-4157/V940, sharing costs and any profits equally. Merck and Moderna plan to discuss the results with regulatory authorities and start a large Phase III study in melanoma patients in 2023.

The Merck/Moderna collaboration is one of several combining powerful drugs that unleash the immune system to target cancers with mRNA vaccine technology. They are designed to target highly mutated tumors.

The personalized vaccine works in concert with Merck’s Keytruda, a so-called checkpoint inhibitor designed to disable a protein called programmed death 1, or PD-1, that helps tumors to evade the immune system.

To build the vaccine, researchers took samples of patients’ tumors and healthy tissue. After analyzing the samples to decode their genetic sequence and isolate mutant proteins associated only with the cancer, that information was used to design a tailor-made cancer vaccine.

When injected into a patient, the patient’s cells act as a manufacturing plant, producing perfect copies of the mutations for the immune system to recognize and destroy.

Moderna’s personalized vaccine can be made in about eight weeks, a time frame the company eventually hopes to halve, Burton said.

Barr said the companies intend to study the approach in other highly mutated cancers, such as lung cancer. Other such cancers include bladder cancers and some breast cancers.

Moderna mRNA rival BioNTech has several cancer vaccine trials in the works including one with Memorial Sloan Kettering Cancer Center in New York testing a personalized vaccine in combination with Roche’s (ROG.S) Tecentriq in patients with pancreatic cancer.

Gritstone is testing a personalized, self-amplifying mRNA vaccine in combination with Bristol Myers Squibb’s (BMY.N) immunotherapies Opdivo and Yervoy in a midstage trial in patients with advanced solid tumors.

Experts said the personalized vaccines were among several promising cancer vaccine ideas in the works after many failures in the field.

“In general, I think cancer vaccines are kind of at a tipping point, and there are going to probably be a lot of vaccines coming down the pipeline in the next five years,” said Dr. Mary Lenora Disis, director of the UW Medicine Cancer Vaccine Institute in Seattle.

Although the COVID-19 pandemic demonstrated the speed, ease and safety of mRNA vaccines, they came out of years of cancer vaccine research, Disis said.

Reporting by Julie Steenhuysen in Chicago, Michael Erman in New Jersey and Aditya Samal in Bengaluru; Editing by Caroline Humer, Edwina Gibbs and Bill Berkrot

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Health

Some bloodstream infection bacteria grew resistant to last-resort drugs in 2020 – WHO

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LONDON, Dec 9 (Reuters) – Increased drug resistance in bacteria causing bloodstream infections, including against last-resort antibiotics, was seen in the first year of the coronavirus pandemic, a World Health Organization report based on data from 87 countries in 2020 showed.

The overuse and/or misuse of antibiotics has helped microbes to become resistant to many treatments, while the pipeline of replacement therapies in development is alarmingly sparse.

High levels (above 50%) of resistance have been reported in bacteria that typically cause life-threatening bloodstream infections in hospitals such as Klebsiella pneumoniae and Acinetobacter spp, report authors highlighted on Friday.

These infections often require treatment with ‘last-resort’ antibiotics, drugs that are used when all other antibiotics fail.

About 8% of bloodstream infections caused by Klebsiella pneumoniae grew resistant to a vital last-resort group of drugs called carbapenems, the report said.

Rates of antimicrobial resistance (AMR) remain very high, but last-resort antibiotics are only just starting to lose potency, said Dr Carmem Pessoa-Silva, the lead for WHO Global Antimicrobial Resistance Surveillance System, in a media conference.

The message of hope, she said is, “we have a very narrow window of opportunity…for responding to the threat.”

While there is a concerted push to limit the unbridled use of antibiotics, the pace of new research remains grim.

The effort, cost and time it takes to get an antibiotic approved and the limited return on investment have deterred drugmakers, as treatments must be priced cheaply and are designed to be used as little as possible to limit drug resistance.

As a result, the lion’s share of antibiotic development is taking place in a handful of labs of small biopharma companies as a majority of their larger counterparts focus on more lucrative markets.

Only a few big pharmaceutical companies remain in the space — including GSK (GSK.L) and Merck (MRK.N) — down from more than 20 in the 1980s.

A landmark global analysis published earlier this year found that 1.2 million people died in 2019 due to antibiotic-resistant bacterial infections, making AMR a leading cause of death worldwide, higher than HIV/AIDS or malaria.

“Political commitment (on AMR) must now urgently move from aspiration into action,” said Thomas Cueni, director general at International Association of Pharmaceutical Manufacturers and Associations.

The authors of the WHO report said more research is needed to identify the reasons behind the jump in AMR in the period studied, and to what extent it is linked to the accelerated use of antibiotics during the pandemic.

AMR rates also remain difficult to interpret due to insufficient testing and weak laboratory capacity, particularly in low- and middle-income countries, the authors wrote.

Reporting by Natalie Grover in London; Editing by Barbara Lewis and Arun Koyyur

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