- Bodies pile up without burials in Sudan’s capital, marooned by a relentless conflict The Associated Press
- ‘Disease catastrophe’ looms in Sudan as health conditions deteriorate, medics warn ABC News
- Save the Children: Decomposing bodies left on streets of Sudan’s capital CNN
- Khartoum: Lack of essential visas for MSF staff threatens lifesaving care in hospital Médecins Sans Frontières (MSF) International
- Sudan humanitarian crisis: NGO warns of risk of diseases as bodies litter streets • FRANCE 24 FRANCE 24 English
- View Full Coverage on Google News
Tag Archives: Pile
I 55 Illinois dust storm pile up accident: 6 killed, more than 30 injured in crash downstate, police say – WLS-TV
- I 55 Illinois dust storm pile up accident: 6 killed, more than 30 injured in crash downstate, police say WLS-TV
- Illinois highway dust storm turns deadly, Mississippi River cresting causing flooding NBC News
- Illinois interstate crash involving 72 vehicles leaves six dead, more than 30 injured: ‘Horrific’ Fox News
- Dust storm in Illinois leaves at least 6 dead after more than 70 vehicles crash on major highway, officials say CNN
- High winds, low humidity, sub-par rainfall and pre-season lack of vegetation contributes to deadly I-55 dust storm Monday WGN TV Chicago
- View Full Coverage on Google News
Vanguard defends strategy as critics pile on after net-zero exit
It’s a sentiment that was echoed by others, including New York City Comptroller Brad Lander, while climate groups such as Reclaim Finance, a French nonprofit, said the defection was proof Vanguard “was never serious about implementing its net-zero commitment” in the first place. The Sunrise Project, another nonprofit, said it expects Vanguard to face anger from some clients.
John Galloway, Vanguard’s global head of investment stewardship, was on a call with his team after the exit was announced and told staff that a concern now is employee safety given the risk of climate protests, according to a person with direct knowledge of the conversation. A spokesperson for the firm declined to comment about the call.
Casey Harrell, a senior strategist at The Sunrise Project, said that Vanguard customers “around the globe will be the ones who will suffer in the long term.”
Vanguard is now trying to rein in the fallout of last week’s decision to back out of the Net Zero Asset Managers initiative, which is a sub-unit of the Glasgow Financial Alliance for Net Zero. Earlier this year, GFANZ proudly announced that the coalition had grown to 550 members overseeing a combined $150 trillion in assets. Vanguard’s defection marks a major blow to that growth narrative.
A spokesperson for the asset manager said it plans to “keep investors informed of our approach through thoughtful insights such as our climate research.” Vanguard also intends to engage with portfolio companies and policy makers and will continue to provide stewardship reports and regular climate reports, the spokesperson said.
But Vanguard’s defection has shone a torch on a weak link in the finance industry’s net-zero claims. The fund manager has about 80% of its portfolio assets in index-tracking funds. As a result, Vanguard says it doesn’t “choose the securities in a fund or dictate a portfolio company’s strategy or operations.”
Vanguard isn’t alone in pointing out the challenges index managers face when it comes to net-zero goals.
“Passive investing isn’t very compatible with net-zero alignment,” said Hubert Keller, senior managing partner of Lombard Odier. “I have some sympathy for these large index-based investors that say, quite rightly, that as a passive investor I can’t force the real economy to change.”
NZAM has acknowledged the issue and said in November that “the challenge” of how to treat index funds in the context of net-zero targets will get more attention “in the coming months.”
Kirsten Snow Spalding, vice president of the Ceres Investor Network, a founding partner of NZAM, said “all asset managers are struggling with passive.” But that shouldn’t rule out committing to net zero, she said. Firms can work with the heaviest emitters represented in indexes to get them to decarbonize through engagement, she said. They can also ensure that client mandates are more closely aligned with net zero. But Ms. Spalding acknowledged that the industry needs more help from regulators.
Many of the world’s biggest money managers have tended to exclude funds they define as passive from their emissions estimates. An analysis earlier this year of 30 major investment firms showed that none applied fossil-fuel restrictions to all their index-tracking funds, according to Reclaim Finance. Of those, 25 were GFANZ signatories, which at the time included Vanguard, as well as BlackRock and State Street.
Of the roughly $8 trillion that BlackRock oversees, some 27% was actively managed at the end of September. PwC expects the global market for assets under management to reach $145 trillion by 2025, with only 60% of that actively managed. “Passives will gain huge market share,” it said.
Vanguard said 96% of the funds it manages don’t align with net-zero goals, and it now has no plan or commitment to change that.
In April, the Science Based Targets initiative, a U.N.-backed group, said it would no longer provide emissions-reduction verifications for asset managers that excluded all their passively invested funds.
“Passive funds continue to be a topic that we discuss with financial institutions in their near-term science-based targets,” said Nate Aden, finance sector lead at SBT. “There are bright spots, and we are elaborating on this topic in our financial-institutions net-zero criteria, the draft version of which we plan to publish early next year.”
Investors pile into insurance against further market sell-offs
Investors are buying record amounts of insurance contracts to protect themselves from a sell-off that has already wiped trillions of dollars off the value of US stocks.
Purchases of put option contracts on stocks and exchange traded funds have surged, with big money managers spending $34.3bn on the options in the four weeks to September 23, according to Options Clearing Corp data analysed by Sundial Capital Research. The total was the largest on record in data going back to 2009, and four times the average since the start of 2020.
Institutional investors have spent $9.6bn in the past week alone. The splurge underscores the extent to which big funds want to insulate themselves from a sell-off that has dragged on for nine months, and has been supercharged by central bankers across the globe aggressively raising interest rates to tame high inflation.
“Investors have realised the [US] Federal Reserve is very policy constrained with inflation where it is and they can no longer count on it to manage the risk of asset price volatility, so they need to take more direct action themselves,” said Dave Jilek, chief investment strategist at Gateway Investment Advisors.
Jason Goepfert, who leads research at Sundial, noted that when adjusting for growth in the US stock market over the past two decades, the volume of equity put option purchases was roughly equivalent to the levels reached during the financial crisis. By contrast demand for call options, which can pay out if stocks rally, has tailed off.
While the sell-off has wiped more than 22 per cent off the benchmark S&P 500 stock index this year — pushing it into a bear market — the slide has been relatively controlled, lasting months, not weeks. That has frustrated many investors who hedged themselves with put options contracts or bet on a surge in the Cboe’s Vix volatility index but found the protection did not act as the intended shock absorber.
Earlier this month the S&P 500 suffered its biggest sell-off in more than two years but the Vix failed to breach 30, a phenomenon never before registered, according to Greg Boutle, a strategist with BNP Paribas. Generally large drawdowns push the Vix well above that level, he added.
Over the past month money managers have instead turned to buying put contracts on individual stocks, betting that they can better safeguard portfolios if they hedge against large moves in companies like FedEx or Ford, which have slid dramatically after issuing profit warnings.
“You’ve seen this extreme dislocation. It’s very rare you see this dynamic where put premiums in single stocks are bid so much relative to the index,” said Brian Bost, the co-head of equity derivatives in the Americas at Barclays. “That’s a large structural shift that doesn’t happen every day.”
Investors and strategists have argued that the slow slide in the major indices has in part been driven by the fact that investors had largely hedged themselves after declines earlier this year. Long-short equity hedge funds have also largely pared back their bets after a dismal start to the year, meaning many have not had to liquidate large positions.
As stocks dropped again on Friday and more than 2,600 companies hit new 52-week lows this week, Cantor Fitzgerald said its clients were taking profits on hedges and establishing new trades with lower strike prices as they put on fresh insurance.
Strategists across Wall Street have cut year-end forecasts as they factor in tighter policy from the Fed and an economic slowdown that they warn will soon begin to eat into corporate profits. Goldman Sachs on Friday lowered its S&P 500 forecast, expecting a further decline in the benchmark as it scrapped its bet on a late-year rally.
“The forward paths of inflation, economic growth, interest rates, earnings, and valuations are all in flux more than usual,” said David Kostin, a strategist at Goldman. “Based on our client discussions, a majority of equity investors have adopted the view that a hard landing scenario is inevitable.”
New-look Cincinnati Bengals offensive line says earning trust of Joe Burrow key as sacks, losses pile up
CINCINNATI — One main objective for the winless Cincinnati Bengals is pretty clear following their 0-2 start to the season.
After quarterback Joe Burrow was sacked 13 times total in the first two games, center Ted Karras said the team must make its franchise cornerstone more comfortable in the pocket.
“That’s our biggest goal here moving forward — helping our guy have confidence in us, earning his trust,” Karras said Monday. “I feel like it’s something we haven’t done yet.”
Burrow was sacked six times in a 20-17 loss to the Dallas Cowboys on Sunday; he was sacked seven times in a season-opening loss to the Pittsburgh Steelers. According to ESPN Stats & Information research, the 13 total sacks to start the season are tied for the most over that stretch in the past 20 years.
Against Dallas, Bengals offensive coordinator Brian Callahan said the Cowboys provided a lot of stunts and twists on which a second pass-rusher was the one who ended up getting a sack or a pressure.
“He looked comfortable moving,” Callahan said of Burrow. “He’s seeing it well. When you end up in those spots where making one guy miss and here comes a second one, that gets a little hard.”
Karras, whom the team signed as its new center this offseason after he spent last season with the New England Patriots, said blocking well and giving Burrow clean pockets is the best way to make him feel comfortable. But Karras echoed Callahan’s point and said that whenever there’s late pressure during a play, it can rattle a quarterback.
“We want him to feel that those hits aren’t gonna come,” Karras said.
Cincinnati’s sack issue comes on the heels of a Super Bowl run in which protecting Burrow was a major issue. The Bengals surrendered 19 sacks in four playoff games in 2021. The Los Angeles Rams, who beat Cincinnati in the Super Bowl, allowed just seven sacks.
Cincinnati has four new starters on the offensive line, with left tackle Jonah Williams the lone holdover from last season. Bengals right tackle La’el Collins, who was previously with the Cowboys before signing with Cincinnati this offseason, said it’s up to the offensive linemen to find chemistry with each other.
“This is our first time playing together, these first two weeks,” Collins said. “I think we will be fine. We will get on the same page and just start doing what we do, and that’s coming out and setting the tone. Lock in on it and own it.”
Not all of Cincinnati’s sack problems fall squarely on the players on the line of scrimmage. Burrow took the blame for several of them in Week 1 against the Steelers.
Callahan chalked the recent struggles up to several factors, ranging from poor communication to good opponents. But that doesn’t mitigate where things stand for the Bengals after two games.
“For us to get where we want to get, ultimately it has to be much better than it has been kind of all the way around,” Callahan said.
Madison Cawthorn is Under Pressure as Scandals Pile Up
Mr. Wheeler provided The Times with a screenshot of the anonymous text he received that included the video, and he said he believed the tipster to be a former Cawthorn campaign aide. Another former aide, Lisa Wiggins, went public in an audio recording released by Mr. Wheeler with her consent, saying, “We all want the ultimate goal of him never serving again.”
Republicans in the state insist that accusations of lawlessness and neglect of his district are more damaging than details of his sex life. Democrats say they are most concerned with Mr. Cawthorn’s support for the protesters who attacked the Capitol on Jan. 6, 2021. A legal effort led by North Carolina Democrats to label him as an “insurrectionist” and constitutionally disqualify him from the ballot failed last month.
But the revelations about his conduct are making a splash. The photos of Mr. Cawthorn in women’s lingerie, first published in Politico, stemmed from a bawdy game aboard a cruise that he took before he was elected to the House, said Melissa Burns, a self-described conservative Republican from Tennessee who witnessed the game, part of an onboard show.
For the finale, the audience was divided into teams, each of which selected a man to dress as a woman, “the sexier ‘she’ is, the more points you get,” Ms. Burns said in an email. Mr. Cawthorn volunteered.
The description is consistent with a description that Mr. Cawthorn provided in a link on Twitter, when he dismissed the photos, saying, “I guess the left thinks goofy vacation photos during a game on a cruise (taken waaay before I ran for Congress) is going to somehow hurt me?”
Ms. Burns also provided a link to a dating app for the cruise from someone identified as “Cawthorn,” using the same photo that was published in Politico, saying, “Im in search of sexy women or couples for some wild sexapades. You wont be disappointed.”
Luke Ball, a spokesman for Mr. Cawthorn, did not deny Ms. Burns’ description of the lingerie game, but he said the dating app was a fake that used the wrong age, wrong hometown and wrong name of the ship.
Southwest Airlines, other carriers cancel hundreds more flights Sunday as weekend delays pile up
Dallas-based Southwest Airlines canceled almost 400 more flights by Sunday morning and delayed nearly 800 others after technology and weather problems wreaked havoc on the carrier on Saturday.
The airline said the cancellations were done proactively to “communicate soonest to our affected customers and crews.” It also said there had been no additional cancellations as of noon Sunday.
“We’ve planned for, and already are well into a much better operational environment today, Sunday, compared to the weather and air traffic conditions we, our customers, and passengers of other carriers experienced on Saturday afternoon and evening,” Southwest said in a statement.
The cancellations and delays represent about one-third of Southwest’s 3,600 flights scheduled for Sunday.
Other airlines also had issues stemming from widespread storms in Florida on Saturday, with cancellations across the U.S. totaling more than 1,500 on Sunday. Fort Worth-based American Airlines, JetBlue and Spirit all canceled at least 200 flights each.
Passengers complaining on social media were reportedly being told that flights may not be available for days.
Southwest’s problems started with “intermittent technology issues following routine overnight maintenance” Friday night that the company said were resolved. There were also thunderstorms in Florida that delayed some flights early Saturday.
But the problems got worse throughout Saturday, eerily similar to other operational meltdowns over the last year that have sometimes left the carrier scrambling for days as the company had trouble getting pilots, flight attendants and aircraft where they were supposed to be and ready fly the next day.
“It’s a nightmare out there on a more and more frequent basis,” said Casey Murray, head of the Southwest Airlines Pilots Association union in a text message. “Yesterday, it began with an IT failure and schedules exacerbates the problems where recovery takes 4-5 days.”
By the end of Saturday, Southwest canceled 520 flights, about one-seventh of all flights and almost half of the company’s flights. Most of those flights were in Florida, with nearly 500 flights out of Orlando, Miami, Tampa and Fort Lauderdale canceled Saturday across all carriers.
Florida and New York airports were particularly problematic for travelers on Sunday.
American Airlines canceled 363 flights Saturday and delayed another 620. On Sunday, the carrier nixed 251 flights as of 2:30 p.m. and delayed 233 others.
“Today, we’re focused on recovering from yesterday’s Florida weather and resulting [Air Traffic Control] initiatives that reduced routes, and could see some more weather and ATC initiatives today,” said American Airlines spokeswoman Yamleque Murillo.
Atlanta-based Delta Air Lines axed 237 flights on Saturday, about 8% of its schedule and a fifth of flights were delayed, an unusual weekend for the carrier that regularly beats others in reliability.
Budget carrier Spirit had to cancel about a quarter of its flights, 222 in all, on Saturday and 237 on Sunday. JetBlue had 161 cancellations Saturday, but bigger problems Sunday with 352 flights called off.
In the past, Southwest has shifted some blame to its point-to-point networks because planes and crews can be left out of position because its aircraft often complete five or six trips before returning to a major base. That’s opposed to an airline such as American, which tends to fly back and forth repeatedly between smaller cities and its hubs in Dallas, Charlotte or Chicago.
Passengers also complained on social media about trouble getting through to customer service on the phone to rebook flights. Some even noted that technology channels seemed to be overwhelmed by the issues.
Becky Patterson of Birmingham, Ala., was stuck at the airport in Orlando for more than eight hours Saturday with her 10-year-old daughter, a delay that included several calls to Southwest Airlines after pilots held loading because of long taxiway waits. She eventually gave up.
“We got one of the last rental cars and drove 9 hours home arriving early this a.m.,” Patterson said. “Last thing I want is a voucher because we will not fly this airline again.”
Flight delayed 6 times due to weather then cancelled because there was no crew. @SouthwestAir didn’t send alerts or even let the gate agents know, offered no vouchers or hotel assistance, and first tried to rebook me on Tuesday. I know things happen but this was handled poorly.
— Lindsay (@NOLAlexis_9) April 3, 2022
Some Southwest passengers were notified that they wouldn’t be able to rebook flights until Monday or later.
Went through all of that yesterday, the process was brutal but lucked out and found an allegiant to Fort Wayne. Took us 12 hours to get home with all the delays, have to get our car from Indy, but we feel so very fortunate. Good luck to you!!!
— Karen Parker (@Ms_Paaarker) April 3, 2022
Family Dollar Rat Infestation Inevitable Given Stock Pile up: Expert
- FDA inspectors found a rat infestation at one of Family Dollar’s distribution centers.
- This led to Family Dollar closing more than 400 stores.
- A retail consultant told Insider that inventory pile-ups and staffing shortages could be to blame.
Family Dollar closed 404 stores this week after a US government agency investigation found 1,000 rodents at one of its distribution centers in Arkansas. The company on Friday announced that it was gradually reopening some of the stores.
According to the US Food and Drug Administration, inspectors reported finding live rodents, dead rodents in various states of decay, rodent feces, and dead birds in the building. Recalls were issued on certain items sold at its stores that were serviced by this distribution center; days later, these stores closed altogether.
News of these infestations didn’t come as a surprise to everyone, however. Scott Mushkin, CEO of consultancy firm R5 Capital, told Insider that his team’s recent visits to more than 50 of Family Dollar’s parent company’s stores, Dollar Tree, highlighted issues with chaotic backrooms and inventory pileups that could lead to rodent infestations.
“To call it chaotic is an understatement, there were inventory mountains,” he said on a recent call. “I’ve never seen anything like what we witnessed in those back rooms … there was plenty of cover for rodents to move around.”
Mushkin’s team created a report after visiting 50 Dollar Tree stores, which was shared with investment analysts and reviewed by Insider. The report shows stacks of boxes piled high in stock rooms at various Dollar Tree stores across the US.
Dollar Tree did not immediately respond to Insider’s request for comment.
“Store after store there were piles of inventory. In our opinion, there is a very low probability that the company fully understands its inventory position at the stores,” the report said.
This paints a similar picture to what Insider found during store visits to two of Dollar Tree’s Brooklyn locations in 2022 and 2018 where boxes were stacked up in the middle of the store or left to be unloaded on abandoned crates.
Mushkin said the inventory pile-ups he witnessed could be down to supply chain challenges and stock arriving all at once or staffing issues because of the labor crunch.
Gabriella Santaniello, analyst and founder of retail research firm A-Line Partners, echoed these sentiments.
“The stores are understaffed, sometimes with only two people working, so it isn’t unrealistic that things like a rat infestation might go unchecked for a long time. They just don’t have the bandwidth to deal with it. It’s a sad reality,” she said.
It’s not only the Dollar Tree group that has issues with unsafe box stacking in its stores (and a lack of staff to deal with it). Its main competitor, Dollar General, has faced over $3.6 million in proposed penalties from the Department of Labor’s Occupational Safety and Health Administration since 2016 over issues of worker safety in its stores.
OSHA said in a press release this week that inspectors found examples of “willful violations” of employee safety at some of its stores last summer including stacking boxes in “an unsafe manner” and blocking exit routes.
While untidy stores haven’t discouraged shoppers so far – dollar stores continue to grow at a rapid rate in the US and thrived during the pandemic – analysts say that recent reports of pest control issues are likely to be more damaging.
“The low price proposition of Dollar Tree and Family Dollar does result in trade-offs. No one expects the stores to be luxuriously appointed, to have fantastic merchandising, or to offer top-notch service,” Neil Saunders, managing director of GlobalData Retail, said in a note to Insider.
He continued: However, basic hygiene, including pest control, is an expectation. I think most shoppers will find the latest headlines distasteful, no matter how low the prices or how low the discounts are.”
Investors Pile Into Gold, Seeking Safety From Market, Geopolitical Turbulence
One asset holding up through the early 2022 market turmoil: gold.
Rising geopolitical tensions in Europe and a slide in major U.S. stock indexes has sent investors rushing into the haven metal. On Friday, they poured a record net $1.6 billion into
SPDR Gold Shares,
GLD 0.54%
the world’s largest physically backed gold exchange-traded fund, according to Dow Jones Market Data. When individuals buy shares of an ETF backed by physical gold, they are buying a stake in a trust. The ETF tracks the metal’s price since the asset held by that trust is metal.
Demand for gold climbed after tensions between Russia and Ukraine escalated last week. Investors often flock to gold during geopolitical turbulence, expecting it to hold value even when other assets struggle.
“Gold thrives on uncertainty, and we’ve got that by ladle full,” said
Rhona O’Connell,
head of market analysis EMEA & Asia at StoneX. She estimates that gold will trade at an average of $1,900 a troy ounce in the second half of 2022.
Gold prices have traded in a relatively narrow range in 2022, hovering below their November highs of $1,870.20 a troy ounce and 2020 record of $2,051.50. Bets the Federal Reserve will act aggressively to curb inflation helped pull the metal back from those levels, reducing the appeal of gold as protection against rising prices. Expectations for rate increases also have sent U.S. government bond yields higher, making them more competitive with gold, which pays no regular income.
Most actively traded gold futures ended Tuesday up $10.80, or 0.6%, to $1852.50.
Analysts said recent declines in the stock market also could support gold, with the S&P 500 and Nasdaq Composite recently wrapping up their worst week since March 2020. Investors also have battered other speculative bets, including bitcoin, which some cryptocurrency enthusiasts have touted as another form of inflation protection.
“Gold has re-emerged as a safe haven and portfolio tail hedge given repricing and selloff in equities and crypto assets,” said Aakash Doshi, head of commodities for North America at Citi Research.
One potential new source of pressure for gold prices is this week’s Fed meeting, which investors plan to watch closely for clues on the path of interest-rate increases. Yields on two-year Treasury bonds, which typically climb when investors expect tighter central bank policy, have lately risen to their highest levels since February 2020.
Some investors said expectations for Fed policy tightening were already weighing on gold, helping push it down to a 3.5% loss in 2021, its largest percentage decline since 2015.
“Gold was the problem child last year, but it might be the star student this year,” said Robert Minter, director of ETF investment strategy at abrdn, which offers the Aberdeen Standard Physical Gold Shares ETF with net assets around $2.4 billion as of Dec. 31.
Copyright ©2022 Dow Jones & Company, Inc. All Rights Reserved. 87990cbe856818d5eddac44c7b1cdeb8
As Romania struggles with Covid fourth wave bodies pile up outside hospital morgue
“I never thought, when I started this job, that I would live through something like this,” said Ionita. “I never thought such a catastrophe could happen, that we’d end up sending whole families to their graves.”
Several floors above, all the beds but one in the hospital’s now-expanded intensive care units were full. A nurse was changing the sheets on the one vacant bed — empty, because the person who occupied it now lay in the morgue.
Romania has one of Europe’s lowest vaccination rates.
Just under 36% of the population has been vaccinated, even though the country’s vaccination campaign got off to a good start last December.
Medical workers and officials attribute this low vaccination rate to a variety of factors, including suspicion of the authorities, deeply held religious beliefs, and a flood of misinformation surging through social media.
When Dr. Alexandra Munteanu, 32, arrived for duty at one of Bucharest’s vaccination centers after an overnight shift in hospital, she found turnout was low. She’s perplexed that the gravity of the disease just doesn’t seem to have sunk in. “There are lots of doctors, myself included, who work with Covid patients, and we are trying to tell people this disease actually exists,” she said.
One of the country’s most vocal and high-profile anti-vaxxers is Diana Sosoaca, a member of the Romanian Senate. In one of her many public stunts she tried to block people from entering a vaccine center in her constituency in the northeast of the country.
“If you love your children, stop the vaccinations,” she says in a video clip on her Facebook page. “Don’t kill them!”
The vaccines on offer in Romania have been extensively tested for use in children and have proven to be safe and effective, but that hasn’t stopped her and others from spreading wild rumors on social media and local television.
Officials and medical personnel are exasperated that public figures have done so much to undermine their efforts.
“Look at the reality,” said Col. Dr. Valeriu Gheorghita, an army doctor who runs the national vaccination campaign. “We have our intensive care units full of patients. We have lots of new cases. We have, unfortunately, hundreds of deaths every day. So this is the reality. And more than 90% of patients who died were unvaccinated.”
In Bucharest, a huge banner has gone up, covering half the façade of a building on a major boulevard. “They’re suffocating. They’re begging us. They’re regretting,” are the words printed in massive black letters above black-and-white photographs of medics struggling over Covid patients in an intensive care unit.
Down below, few passers-by glance up at the poster, and even fewer cared to share their thoughts with CNN. Soon, however, that banner will go up in other major cities in the country.
“There’s manipulation,” said a woman who gave her name only as Claudia, adding: “Some people don’t believe in the vaccines.”
Mayor: ‘It’s not a safe vaccine’
Nowhere is that suspicion more apparent than in the countryside, where Covid-19 vaccination rates plummet to about half of those in urban areas.
Suceava County, an hour’s flight northeast of Bucharest, has the lowest overall vaccination rate in the country.
Here, the manager of the main hospital, Dr. Alexandru Calancea, 40, talks about the particularity of this region, where he was born and bred.
“This county is very religious. This is an area that has a strong religious tradition, and a lot of religious people. […] Very few [priests] are pro-vaccine, and I definitely know some who are anti-vax. Most of them choose not to say anything, either for or against. We have proof, from the hospital, from patients who come from the same religious communities, where their priest, or their pastor, has advised them to not get vaccinated, just like that.”
Just outside Suceava, in the village of Bosanci, such a pastor also serves as the village mayor. Neculai Miron has been one of the most vocal anti-vax public figures in the country, and today is no different.
“We’re not against vaccination, but we want to verify it, to satisfy our worries, because there have been many side effects,” he told CNN. “We don’t think that the vaccine components are very safe. It’s not a safe vaccine.”
The medical data doesn’t sway him, and neither does the local GP, whom he took the CNN team to see.
Dr. Daniela Afadaroaie administers the vaccine to about 10 people every other day, using the Johnson & Johnson vaccine. The latest official records show that just under 11% of the village was vaccinated as of early November 2021.
While she talked about the situation in the village, the mayor, Miron, hovered around the doctor’s desk, peering down at the papers on her desk to see who had been vaccinated.
“When are you going to get vaccinated, Mr. Mayor?” asked Afadaroaie, laughing.
“I don’t need to get vaccinated,” he shot back. “I’m perfectly healthy.” The doctor’s explanation that the vaccine helps keep you that way fell on deaf ears.
Pastor: ‘I believe what I see, rather than what I hear’
In rural villages like this, poverty and lack of education, together with local leaders’ personal influence and traditional religious beliefs, can make for a deadly combination.
But the local Pentecostal pastor, Dragos Croitoru, insisted he was unaware of any deaths from Covid-19 in the parish. “Here in the church, we don’t have any cases of people who are sick with coronavirus. We have a zero percent mortality rate, I don’t know anyone who’s died of coronavirus here in our parish. And I believe what I see, rather than what I hear,” he said.
Despite hearing from CNN about the bodies of Covid-19 victims filling the morgue at Bucharest University Hospital, Croitoru was unconvinced. “Bucharest is bigger than Bosanci, as far as I know,” he chuckled. “We haven’t had any dead. Maybe we’ve had a few people who have been ill in the village, yes, as far as I know, yes. But the mortality rate in our church has been zero.”
The mortality rate is certainly high elsewhere in this mostly rural county. Suceava ranked third highest in Covid-19 mortality rates for the whole country as of early November, according to figures from the Public Health Unit, which monitors deaths.
A corner of the main cemetery in Suceava, the county seat that’s about 10 minutes from Bosanci, is full of freshly dug graves. In the cemetery’s chapel, a service is underway. On the hill behind the chapel, mourners gather for a funeral. Nearby, another grave is being prepared.
The wooden crosses over each new grave don’t indicate the cause of death, so it’s unclear how many died from the virus. A man working on one of the graves, however, said the number of people being buried of late was far higher than usual.
“Eternal regrets,” reads a ribbon draped across one of the graves.
Back in the morgue of the Bucharest University Hospital, a medic hammered a nail into a wooden coffin. A colleague sprayed the coffin with disinfectant.
For those who die of Covid, there will be no open-casket funerals.
“The vaccine means the difference between life and death,” said Ionita, the nurse. “People should understand that. Maybe in their last hour they should understand that.”
For those shrouded in the black body bags before him, it is already too late.