Virus Update
- Cases world-wide topped 937,000, while the death toll exceeded 47,000.
- Cases in the U.S. exceeded 216,000. New York state, the hardest-hit, had more than 84,000 cases. Some 5,000 people have died of the disease in the U.S.
- Many New York Coronavirus Patients Are Young, Surprising Doctors
- Italy’s death toll from the virus is probably far higher than the official figure of more than 13000. Many people who have died from the virus didn’t make it to the hospital and were never tested. In two of the hardest-hit cities, Bergamo and Brescia, the real number of deaths is probably at least double the official count, according to interviews with local officials, doctors and funeral-service providers and comparisons with the numbers of deaths from past years.
- Tokyo found a record 97 new coronavirus cases on Thursday, national broadcaster NHK reported, a number quickly approaching a level medical professionals warned would merit more pronounced measures from the government.
- China reported 130 people over the past day who were infected with the novel coronavirus but don’t have symptoms, a sign that the group of people who can spread the virus without being detected is sizable.
- A county in central China has been put under lockdown again after a flareup in cases, pointing to the difficulty of sustaining containment when carriers show no signs of sickness. Jia county, with a population of about 640,000, issued a directive Wednesday asking all residential compounds to be sealed off, and those visiting and leaving homes to produce identity cards, wear masks and submit to temperature checks.
- Confirmed cases in Germany rose by more than 6,000 on Thursday to 77,981, after several days with a lower number of new infections. Deaths rose to 931 from 775.
- Since March 13, 158 flights have come into Canada with a confirmed case of COVID-19 on board
- Hyped Malaria Drug Not Showing Much Effect at One Paris Hospital
Some Nations Look to Mass Testing for Faster Way Out of Coronavirus Crisis As quarantine fatigue sets in, several countries ramp up test capacity
(…) In the U.S., most officials remain focused on keeping people apart to slow the virus’s transmission, as testing availability is spotty in different parts of the country.
In Germany, which is testing up to 500,000 people a week, the highest number of any Western nation, government advisers recommended last week that this capacity be raised to up to 200,000 tests a day, in a report to Chancellor Angela Merkel seen by The Wall Street Journal.
“By far the most important measure against a virus such as SARS-CoV-2 is testing and isolating of the infected persons,†the report said, referring to the new coronavirus. (…)
The U.K. has purchased 2.5 million kits for a mass-testing campaign and aims to be testing 25,000 people a day by the end of April. Officials in Sweden and Austria said they are boosting capacity to up to 15,000 tests a day.
(…) [Some experts] say the approach is too late in places where the virus is already widespread, as it is in much of Europe and the U.S. Most countries still limit testing to the severely sick, including industrial nations such as Japan and France and large ones such as India.
Relying only on lockdowns without extensive testing is like fighting a fire blindfolded, said Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus, head of the World Health Organization.
In the U.S., more than 1.1 million coronavirus tests had been completed as of Tuesday, according to Vice President Mike Pence. But the availability of tests in the U.S. varies by location. (…)
In the U.S., Abbott Laboratories ABT plans to make a rapid test available this week for use in clinics and other settings that can detect the virus in a patient sample in as few as five minutes and return negative results in 13 minutes. (…)
Only 63% of Germans said they would go into self-isolation if they were to experience Covid-19 symptoms, and only 41% believed the disease was dangerous, in a poll commissioned by Germany’s disease-control agency. (…)
Got Coronavirus Antibodies? Tests that show immunity are crucial to beating Covid-19.
(…) Dozens of commercial and public health labs around the world are rolling out antibody tests that can show if an individual was recently infected with the virus and has developed immunity. When fighting a pathogen, the immune system produces proteins known as antibodies that bind to specific molecules known as antigens on the invader’s surface like a lock and key. (…)
Some experts estimate that more than half of infected individuals show mild or no symptoms, though the true figure could be higher. Around three-quarters of people infected with flu viruses show mild or no symptoms. (…)
Antibody tests would also let governments and individuals tailor their behavioral responses. Kids with antibodies could visit grandparents without worrying they might kill them. Governments could ease restrictions for those with immunity and focus on protecting those most at risk. (…)
Forty some companies have indicated that they plan to launch tests. But many are waiting for the government imprimatur of FDA approval and inoculation against lawsuits. (…)
Gleaned here and there:
The Food and Drug Administration issued an emergency approval Tuesday for a serological testing kit produced by Bodysphere Inc. that can detect a positive or negative result for COVID-19 in two minutes. (…)
The Bodysphere two-minute test can only detect the coronavirus in people who have had the infection for several days, meaning the test can’t be used too early on when the body hasn’t produced enough antibodies.
Abbott Laboratories received emergency authorization last week to produce portable coronavirus tests, which the company indicates can detect the virus within five minutes.
Nature: On 25 March, a UK government official said that the country had ordered 3.5 million ‘finger-prick’ tests and planned to order millions more. (…) These ‘serological tests’ should become available to the public in days rather than weeks or months, said Sharon Peacock, director of the national infection service at Public Health England (PHE), a UK health agency. Peacock suggested that the bulk of the UK tests, which will be available to buy from Amazon and pharmacies to perform at home, had not yet arrived.
LiveScience: The CDC has been developing two serological tests for coronavirus for weeks, Stat News reported. On March 18, virologist Florian Krammer of the Icahn School of Medicine at Mount Sinai and colleagues posted a preprint paper describing their serological test, which they are now working to get into clinical use. The Krammer lab has set up a website describing their ingredients and techniques for any other lab that would like to use them. Researchers at the Mayo Clinic are developing serological tests as well, Pritt said.
There are also efforts to import already-developed serological tests from other countries. For example, the distributor Ideal Rehab Care Inc. has been approved to import a test from a Singapore-based manufacturer, according to the distributor’s law firm.
The testing is being offered free of charge by UBI and c19 and will be administered by the Public Health Department of San Miguel County, with the goal of detecting and containing community spread, and providing a more accurate assessment of disease prevalence. (…)
UBI’s c19 has developed a high-precision antibody blood diagnostic test that has been validated in China, Taiwan and California labs and has virtually 100% sensitivity and specificity in patients who have developed antibodies against the virus (seroconverted). The tests are manufactured in Long Island, N.Y. and can differentiate between COVID-19 and other coronaviruses (e.g., HKU1 and NL63). Results can be obtained within a couple hours. The company has submitted to the FDA for Emergency Use Authorization, and is allowed under FDA guidance to begin distributing the antibody test with specific disclaimers about its status and limitations until an EUA is authorized.
COVID-19: the immune system can fight back
Melbourne researchers have mapped immune responses from one of Australia’s first novel coronavirus (COVID-19) patients, showing the body’s ability to fight the virus and recover from the infection.
Researchers at the Peter Doherty Institute for Infection and Immunity (Doherty Institute) were able to test blood samples at four different time points in an otherwise healthy woman in her 40s, who presented with COVID-19 and had mild-to-moderate symptoms requiring hospital admission.
Published today in Nature Medicine is a detailed report of how the patient’s immune system responded to the virus. One of the authors on the paper, research fellow Dr Oanh Nguyen said this was the first time that broad immune responses to COVID-19 have been reported. (…)
“Three days after the patient was admitted, we saw large populations of several immune cells, which are often a tell-tale sign of recovery during seasonal influenza infection, so we predicted that the patient would recover in three days, which is what happened.†(…)
Working together with University of Melbourne Professor Katherine Kedzierska, a laboratory head at the Doherty Institute and a world-leading influenza immunology researcher, the team were able to dissect the immune response leading to successful recovery from COVID-19, which might be the secret to finding an effective vaccine.
“We showed that even though COVID-19 is caused by a new virus, in an otherwise healthy person, a robust immune response across different cell types was associated with clinical recovery, similar to what we see in influenza,†Professor Kedzierska said.
“This is an incredible step forward in understanding what drives recovery of COVID-19. People can use our methods to understand the immune responses in larger COVID-19 cohorts, and also understand what’s lacking in those who have fatal outcomes.â€
Dr Thevarajan said that current estimates show more than 80 per cent of COVID-19 cases are mild-to-moderate, and understanding the immune response in these mild cases is very important research. (…)
Professor Peter C. Doherty: Producing massive numbers of antibody test kits really fast should be a top priority. Once people are antibody positive, they will be at (or near) zero risk of being transmitters, and they should be able to return to normal life.
Even in the absence of an antibody screening test — if, say, it is true that 40%-60% of Brits and Italians have already had the disease — we should see a massive drop in clinical case acquisition through the next month or so. An epidemiologist could model this and give better estimates. Of course, we don’t know that 60% herd immunity will be enough. Maybe it will take 80% or 90%. (via BCA Research)
Now Is Not the Time for ‘Coronabonds’ The ECB gives crisis-struck Southern Europe all the flexibility it needs to fight Covid-19. Directly sharing debt with Germany could take some of it away.
This past week, Germany and the Netherlands have shot down proposals that “coronabonds†could jointly finance the fight against the Covid-19 outbreak, triggering vocal protestations from Italy, Spain and Portugal. Many economists warn that, without debt mutualization, the currency bloc is doomed. (…)
Unlike in the U.S. or the U.K., where government bonds are akin to money in that both are ultimately issued by the state, 18 nations in the eurozone need to repay their debts in a currency printed by someone else. The exception is Germany, which is seen by investors as being fully in control of the Frankfurt-based European Central Bank.
This is a big reason why U.S. fiscal stimulus measures are typically well received by financial markets—as was the case last week—whereas their Italian and Spanish equivalents often prompt investors to dump their debt. The result is that the Covid-19 fiscal packages announced by these worst-affected countries are so far much smaller than those of austerity-prone Germany.
Fixing this problem, though, doesn’t require coronabonds—only the ECB’s implicit promise that Italian and German debts are interchangeable. (…)
PANDENOMICS
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U.S. March Manufacturing PMI: Output declines at fastest pace since August 2009 amid COVID-19 outbreak
- World food prices fell 4.3% from the prior month to 172.2 points in March, the United Nations’ Food & Agriculture Organization said. The drop to the lowest level since October was driven by demand contractions because of the pandemic.
Debt crisis awaits in emerging markets (Axios)
Many of the world’s poor and developing countries could begin defaulting on their bonds in the coming weeks as the coronavirus outbreak has led to massive outflows from emerging market assets and real-world dollars being yanked from their coffers.
The wave of defaults is unlikely to be contained to EM assets and could exacerbate the global credit crisis forming in the world’s debt markets.
Investors pulled a record-breaking $83.3 billion from EM securities in March, dwarfing outflows seen during previous “stress events” like the global financial crisis, the 2014 taper tantrum, and China’s devaluation scare of 2015, the Institute of International Finance says.
- The outflows will be particularly damaging for emerging economies that are heavily reliant on foreign capital, especially as foreign direct investment has been drying up since early 2019 as a result of the U.S.-China trade war.
“The huge fiscal costs and humanitarian consequences of coronavirus could incentivize a slew of distressed governments to default on their debts,” Edward Glossop, emerging markets economist at Capital Economics, wrote last week.
- The World Bank and IMF already have called for an immediate suspension of debt payments from International Development Association countries, which are the world’s poorest.
- However, both Fitch and Moody’s warned that any restructuring of private-sector debt could trigger restrictive defaults.
(…) IIF’s data show total debt for 30 large EM countries reached $72.5 trillion in 2019, a 168% increase over the past decade.
- EM countries also have around $5.5 trillion of debt coming due this year, with a sizable percentage held by investors in the industrialized world.
FILL HER UP!
As Saudi Arabia Boosts Oil Output, Some Tankers Have Nowhere to Go Saudi Arabia is ramping up its oil output, boosting production capacity and hiring new tankers to fight its price war with Russia despite the coronavirus pandemic’s erosion of crude demand.
The world’s biggest oil exporter is producing above 12 million barrels a day, at maximum capacity, and about two million barrels a day more than a month ago, Saudi officials said.
There are signs that some of this extra oil has virtually no place to go. Some of the vessels the kingdom has hired to help it increase exports are leaving ports filled with oil, but have no destination, casting doubts on whether the extra production will end up with customers and add to a global glut.
“There are loadings [from Saudi ports in the Persian Gulf] with no destination on them because we don’t have buyers,†a Saudi official said. (…)
The market is expected to be oversupplied in April by 25 million barrels a day, more than twice Saudi Arabia’s production capacity, according to consulting firm Rystad. (…)
There is also evidence that some of the extra oil Saudi Arabia is pumping isn’t leaving its shores at all. As of March 17, Kpler had detected a significant increase in oil inventories inside the kingdom with stocks at 74.4 million barrels, 8.2 million barrels above the 2019 average.
Saudi Arabia has refused overtures from other nations offering to broker oil-market peace. Last week, it nixed a proposal from Algeria—which holds the OPEC presidency—to convene a meeting to discuss the market situation, according to Saudi and OPEC-country officials. When Russia offered a three-way dialogue with the U.S. in recent weeks, Saudi Arabia refused.
Moscow hasn’t been in contact with Saudi Arabia regarding the oil market but is prepared to do so if necessary, Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov said Wednesday.
(…) Trump also said he had talked recently with the leaders of both Russia and Saudi Arabia and believed the two countries would make a deal to end their price war within a “few days†– lowering production and bringing prices back up.
“I’m going to meet with the oil producers on Friday. I’m going to meet with independent oil producers also on Friday or Saturday. Maybe Sunday. We’re going to have a lot of meetings on it,†Trump told reporters at a media conference. (…)
The WSJ adds:
But the options are limited for Washington to help beleaguered U.S. oil-and- gas producers, and there are strong differences between major oil companies and some independent shale drillers about whether aggressive government actions are even necessary, making the prospect of any agreement challenging, some of the people said.
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Given the size of the demand shock, however, any conceivable cut by OPEC+/US/Canada would, in our view, still fall far short of the current 26 mb/d demand losses, likely providing only fleeting support to inland crude prices. (Goldman Sachs)
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U.S. shale giant’s bankruptcy a warning to Canada’s oil patch
(…) Whiting Petroleum Corp., once the largest oil producer in North Dakota’s Bakken region, (…) has seen its market capitalization shrink to US$61.5-million from as much as US$15-billion at its peak in 2011, when investors were first discovering the burgeoning shale sector.
(…) corporate balance sheets in the U.S. energy industry tend to be heavier on debt, making them more vulnerable to the current crisis than Canadian companies on average, said Robert Fitzmartyn, analyst at Stifel FirstEnergy. (…)
MARKETS!
But don’t trust forward earnings here.
‘Highly Bullish’ Survey May Mean Stock Bottom Not In, RBC Says
Respondents to RBC’s survey of American stock investors were the most bullish since it began in early 2018, encouraged by what they see as attractive valuations, faith the Federal Reserve will continue to support equities and a belief that the economic damage from the coronavirus crisis will be manageable, strategists including Lori Calvasina said in a note Thursday.
“This surprisingly high level of bullishness supports our own view that we haven’t yet seen investor capitulation, echoing what we’ve seen in other data sets,†the strategists wrote. “We view capitulation as a necessary, though not sufficient condition for stock market bottoms in major drawdowns.†(…)
Nearly two-thirds of the 185 institutional investors responding thought the S&P 500 Index would bottom at 2,100 or higher, according to the survey, which was conducted between March 25 and 31. (…)
Still, 57% of respondents expected a trough in the second quarter, compared with 19% who think the lows have already occurred, according to the report. Those bulls have company, with Morgan Stanley’s Mike Wilson saying the benchmark was unlikely to retest the March lows, and JPMorgan Chase & Co.’s John Normand writing that the market rout is probably past its worst point. (…)
Fed Temporarily Eases Capital Requirements for Big Banks Central bank aims to address strained conditions in Treasury market
(…) The banks are sitting on giant stockpiles of cash, U.S. government debt and other safe assets. By tweaking how the ratio is calculated, the Fed is effectively trying to engineer a swap. Remove Treasurys and central bank deposits from the calculation, the thinking goes, and banks should be able to replace them in the asset pool with loans to consumers and businesses.
The Fed made it clear that tweak is designed to give banks more flexibility to grow their assets rather than shrink their capital by increasing shareholder payouts. (…)
Bloomberg: Cruise line operator Carnival Corp. proved that Wednesday when investors clamored to buy a new $4 billion bond sale that pays interest of 11.5%, one of the highest coupons ever offered, particularly by an investment-grade rated company. Demand was so frenzied — as high as around $17 billion — that Carnival was able to cut the coupon and increase the original size of the offering by an extra $1 billion, according to people familiar with the situation.
Overall in March, U.S. investment-grade issuance topped $259 billion for a new monthly record, while European supply passed 135 billion euros ($148 billion), the most since 2016. Asia’s dollar market was quiet for most of the month, though Chinese internet search giant Baidu Inc. announced a deal to start April.
WHEN ZOMBIES MEET BLACK SWAN
WeWork troubles deepen as SoftBank pulls $3 billion tender offer
SoftBank Group Corp (9984.T) said it has terminated a $3 billion tender offer for additional WeWork shares agreed last year with shareholders, drawing threats of legal action and plunging the floundering office space company further into crisis. (…)
Watch the ripple effects…
1 thought on “THE DAILY EDGE: 2 APRIL 2020”
The Bloomberg report on young, otherwise healthy CV victims in ICU is anecdotal, and conflicts with other data that suggests 90% of ICU patients are older, have co-morbitity issues, or both. E.g. a recent WSJ article reported that fully 74% of NYC ICU patients were on dialysis.
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