Gold futures end with a loss as prospects for a COVID-19 vaccine boost the stock market MarketWatch
The global scientific community has joined forces in an unprecedented effort to understand, track, forecast, test for, and find a cure for the current coronavirus pandemic. But in a crisis where every second lost means more loss of lives, solidarity alone isnt enough. Supercomputers are enabling a vastly accelerated pace by which scientists can conduct research and collect and analyze data. Never have they proven their value to society more than during this COVID-19 pandemic.
Supercomputers provide scientists who are studying COVID-19 with unique capabilities: they can explore the structure and behavior of the virus at the molecular level while designing drugs and forecasting the spread of the disease much faster than would otherwise be possible.
The Texas Advanced Computing Center (TACC) began fielding requests for computing time to assist in the fight against COVID-19 in February 2020. In March, the White House enlisted some of the world's most powerful supercomputers through the COVID-19 High Performance Computing (HPC) Consortium, a public-private partnership providing researchers worldwide with massive computing resources.
As part of this effort, we are working closely with teams to provide priority access to supercomputing resources here and across the world. In the U.S. alone, there are more than 100 projects, involving thousands of researchers, using HPC systems to predict the effects of interventions like stay-at-home orders and school closings; to simulate the molecular behavior of the proteins that make the virus virulent; to understand the genetics of the virus and its mutability; to screen potential drugs and vaccines for efficacy, and to visualize and interactively share data with decision-makers.
At TACC, nearly a third of all computing time has been dedicated to accelerating these efforts the equivalent of 40,000 desktop computers churning non-stop. None of this would be possible without federal funding for high-performance computing by the National Science Foundation (NSF) and Department of Energy (DOE), who have made open access to supercomputers part of their mission for more than four decades.
Beyond big machines, supercomputing centers employ some of the brightest minds in computational science, and these individuals are collaborating with teams across the nation to fast-track research.
Among these partnerships is the University of Texas at Austin COVID-19 Modeling Consortium, led by Dr. Lauren Ancel Meyers, which developed one of the leading epidemiological models of how the disease spreads based on virus transmission and real-time cell phone data. The White House and CDC, as well as the national media and public, have used the model to inform their understanding and decision-making.
A team from DOEs Argonne and Brookhaven National Laboratories applied several of the most powerful supercomputers in the world to accelerate an AI-based approach to drug docking. Their effort narrowed 6 billion possible small molecules to the 30 with the best chance of binding to one of the virus proteins and disrupting its function. These are now being tested in labs at the University of Chicago.
The TACC-powered COVID-19 Drug Discovery Consortium is collaborating with Enamine, the worlds largest provider of screening compounds, and Boston University, Texas A&M, and the University of Texas Medical Branch, to identify the 600 most promising, readily available, drug-like molecules (out of 2.6 million) and test them in high-containment laboratories in order to find potential drugs in months rather than years.
New projects are launching daily.
In many of these cases, long-term research collaborations helped speed the projects out of the gate. The UT Austin Modeling Consortiums projections built on a decade of federally-funded R&D on flu pandemic modeling by Meyers team. The DOE researchers adapted AI-based cancer drug discovery methods for SARS-CoV-2. The Drug Discovery Consortium leveraged tools and methods developed over many years to fight bioterrorism. Our ongoing relationships with these teams has made it possible for them to shift their research focus, expand their scope, and reduce limitations as they work towards a common good.
Academic research is frequently the first step in a long process that requires efforts by government agencies, philanthropic organizations, and industry. Basic science helps decision-makers protect the populace, and informs the creation of vaccines and treatments.
Under normal circumstances, this process takes years or decades. However, time is a luxury we simply do not have. The urgency of the challenge we face makes the application of research accelerators like supercomputers even more critical to help flatten the curve and ultimately solve the greatest crisis we as a society have ever faced.
Dr. Dan Stanzione is the associate vice president for Research at The University of Texas at Austin and executive director of the Texas Advanced Computing Center (TACC).
A coronavirus vaccine will result in significant calls to supply locals first, a form of vaccine nationalism that will leave all worse off, the chair of the Coalition for Epidemic Preparedness Innovations has warned.
Jane Halton, who is also a former head of Australias health and finance departments, issued the warning at the National Press Club on Monday.
Halton told reporters there is a reasonable chance of developing a Covid-19 vaccine because although 94% of vaccine candidates fail there are 130 groups working on the problem worldwide.
With seven different categories of vaccine on trial and 20 candidates in the other category, Halton said the scientific community is doing well to get the maximum shots on goal.
The Coalition for Epidemic Preparedness Innovations has backed 10 candidates, including one in Australia that could go to human trials as early as July.
If a vaccine is identified, production should be globally distributed to guard against vaccine nationalism, she said.
A vaccine is critical to returning to work, global trade and tourism, so if we have vaccine nationalism, and one country looks after itself first, and at the expense of the rest of the world, everyone is going to continue to suffer, Halton said.
The World Health Organization is working out a list of priority recipients including first-responder health workers, the elderly and immunocompromised.
Now, this is hard, because its going to require people to cooperate.
And the urge for domestic priority, I think, will be very significant.
After a country has produced a vaccine and served its vulnerable citizens it will need to determine what share of that is going to vulnerable people around the world at the same time, Halton said.
At the moment, were all in it together. As soon as there is a vaccine, I fear that we may not be quite all in this together as we have been.
Halton, a member of the WHO board for three years, said she could understand the concerns of our friends in China about being blamed for Covid-19 but defended a proposed investigation into the zoonotic origins of the virus as the best way to prevent it from happening in the future.
Halton, also a commissioner in Australias national Covid-19 Coordination Commission, warned against complacency now Australia has begun to ease restrictions.
She said a its all good attitude would reduce social distancing and could cause a really bad outcome for the elderly and immunocompromised.
Halton said the Australian states do not work in hermetically sealed spheres and although she understood states being nervous about taking down internal border controls, she was not convinced current border controls were the best way to manage risk.
Halton also foreshadowed a greater role for the commission in planning Australias economic recovery after the immediate challenges of ensuring enough personal protective equipment had been met.
The commissions chairman, Nev Power, has publicly backed a fertiliser plant and spruiked natural gass role in powering domestic manufacturing since taking the role.
We will turn our focus to what is actually going to get our economy kickstarted, Halton said.
What we want to be able to see is an increase in productivity in our economy. And we will be working with the government on what some of those ideas might be.
A man from Winter Springs, Florida, told CNN on Monday that he has been stuck on a cruise ship and then a hospital ship in an Italian port for 62 days after testing positive for Covid-19 in early April.
Grimes set sail mid-January from Genoa, Italy, on his second cruise as an employee of MSC Cruises, a global cruise company headquartered in Geneva, Switzerland. Grimes worked in the jewelry store on their Mediterranean route.
On March 17, a friend of Grimes and fellow employee tested positive for Covid-19, Grimes said. After consulting with the ship doctor and captain, Grimes said he "voluntarily went into isolation." Fifteen days later, he also tested positive, Grimes said.
Grimes has since been tested seven more times and has received a mixture of positive and negative results, he said.
Grimes said he hopes his eighth Covid-19 test result will be negative, so he can return to the United States.
The American Embassy confirmed to the family it is Italian policy that cruise ship employees may not be released from a ship until they have tested negative in two subsequent tests, Ann Grimes said.
"We don't question that that's the standard," Ann Grimes said. "It's the fact the testing is so sketchy. How can you be in quarantine for 62 consecutive days and still be testing positive?"
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As our counties start opening back up its important to remember that COVID-19 is still here, added Diane Creek, Toe River Health District Health Director. We are blessed in Avery County to have a strong community. Your public officials and county leadership have been working tirelessly to prepare for the impact of this virus. Community members can do their part by continuing to follow the guidelines, and remember that were all in this together, and to support one another.
Monday brought renewed enthusiasm to Wall Street as investors looked favorably on efforts to reopen the U.S. economy. With several states implementing new procedures to allow businesses to open, millions of Americans are looking forward to getting back to some semblance of normal life. Market participants also reacted positively to comments from Federal Reserve Chair Jerome Powell Sunday night that lent credibility to the idea that the central bank still has ways to help in the economic fight against the pandemic's effects. Just after 11 a.m. EDT, the Dow Jones Industrial Average (DJINDICES:^DJI) was up 806 points to 24,492. The S&P 500 (SNPINDEX:^GSPC) rose 86 points to 2,950, and the Nasdaq Composite (NASDAQINDEX:^IXIC) picked up 218 points to 9,233.
One of the things that buoyed sentiment among investors was the effort to develop a coronavirus vaccine. Shares of Moderna (NASDAQ:MRNA) were higher by 23% following positive results from early tests of its COVID-19 vaccine in humans. Certainly early-phase trials of vaccine candidates will have a direct impact on the pharmaceutical and biotech stocks sponsoring them. But in the long run, the three stocks that stand to gain the most from a coronavirus vaccine are cruise ship operators Carnival (NYSE:CCL), Norwegian Cruise Line Holdings (NYSE:NCLH), and Royal Caribbean (NYSE:RCL). That's a big part of why the three cruise ship stocks are up between 13% and 18% Monday morning.
Image source: Getty Images.
The key to the stock market rally over the past couple of months has been hope that returning to business as usual is still an option in the long run. In particular, the need to get businesses moving forward as soon as possible can be felt in communities across the nation.
Most businesses, with the guidance of health officials, could take steps to reopen while still offering some protection against coronavirus contagion. We'll see some of those steps in the months ahead, including limiting the number of people in stores at any one time, reserving certain times for customers at highest risk of serious illness, and requiring the use of personal protective equipment.
Yet cruise ship operators would have a difficult time adapting their business models to meet stopgap regulatory guidelines. Inherent in the cruise ship experience is large groups of people traveling together within an enclosed environment for several days and periodically going ashore at various locations to spend time interacting with locals.
Cruise companies could try to impose new restrictions on travelers, such as by keeping groups of passengers in their cabins to limit the number of people congregating at any one time. However, that would detract from the entire point of a cruise. Moreover, enforcing those requirements would bring up many of the same troubles that state and local governments have run into trying to enforce lockdown and stay-at-home orders.
In that light, it makes sense that a full vaccine would be the best solution for cruise ship operators. That way, bullish investors figure, companies like Royal Caribbean, Norwegian, and Carnival can largely return to their former operating models. With protection against the coronavirus in place, passengers would feel just as comfortable as they did before the pandemic struck.
The big question is timing. Even with fast-tracked efforts to develop a vaccine, researchers are still only in the early stages. Meanwhile, cruise ship operators have canceled months' worth of voyages, and although they've raised capital to get through a period of essentially no revenue, there's a limit to how much liquidity they'll be able to get. That leaves these companies in a race against time, with no certainty about whether they'll outlast the outbreak.
The healthcare stocks developing a vaccine have been volatile, with prices soaring when prospects for a particular company's vaccine look good. But for cruise ship stocks, a vaccine is even more important -- because the industry's entire future could rest on a reliable way to prevent the illness from ever taking hold again.
All of the Bay Area and the majority of California has now entered the second of four phases in Gov. Gavin Newsoms plan to reopen the state. Curbside retail, manufacturing plants and offices will be allowed to resume operations around the state in all but Los Angeles and Sacramento counties.
But the number of new cases of COVID-19 continues to come in the thousands, with days of triple-digit fatalities. The most recent of which came three days ago, with 107 deaths reported Friday amounting to the states second-deadliest day of the outbreak.
[ FAQ: What does it mean to enter Phase 2? Which parts of the state qualify? ]
Another 84 Californians succumbed to the virus over the weekend, including 33 on Sunday to bring the death toll to 3,240, according to data compiled by this news organization, while the state crossed 80,000 total confirmed cases with another 1,433 positive tests reported Sunday.
The states pace of growth remained exactly the same as the week prior: 18% more cases and 17% more fatalities.
Los Angeles County continues to account for a large chunk of the growth statewide, but more than half of the new cases Sunday came in counties moving forward with reopening. Of the 84 deaths over the weekend, 66 occurred in LA County, while the other 18 came in counties that have entered Phase 2.
The Bay Area, while still outpaced by Southern California, has seen an increase in new cases the past three days. The 10-county region added another 349 confirmed cases over the weekend, or just over 10% of the statewide gain still below its proportion of the population but slightly higher than in past days.
Alameda led the growth with 92 new cases from Friday to Sunday, followed by San Francisco (65), Santa Clara (50), Contra Costa (46) and San Mateo (27). In Southern California, the largest increases have come in Los Angeles (1,715), San Diego (313), Orange (251) and San Bernardino (200).
A number of mostly rural Northern California counties have been approved to accelerate the reopening of restaurants and shopping malls, too, in an advanced stage of Phase 2. But to qualify for that, counties cannot have recorded a fatality from the virus in the past 14 days, in addition to a number of other criteria.
One death in Alameda County was the regions lone fatality over the weekend, and hospitalization rates continue to decrease. The number of COVID-19 patients hospitalized across the Bay Area dropped to 252 on Friday, the most recent day for which data was available, the lowest it has been since April 1.
Statewide, hospitalizations hit one-month low on Sunday, with 3,037 patients in hospital beds, the lowest number since April 13. That number has fallen 11.3% since the beginning of the month, while the number of patients in ICUs has dropped by 8.7%.
As new cases and deaths plateau and hospitalizations decrease slightly, the state has ramped up testing but not yet to the goals Newsom set last month. Labs around the state performed 200,000 tests last week, about 12,000 more than the week before and 75,000 more than three weeks ago. But that still only amounts to 7 of every 10,000 Californians being tested each day.
Newsom had set a goal of 25,000 tests per day by the end of April, which the state accomplished, but also an eventual capacity of 60,000 to 80,000 per day. Entering the third week of May and the eighth week since the Bay Areas shelter-in-place mandate the state has yet to conduct more than 36,000 tests in a single day.
Scientists at the University of Pittsburgh School of Medicine believe that theyve found a potential vaccine for the new coronavirus.
The researchers announced their findings Thursday and believe the vaccine could be rolled out quickly enough to significantly impact the spread of disease, according to their study published in EBioMedicine.
The vaccine would be delivered on a fingertip-size patch. When tested on mice, the vaccine produced enough antibodies believed to successfully counteract the virus.
The scientists say they were able to act fast because they had already done research on the similar coronaviruses SARS and MERS.
These two viruses, which are closely related to SARS-CoV-2, teach us that a particular protein, called a spike protein, is important for inducing immunity against the virus, read a statement from co-senior author Andrea Gambotto, M.D., associate professor of surgery at the Pitt School of Medicine.
We knew exactly where to fight this new virus.
The vaccine follows the traditional approach of ordinary flu vaccines, using lab-made pieces of viral protein to build immunity.
While the mice have not been studied over a long period of time, the vaccine was able to deliver enough antibodies against the coronavirus within two weeks, according to the researchers.
The studys authors are now applying for an investigational new drug approval from the US Food and Drug Administration. They hope to start human clinical trials within the next few months.
Researchers said they sided with using a patch, rather than a traditional needle, to deliver the spike protein to the skin, which elicits the strongest immune reaction.
The patch contains 400 tiny microneedles made of sugar and protein pieces. It would be applied like a Band-Aid with the needles dissolving into the skin.
The vaccine would be highly scalable for widespread use, the researchers said in a news release.
For most vaccines, you dont need to address scalability to begin with, Gambotto said. But when you try to develop a vaccine quickly against a pandemic, thats the first requirement.
A researcher of the Openlab genetic and cell technologies laboratory of the Kazan Federal University working with biomaterial.
Yegor Aleyev | TASS via Getty Images
Health officials and scientists across the world are racing to develop vaccines and discover effective treatments against the coronavirus, which has infected more than 4.2 million people worldwide in as little as four months, according to data compiled by Johns Hopkins University.
There are no proven, knockout treatments and U.S. health officials say a vaccine could take at least a year to 18 months.
On May 1, theFood and Drug Administration granted emergency use authorizationfor Gilead Sciences' antiviral drug remdesivir. This after a government-run clinical trial found Covid-19 patients who took remdesivir usually recovered after 11 days. That is four days faster than those who didn't take the drug. The EUA means doctors in the U.S. will be allowed to use remdesivir on patients hospitalized with Covid-19 even though it has not been formally approved by the agency.
Even if the drug wins final approval, infectious disease specialists and scientists say researchers will need an arsenal of medications to fight this respiratory virus, which can also attack the cardiovascular, nervous, digestive and other major systems of the body.
Below is a list of the leading vaccines and drugs in development to battle Covid-19.
Nicolas Asfouri | AFP | Getty Images
Moderna
The National Institutes of Health, an agency within the Department of Health and Human Services, has been fast-tracking work with biotech company Moderna to develop a vaccine to prevent Covid-19.The company began the first phase 1 human trialon45 volunteers testing a vaccine to prevent the disease in March and has been approved to soon start its phase 2, which would expand the testing to 600 people, by late May or June. If all goes well, its vaccine could be in production as early as July.
Scientist Xinhua Yan works in the lab at Moderna in Cambridge, Massachusetts, on Feb. 28, 2020. Moderna has developed the first experimental coronavirus medicine, but an approved treatment is more than a year away.
David L. Ryan | Boston Globe | Getty Images
Moderna's potential vaccine contains genetic material called messenger RNA, or mRNA, that was produced in a lab. The mRNA is a genetic code that tells cells how to make a protein and was found in the outer coat of the new coronavirus, according to researchers at the Kaiser Permanente Washington Health Research Institute. The mRNA instructs the body's own cellular mechanisms for making proteins to create those that mimic the virus proteins, thereby producing an immune response.
Johnson & Johnson
Johnson & Johnson began Covid-19 vaccine development in January. J&J's lead vaccine candidate will enter a phase 1 human clinical study by September, the company announced in March, and clinical data on the trial is expected before the end of the year. If the vaccine works well, the company said it could produce600 million to 900 million doses by April 2021.
The company said it is using the same technologies it used to make its experimental Ebola vaccine, which was provided to people in the Democratic Republic of Congo in late 2019. It involves combing genetic material from the coronavirus with a modified adenovirus that is known to cause common colds in humans.
Inovio Pharmaceutical
Inovio began its early stage clinical trials for a potential vaccine on April 6,making it the second potential Covid-19 vaccine to undergo human testing after Moderna. It says it will enroll up to 40 healthy adult volunteers in Pennsylvaniaand Missouri and expects initial immune responses and safety data by late summer. Inovio made its potential vaccine by adding genetic material of the virus inside synthetic DNA, which researchers hope will cause the immune system to make antibodies against it.
Oxford University
A coronavirus vaccine developed by researchers at Oxford University began phase 1 human trials on April 23. British Health Minister Matt Hancock saidthat he wouldprovide 20 million, ($24.5 million), to help fund the Oxford project. The team said it aims to produce 1 million doses by September.
General view of the sign for University of Oxford, Old Road Campus and Trials clinic on May 02, 2020 in Oxford, England.
Catherine Ivill | Getty Images
Oxford researchers are calling their experimental vaccineChAdOx1 nCoV-19, and it's a kind ofrecombinant viral vector vaccine. Like J&J's team, the researchers will place genetic material from the coronavirus into another virus that's been modified. They will then inject the virus into a human, hoping to produce an immune response.
Pfizer
Pharmaceutical giant Pfizer,which is working alongside German drugmaker BioNTech, began testing an experimental vaccine to combat the coronavirus in the U.S. on May 5.The U.S.-based drugmaker hopes to produce "millions" of vaccines by the end of this year and expects to increase to "hundreds of millions" of doses next year. The experimental vaccine uses mRNA technology, similar to Moderna. The mRNA is a genetic code that tells cells what to build in this case, an antigen that may induce an immune response for the virus.
In this photo illustration the American multinational pharmaceutical corporation Pfizer logo seen displayed on a smartphone with a computer model of the COVID-19 coronavirus on the background.
Budrul Chukrut | SOPA Images | Getty Images
Sanofi and GSK
Sanofi and GSKannouncedApril14 that they had entered an agreement to jointly create a Covid-19 vaccineby the end of next year.The companies plan to start clinical trials in the second half of 2020 and, if successful, produce up to 600 million doses next year. To make it, Sanofi said it will repurpose its SARS vaccine candidate that never made it to market while GSK will provide pandemic adjuvant technology, which is meant to enhance the immune response in vaccines.
Novavax
Novavax announced on April 8 it found a coronavirus vaccine candidate and would start human trials in May with preliminary results expected in July. The potential vaccine, which is being calledNVX-CoV2373, is usingadjuvant technology and will attempt to neutralize the so-called spike protein, found on the surface of the coronavirus, which is used to enter the host cell.
Vials of investigational coronavirus disease (COVID-19) treatment drug remdesivir are capped at a Gilead Sciences facility in La Verne, California, U.S. March 18, 2020. Picture taken March 18, 2020.
Gilead Sciences Inc | Reuters
Gilead Sciences
The FDA granted emergency use authorization for Gilead's remdesivir drug to treat Covid-19 on May 1. The National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases released results from its study showing patients who took remdesivir usually recovered faster than those who didn't take the drug. Even though remdesivir was granted for emergency use, there are still several ongoing clinical trials testing whether it's effective in stopping the coronavirus from replicating.
Remdesivir has shown some promise in treating SARS and MERS, which are also caused by coronaviruses. Some health authorities in the U.S., China and other parts of the world have been using remdesivir, which was tested as a possible treatment for the Ebola outbreak, in hopes that the drug can improve the outcomes for Covid-19 patients. The company said it expects to produce more than 140,000 rounds of its 10-day treatment regimen by the end of May and anticipates it can make 1 million rounds by the end of this year.
New York state and others
Hydroxychloroquine is a decades-old malaria drug touted by PresidentDonald Trumpas a potential "game-changer."
The drug is proven to work in treating Lupus and rheumatoid arthritis, but not Covid-19. A handful of small studies on its use in coronavirus patients published in France and China had raised hope that the drug might help fight the virus. However, hydroxychloroquine, which is available as a generic drug and is also produced under the brand name Plaquenil by French drugmaker Sanofi, can have serious side effects, including muscle weakness and heart arrhythmia.
A bottle of Prasco Laboratories Hydroxychloroquine Sulphate is arranged for a photograph in the Queens borough of New York, U.S., on Tuesday, April 7, 2020.
Christopher Occhicone | Bloomberg | Getty Images
The FDA issueda warning against takingthe drug outside a hospital or formal clinical trial setting after it became aware of reports of "serious heart rhythm problems" in patients.
On March 24, researchers at NYU Langone in New York launchedone of the nation's largest hydroxychloroquine clinical studiesafter federal health regulators fast-tracked approvals for coronavirus research, allowing scientists across the nation to skip through months of red tape. It's one of more than a dozen formal studies in the U.S. looking at treatments for the coronavirus,according to ClinicalTrials.gov.
But the early results aren't so promising. An observational study published in thejournal JAMA Network Open on Monday and run by the New York State Department of Health, in partnership with the University of Albany, found that it didn't help coronavirus patients. Worse yet, when taken with azithromycin which French researchers credited with speeding recovery times it put patients at significantly higher risk of cardiac arrest.
Zhejiang Hisun Pharmaceutical
Favipiravir is an anti-flu drug sold byFujifilm Holding under the name Avigan. Researchers in China are testing the drug to see if it's effective in fighting the coronavirus. Most of favipiravir's preclinical data is derived from its influenza and Ebolaactivity; however, the agent also demonstrated broad activity against other RNA viruses, according to researchers in Japan.
Regeneron and Sanofi
Regeneron and Sanofi started clinical trials of rheumatoid arthritis drug Kevzara in Covid-19 patients in March.The drug inhibits a pathway thought to contribute to the lung inflammation in patients with the most severe forms of Covid-19.
The companies announced last month that Kevzara showed promise for treating the sickest coronavirus patients in a clinical trial but it wasn't beneficial for patients with less-advanced disease, prompting the companies to stop testing the medicine in that group.
Eli Lilly
Eli Lilly, in partnership with National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases, is seeing if its rheumatoid arthritis drugbaricitinib is effective against the coronavirus.The company theorizes that baricitinib's anti-inflammatory effects could curb the body's reaction to the virus.
Eli Lilly, AstraZeneca and Regeneron
While some drugmakers are looking for vaccines to stop the virus, Eli Lilly, AstraZeneca and Regeneron, among other companies, are working on so-called antibody treatments, which are made to act like immune cells and may provide protection after exposure to the virus. Earlier this month,Regeneron said its treatment could be available for use by the end of this summer or fall.
A new strain of Coronavirus, COVID 19, is spreading around the world, causing deaths and major disruption to the global economy.
Responding to this crisis requires global cooperation among governments, international organizations and the business community, which is at the centre of the World Economic Forums mission as the International Organization for Public-Private Cooperation.
The Forum has created the COVID Action Platform, a global platform to convene the business community for collective action, protect peoples livelihoods and facilitate business continuity, and mobilize support for the COVID-19 response. The platform is created with the support of the World Health Organization and is open to all businesses and industry groups, as well as other stakeholders, aiming to integrate and inform joint action.
As an organization, the Forum has a track record of supporting efforts to contain epidemics. In 2017, at our Annual Meeting, the Coalition for Epidemic Preparedness Innovations (CEPI) was launched bringing together experts from government, business, health, academia and civil society to accelerate the development of vaccines. CEPI is currently supporting the race to develop a vaccine against this strand of the coronavirus.
Iceland will reopen its borders to tourists by June 15, according to an by Insider. Travellers will receive free COVID-19 tests upon arrival at the airport. Any who test positive will be forced to self-isolate for 14 days. Those with negative test results or who can produce other health documentation will be free to continue their travels in the country.
"I believe that if everything goes well, we should see some tourists here this summer," Bjarnheiour Hallsdottir, the chair of the Icelandic Travel Industry Association, told RUV. "For those who want to come, this will be a very real possibility."
3. Track the progress toward a COVID-19 vaccineResearchers from around the globe are racing to develop a coronavirus vaccine in record time. Health site StatNews has developed a tracker to monitor the progress of each of these efforts, as well as treatments for the disease, and help anyone understand the vast array of efforts under way.
Image: StatNews
Two nationwide surveys from China revealed new findings regarding COVID-19's impact on mental health. According to a study released this week, the pandemic's onset fueled a 74% drop in overall emotional well-being. The shift was more noticeable for those living near an outbreak epicentre or in vulnerable groups such as the elderly.
Those who believed themselves more informed about the virus reported feeling happier during the outbreak than those who felt less knowledgeable. "People's perceptions about themselves are often more potent in influencing their emotional well-being than the corresponding objective aspects," said Haiyang Yang, an assistant professor at Johns Hopkins Carey Business School and a co-author of the study.
Gaming and esports got a huge boost from the coronavirus lockdown. This week's podcast checks in with esports pioneeer Mike Sepso on how gaming's role is transforming under COVID-19 and why he thinks it could even replace some physical sports.
Find all previous episodes of World Vs Virus here.
Cars will be banished from miles of streets in central London to encourage more walking and cycling and help public transport cope with social distancing restrictions.
Mayor Sadiq Khan said central London would become one of the largest car-free zones in any capital city.
COVID-19 poses the biggest challenge to Londons public transport network in TfLs (Transport for London) history, he said.
It will take a monumental effort from all Londoners to maintain safe social distancing on public transport as lockdown restrictions are gradually eased.
7. Italy to reopen from 3 June
Italy - one of the worst-hit countries in Europe - will reopen shops on 18 May, and people will also be able to travel within their own regions from then. A complete lifting of the travel ban will happen on 3 June - allowing anyone to travel around, or beyond, the country.
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Written by
Linda Lacina, Digital Editor, World Economic Forum
The views expressed in this article are those of the author alone and not the World Economic Forum.
