The German zoo, which is struggling financially due to a lack of any patrons, said the plan was a worst-case scenario.
Posted on April 15, 2020, at 2:55 p.m. ET
Verena Kaspari, director of the Tierpark Neumnster, at the zoo.
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A zoo in Germany made international headlines on Wednesday after its director said staff may be forced to feed some of the park's animals to other animals as they confront possible financial ruin as a result of the coronavirus pandemic.
Tierpark Neumnster, which sits between Hamburg and the Danish border in Germany's north, has been closed to paying guests since March 15 as a result of a government order to shut down non-essential businesses in the country.
Director Verena Kaspari told the German Press Agency (DPA) and the Die Welt newspaper that as her zoo struggles to feed its roughly 700 animals amid the financial fallout they have drawn up emergency plans that involve some tough decisions.
"If and this is really the worst, worst case of all if I no longer have any money to buy feed, or if it should happen that my feed supplier is no longer able to deliver due to new restrictions, then I would slaughter animals to feed other animals," she said.
Representatives from the zoo did not respond to a request for comment, but a spokesperson confirmed Kaspari's comments to the New York Times. The spokesperson also told the newspaper that the zoo's 12-foot-tall polar bar, Vitus, would sit at the top of the proverbial food chain and be spared.
Kaspari told German public broadcaster Deutsche Welle that endangered animals would not be killed, but that any goats and deer would be first on the slaughter list.
"It's a worst-case scenario," she said. "We don't see it getting that way yet, but we have to think of it early enough."
Other animals at the zoo, according to its website, include alpacas, dingoes, deer, lynxes, seals, reindeer, wildcats, turtles, and chinchillas.
Vitus the polar bear swimming in his tank.
Germany's Association of Zoological Gardens, of which the Neumnster zoo is a member, clarified on Twitter that they did not support the idea.
"The proposal expressed by one animal park to kill animals because of financial losses due to the coronavirus does not represent our association's opinion," the group tweeted. "We are working on financial solutions to support our zoos until they're allowed to open their gates again."
On March 31, the association called for a government bailout of more than $100 million for its 56 member zoos in Germany. "Unlike other facilities, we cannot simply shut down our farm," Leipzig zoo director and association president Jrg Junhold said in a statement. "Our animals still have to be fed and cared for."
A zoo director in Hanover told German magazine Der Spiegel it costs more than $68,000 a day to run the zoo, but the park currently has no income.
Jan Philipp Albrecht, the environment minister for the state of Schleswig-Holstein, in which the Neumnster zoo sits, said the emergency slaughtering of zoo animals should not happen, noting that federal and state aid was available.
Kaspari said her zoo had applied for government assistance, but had received nothing so far and was relying solely on donations.
Germany currently has more than 130,000 confirmed cases of the coronavirus, but there have been around 3,600 deaths in the country a comparatively lower rate than countries with the same rate of infections. Germany and the UK both recorded their first cases on the same day in January, but Chancellor Angela Merkel moved quickly to scale up testing and contact tracing.
[Read more: The Coronavirus Hit Germany And The UK Just Days Apart But The Countries Have Responded Differently. Heres How]
While zoos in the US are also feeling economic pressure as a result of the coronavirus, Dan Ashe, president and CEO of the Association of Zoos and Aquariums (AZA), told BuzzFeed News he was confident that member zoos were still taking good care of their animals.
"While all AZA members are currently operating under severe economic stress, none is in a position where animal care is compromised," he said.
"If a similar situation [as the Neumnster zoo] were to occur at an AZA-accredited facility, I am confident AZA and its members would find a way to provide assistance," he said, "including by moving any animals the facility could not care for.
Kaspari, the Neumnster zoo director, said moving animals was also an option at her zoo, although that was easier for some animals than other larger predators, like Vitus the polar bear.
"If things get really tough here and the zoo has to be dismantled, I can't just put it in a box and transport it somewhere else," she said.
Kaspari doesn't believe her team will be forced to carry out its worst-case scenario because other animal parks have offered to send fish and meat to feed her zoo's predators should it come to it.
But, Kaspari noted, the slaughter of some animals to feed others is standard practice at zoos around the world.
"We have carnivorous animals," she said, "so that's nothing new."
The United States has responded to the economic havoc wrought by the coronavirus with the biggest relief package in its history: $2 trillion. It essentially replaces a few months of American economic activity with a flood of government money every penny of it borrowed.
And where is all that cash coming from? Mostly out of thin air.
The traditional view of economic theory holds that governments and central banks have distinct responsibilities. A government sets fiscal policy spending the money it raises through taxes and borrowing to run a country. And a central bank uses various levers of monetary policy like buying and selling government securities to change the amount of money in circulation to ensure the smooth operation of the countrys economy.
But the relief package, called the CARES Act, will require the government to vastly expand its debt at the same time that the Federal Reserve has signaled its willingness to buy an essentially unlimited amount of government debt. With those twin moves, the United States has effectively undone decades of conventional wisdom, embedding into policy ideas that were once relegated to the fringes of economics.
Its an epic moment in terms of breaking down the orthodoxy of church-and-state separation of the fiscal and monetary authority, said Paul McCulley, a former chief economist of Pimco, a giant asset management shop.
Playing out in the background of this shift is a debate over what is known as modern monetary theory, which says countries that control their own currency can run much larger budget deficits than they typically do, in part because of the power of central banks to create new money to help finance the shortfall.
But to the theorys adherents, the lock-step maneuvers by the Fed and the government were not the arrival of a far-out idea but the removal of a fig leaf.
What its doing is just making more transparent a relationship between the Treasury and the Fed that has always existed, said Stephanie Kelton, a professor of economics at Stony Brook University and one of the theorys major advocates.
For those not attuned to the wonky worlds of monetary policy and government debt, the parallel policy changes might have been easy to miss.
On March 23, facing a roughly 30 percent stock market crash and growing dysfunction in key bond markets, the Fed announced its latest, and most significant, plan to pump cash into the financial system. The central bank said it would basically buy an unlimited amount of Treasury bonds and government-backed mortgage bonds whatever was necessary to support smooth market functioning.
In the world of central banking, this muted statement qualified as seriously radical. The new policy didnt put a number on the bonds the Fed would buy, a tacit nod to the idea that it could buy unlimited amounts.
Then, within days, President Trump signed a $2 trillion economic rescue package into law. That package alone equaled about half of what the federal government spent in all of 2019.
Nobody knows exactly how much the relief bill will add to the national debt; it was cobbled together so quickly that there wasnt time for the Congressional Budget Office to carry out an analysis, though one is expected to be published this week. But the Fed will be the biggest buyer by far of the bonds the government will sell to fund this spending.
Goldman Sachs analysts estimate the Fed will buy $2.4 trillion in Treasury securities as part of its recently reintroduced bond-buying programs. Economists at Morgan Stanley put the number at around $2.5 trillion in 2020 alone, rising to as much as $3 trillion for the entirety of the bond-buying program.
But the Fed isnt an ordinary bondholder: By law, it has to pay its profits to the Treasury.
That means when the Treasury makes payments on bonds held by the Fed either paying interest or paying it off at maturity almost all the money eventually moves back to the Treasury.
When a government bond is involved, the cash moves from one government pocket to another.
Once the central bank buys them, its as if the Treasury never issued them in the first place, said Dr. Kelton, who was an adviser to Senator Bernie Sanderss 2016 presidential campaign. For all intents and purposes, theyre retired.
The CARES Act borrowing is, in many ways, the natural result of an evolution that began with the 2008 financial crisis. The bond-buying programs that central banks undertook around the world helped ensure low-cost financing for governments running giant deficits as policymakers contended with a deep recession and a prolonged period of lackluster growth. And despite constant, high-decibel warnings that such an approach would surely ignite a surge of inflation, it never happened.
That was a legitimate concern: Financial historians often point to disastrous periods when a central bank printed money for the government to pay its debts. A common example is Weimar Germany, when the central bank churned out banknotes that allowed the fragile government to repay onerous World War I reparations with essentially worthless marks, impoverishing most of the country in the process.
But at other times, the idea has worked just fine: Japans central bank has been buying huge chunks of the governments bonds effectively financing the central government of the worlds third-largest economy for years without triggering the kind of inflation that traditional economic views would expect.
Adherents of M.M.T. have long argued that the United States can and probably should run much larger budget deficits than it did already. In recent years, this belief has been most often associated with left-leaning politicians such as Mr. Sanders and Representative Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez of New York.
But the ideas have found broader currency in some unlikely places, such as Wall Street. In recent years, some at huge money management firms and gold-plated investment banks have increasingly turned to M.M.T. as a useful analytical framework to understand the strong links between central banks and markets that have grown since the financial crisis.
M.M.T. has been invoked so many times by completely mainstream people and politicians, said L. Randall Wray, a professor of economics at Bard College who has written seminal papers on modern monetary theory. Even Trump used almost word for word what weve been saying all along. (You never have to default because you print the money, Mr. Trump said as a candidate in 2016.)
Other experts counter that coordination between the Fed and the Treasury may be justified in a national crisis, but that a continuing large-scale expansion of government deficits could have negative consequences, such as higher inflation.
I think the Treasury did the right thing. I think the Fed is doing largely the right thing, said Glenn Hubbard, a professor of finance and economics at Columbia University. There shouldnt be an ongoing dance of borrowing money and printing money. This isnt the lesson to learn from this episode.
Even so, the growing comfort with the Treasury Departments relying on the Fed to buy its bonds and help finance large deficits is an important shift in the conventional thinking of politicians and policymakers, said Mr. McCulley, who retired from Pimco in 2015 and now teaches at Georgetown University.
What this crisis has brought to the forefront is that this isnt an academic debate anymore whatsoever, he said.
Mr. McCulley said the speed with which the crisis took hold and the unique circumstances of a nearly nationwide lockdown of consumers meant political leaders had little choice but to vastly expand deficits. And, he said, those who usually question how deficits will be paid for have been rendered mute.
How do we pay for it? Mr. McCulley said. We print the damn money.
Spread across 4,216 square miles of mostly wild country, including Grand Teton and Yellowstone National Parks, Teton County is nearly 3 times the size of Rhode Island. For all that space, only about 23,000 people live there year round. The countys sole hospital, St. Johns Health, has 24 ventilators and a dwindling supply of personal protective equipment.
Pete Muldoon, the mayor of Jackson, the county seat, says that the extreme wealth of some of the valleys part-time residents makes it more difficult for local people to stomach job losses from the lockdown, especially when they are wondering if the communitys health care resources will instead go to someone who might only have a house here to avoid paying taxes. Despite a great temptation to point fingers at the rich, Mr. Muldoon says, he reminds people that tax policies enable a small number of people to hoard all of the wealth.
It is difficult to know how many wealthy people have moved to Teton County to shelter in their mansions. Early on, the county urged outsiders to stay away. In late March, the countys health officer, Dr. Travis Riddell, was explicit, saying, Nonresident homeowners are strongly encouraged to leave or not travel to Teton County.
But a pharmacist reported to local health officials recently that he was processing a lot of prescription transfers from other states for three-month refills. And an employee for a company that provides services for the ultrawealthy (few people were willing to be quoted by name) told me that she estimated there are 30 percent more of those families around than usual at this time of year.
Weve done all we can to provide for them, such as grocery shopping and other services, she told me. Many came for spring break, went home, and then came right back. I know one family of six from Manhattan that has rented a house until August.
She said she feared going to work. I cant believe everyone is flocking here just to be safe, she said. I know you want to get out of New York and California. But I shouldnt be working, and you shouldnt be here either.
One physician told me, I know a doctor in town who was asked to go to someones property once the private ventilator arrived, to make sure it was operational. Disturbed by this hoarding of medical supplies, this person said, the doctor refused.
LONDON As Britain closes in on 100,000 reported cases of the coronavirus a solemn milestone in a contagion that has ravaged its political leadership a raft of new statistics suggests that the government is undercounting the human, and economic, cost of the epidemic.
The governments Office of National Statistics released data on Tuesday revealing that the death toll from the virus could be at least 10 percent higher than the official toll of 12,107 because that number does not take into account people who die in nursing homes or in their own residences.
At the same time, the Office for Budget Responsibility, a fiscal watchdog group, said the lockdown could shrink Britains economy by 35 percent in the second quarter and throw two million people out of work a prediction even worse than the governments darkest warnings.
Taken together, these new numbers cast a grim shadow over Britains response to the epidemic, which has already been dogged by shortfalls in testing and questions about the supply of ventilators and protective gear.
And the government, buoyed by the release of Prime Minister Boris Johnson from the hospital after his bout with coronavirus, found itself on the defensive about how it was handling both the surge in cases and the economic fallout.
It is important that we be honest with people about what might be happening, the chancellor of the Exchequer, Rishi Sunak, acknowledged at a briefing on Tuesday. These are tough times, and there will be more to come.
As in the United States and other countries, nursing homes in Britain have become hot zones for the virus. Two major operators have reported 521 deaths in their homes in recent weeks, many of which have not yet been reflected in the official statistics because of a lag in recording the deaths.
The daily death toll, which is published by Public Health England, has become the main barometer for measuring Britains handling of the crisis. But it covers only patients who died in hospitals, which has aroused suspicions that the government is trying to improve its performance relative to neighbors like France, which includes nursing home deaths in its statistics.
British officials said Tuesday that they would work to include the nursing home death statistics in the overall death figures, but noted it was difficult to do so because, unlike with hospitals, there is no centralizing reporting system for nursing homes.
Britains chief medical officer, Chris Whitty, estimated this week that 13 percent of the countrys nursing homes, or more than 2,000 facilities, had been struck by outbreaks. The nursing staff in many of those homes have complained about an acute shortage of masks, gloves, and other protective gear.
Critics said the government, in its intense focus on shoring up the National Health Service, was neglecting the nursing industry, which is more dispersed and run mainly by private companies and charities.
Its almost as if the system has been stacked against them, Baroness Ros Altmann, a member of the House of Lords who campaigns on behalf of the elderly, said to the BBC. Weve got to realize whats happening and step up the measures were taking to protect vulnerable elderly people.
In the data released on Tuesday, the Office of National Statistics reported that from the beginning of the year until April 3, there were 217 deaths from the coronavirus in nursing homes in England and Wales; 136 in private homes; and 33 deaths in hospices.
It estimated that 90.2 percent of deaths from the virus occurred in hospitals, while the rest occurred in nursing homes, hospices, or at home. The statistics do not include Scotland or Northern Ireland.
But for the week of March 28 to April 3, the office reported 16,387 deaths in England and Wales, the largest weekly total since it began compiling data in 2005, and 6,082 more than the five-year average death toll for that week. It reported that 3,475 deaths were registered as involving coronavirus.
This suggests either that people are dying of other illnesses at significantly greater than normal rates or that coronavirus is killing even more people than is being accounted for. Medical experts say the lockdown, and the strains on the National Health Service, are leading some people to put off elective surgery or treatments for chronic illnesses, which in turn leads to higher death rates.
Devi Sridhar, the director of the global health governance program at Edinburgh University, said the fuzziness in the data was further evidence of the governments failure to ramp up testing.
When you cant test, theres no way you can determine if the cause of death was coronavirus, she said.
While the government has promised to conduct 100,000 tests a day by the end of the month, it performed only 14,506 during the 24-hour period ending on Monday morning. That was lower than the 18,000 tests performed during a comparable period the previous weekend.
Mr. Sunak, the chancellor of the Exchequer, did not dispute the economic figures from the Office for Budget Responsibility, though he highlighted its assertion that this was just one scenario and that the economy could bounce back quickly from a deep trough once the lockdown was lifted. But some economists said they were skeptical of a rapid return to normality.
I dont buy that the U.K. is going to recover as strongly as the O.B.R. data would suggest, said Simon Tilford, director of research at Forum New Economy, an economic research institute. It assumes that a shock of this magnitude is not going to do any lasting damage to the economy.
Making up for lost consumption, particularly in the services sector, would be difficult, said Mr. Tilford, who described the long-term projections as overly optimistic. The report assumes that it is possible to put the economy into deep freeze and for it to jump straight back to life, he added.
Playing down reports of tensions within the government over when to reopen the economy, officials rejected reports that the Treasury is pushing for a speedy end to the lockdown. Mr. Sunak said the key to returning to economic health lies in first overcoming the medical crisis.
The lockdown is likely to extend well into next month.
In a sign of troubles to come, companies are showing greater than expected interest in the governments program to avert job losses by paying 80 percent of the wages of people unable to work because of the lockdown. In a survey, about 44 percent of companies said at least half their staff would be paid through the program.
The lockdown will clearly have a very significant impact on the economy including increased unemployment, lower government revenues and a higher level of national indebtedness, said Mel Stride, chairman of the House of Commons Treasury select committee.
DETROIT Paris Banks sprayed the seat with Lysol before sliding into the last row on the right. Rochell Brown put out her cigarette, tucked herself behind the steering wheel and slapped the doors shut.
It was 8:37 a.m., and the No. 17 bus began chugging westward across Detroit.
On stepped the fast-food worker who makes chicken shawarma thats delivered to doorsteps, the janitor who cleans grocery stores, the warehouse worker pulling together Amazon orders.
By 9:15, every available row on the bus was occupied. Strangers sat shoulder-to-shoulder. The city might be spread across 139 square miles, but one morning last week there was no way to socially distance aboard this 40-foot-long New Flyer bus. Passengers were anxious and annoyed. Resigned, too.
I dont like it, but its something you have to do, Valerie Brown, 21, the fast-food worker, said through a blue mask. She was on her way to work at a local Middle Eastern fast-food chain.
This hardscrabble city, where nearly 80 percent of residents are black, has become a national hot spot with more than 7,000 infections and more than 400 deaths. One reason for the rapid spread, experts say, is that the city has a large working-class population that does not have the luxury of living in isolation. Their jobs cannot be performed from a laptop in a living room. They do not have vehicles to safely get them to the grocery store.
And so they end up on a bus. Just like the No. 17 a reluctant yet essential gathering place, and also a potential accelerant for a pandemic that has engulfed Detroit. It is a rolling symbol of the disparity in how this virus is affecting Americans.
After the citys roughly 550 drivers walked off the job for a day in mid-March because of safety concerns, city officials put in effect new measures. Riders had to enter through the back doors. Drivers would be offered gloves and masks. Buses would be cleaned more frequently.
Later, Mayor Mike Duggan said all of the citys front-line employees, including bus drivers, would get $800 a month in hazard pay. He also announced that masks would be made available to riders on all buses.
But on the first day of the mask initiative last week, there were no masks on board the No. 17 bus Rochell Brown was driving.
A manager told her that riders were not required to wear them.
Ms. Brown, 49, shook her head and thought about a colleague who died this month from complications of Covid-19, the disease caused by the coronavirus. It should be mandatory, she said of the masks.
She saw herself at risk of a similar fate. She had a heart attack two years ago and has hypertension. The night before this ride, her doctor suggested she take time off for her safety.
Yet here she was, on a sun-soaked, mild spring morning, performing an essential duty for $19.13 an hour, but without, she felt, the praise and appreciation that police officers and emergency medical workers received. No one was peering out of a window clapping for her. Her bus was not even equipped with masks.
The 17 line cuts a roughly 25-mile path across Eight Mile Road, the infamous dividing line between black Detroit and the white suburbs.
The route tells the story of these bizarre times. It traces streets devoid of traffic, winds through the completely empty parking lot of a temporarily shuttered mall and dips into the bustling parking lot of a grocery store, one of the few businesses that can still attract big crowds.
Thats where Demetrius Jordan, 37, hops off to work his job as a janitor. First order of business at work: wash his hands. The trip was a necessary risk for Mr. Jordan, who said he worried most about the people whose only respite from the elements was a seat on the bus.
My concern is about the homeless people on the bus, he said, adding that they were endangering themselves and others. Are they being checked out?
A notice on the Detroit Department of Transportation website asks that customers limit nonessential bus travel.
Drivers and passengers going to work say that is not happening. This trip on the No. 17 attracted riders headed to the store, to visit friends and family, and at least one homeless man.
Riders should be required to present proof that they are performing essential duties, Ms. Brown said.
I would appreciate that show some paperwork why youre out here, what Im risking my life for, she said. To me, too many people dont care.
A rider stepping off another No. 17 bus vented her frustration.
Im an essential worker, she yelled. I have to get out here and get the bus, but Im tired of getting on this bus with people that want to visit other people because they aint working and theyre at home and theyre bored.
Ms. Brown, the fast-food worker, boarded at the corner of East Eight Mile and Kelly Roads shortly before 9 a.m. to a bus that was still relatively empty. She sat at a window on the left. But within 20 minutes, a man sidled up right next to her.
It was kind of irritating because there was a lot of space, she said later. I was like, why do you want to sit right next to someone when there are so many seats?
With roughly the front third of the bus blocked off to protect the driver, passengers that morning were left with 29 seats to choose from. At peak ridership, there were 21 people on board at a single time.
Despite a statewide stay-at-home order, the buses are often packed, Ms. Brown said. If a bus is too crowded, she will sometimes wait for the next one. She does not like taking chances.
She lives with her mother, who is 46 and recently battled pneumonia. Ms. Brown does not want to bring the coronavirus home to her, or to her father and three siblings who also live in the four-bedroom house in the neighboring town of Eastpointe.
Im risking bringing it home, said Ms. Brown, who rides the bus seven days a week. And I work at a restaurant. Its a high risk for it, and you cant do anything about it really if your job is still open.
The bus made it to the end of the line in a brisk hour and 38 minutes. It headed back the other direction, and as more and more passengers piled on most wearing masks tensions rose.
When a rider tried to take a seat next to a young man with an American flag bandanna tied around his neck, the young man stopped him and pointed him to another seat. He then pulled the bandanna over his nose and mouth and tightened it.
An older woman carrying two shopping bags wedged herself into a seat in front of two riders. One of those riders recoiled, wondering why the woman had come so close. Excuse me, she said, the six-feet distance.
The older woman pointed across the aisle to where she had been sitting and said the woman behind her had been coughing. She wanted no part of that. The woman who had coughed was close enough to hear, and she mumbled a few choice words beneath her yellow mask.
Ms. Banks, who sprays her seat with Lysol before sitting, wondered whether the reduced service contributed to the packed buses. During the week, the buses are running on the Saturday schedule, meaning they come less frequently.
I take my own precaution by disinfecting; I still dont think its safe, she said.
She was a little scared about riding the bus, she said, and sometimes asked her co-workers for a ride. Ms. Banks, 27, said she worried that if she became infected, she would pass on the virus to others because her job with the National Guard often has her around a lot of people.
The crowds do not faze all passengers.
John Porter spread out on the back seat in black sweatpants and an unzipped brown jacket, his mustachioed face uncovered. He was headed home after his wife took the car to work.
I believe in the Lord, Mr. Porter, 63, said. If its going to happen, its going to happen.
A.J. Harris, 24, wore a mask but said he was not concerned about riding the bus. His attitude seemed more of resignation than bravado.
These buses have been dirty long before the coronavirus was going on, said Mr. Harris, on his way to work at an Amazon warehouse. You got on the bus every day with people having H.I.V. and bedbugs, all types of diseases. Its just another dirty bus coming along.
Ms. Brown, the driver, does what she can to manage the crowds.
She does not allow anyone to stand most other drivers do, so passengers tend to gripe when she tells them to sit. She will pass up stops when her bus is full, though she is loath to do that because she knows that some people need to get to work on time.
As she zoomed past a couple of stops, waiting riders threw their arms in the air. One person threw a plastic shopping bag at the bus.
Ms. Brown sees the disgruntled reactions and hears the snide comments coming from the back of the bus. On her way back to the beginning of the line, a man cursed her because she would not let him off between stops.
She arrived back to the first stop on a wide road between a hospital and brick bungalows at 11:57 a.m. Three hours and 20 minutes, and she had had enough.
Shortly after she stepped off the bus, a couple of passengers came asking for masks. Another driver who did not have masks on his bus would not let them get on without one. She did not have any, she told them, and they vented their frustration.
This is stressful, Ms. Brown said, and right there she decided it was best she followed her doctors advice. She was taking a two-week medical break.
This week, things were getting worse for riders, Valerie Brown, the fast-food worker, said in a text message. Officials had put signs on some seats, asking passengers to leave them vacant, but the message was being ignored, she wrote. It was standing room only on one ride, she said, yet the driver continued to pick up riders.
Ms. Brown texted two face-slapping emojis. Its never going to get better here.
The precise, nationally coordinated campaigns of Covid-19 testing and contact isolation that helped South Korea and Singapore avoid broad lockdowns are conspicuously absent in the United States.
The federal government has not been able to rapidly and effectively institute Covid-19 testing, from actively blocking early efforts to providing false reassurance on testing availability. In the absence of national leadership, states and counties are left to their own judgments, to procure their own essential supplies, and to set their own policies, making large-scale coordinated testing even more challenging. And the county-level public health institutions we defer to for policymaking do not control the financial or health care delivery resources required to implement the testing and contact tracing we need today and the vaccinations we will need tomorrow.
I believe that American employers will be our fastest path to establishing the framework for, or alternative to, the national public health system we do not have. Employers already provide health care coverage to 49% of Americans. Extending the reach of American employers to take the lead on broad testing for disease among their workforces and their affiliates, certifying who is clear to return to work, and eventually verifying vaccination will be essential to beating the pandemic and getting Americans back to work.
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Covid-19 testing organized and sponsored by employers to confirm that workers are either not infected with SARS-CoV-2 or are immune due to prior infection may be the most effective tool to gradually relax social distancing measures and get the country back to work. Employers could enable broad and frequent testing of their employees and require certification that they are not currently infected before they come back into the workplace.
Employers have a powerful financial incentive to test their full- and part-time employees, contractors, temporary workers, and gig workers: They want to bring them back to work and restart their businesses, which have slowed or stopped on a scale we have never seen before. These employers also have a social and legal obligation to ensure the safety of their employees and their customers, students, and patients.
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The cadence of testing would need to be determined by the disease trajectory in a given region, and by the risk exposures of the population. Health care workers, for example, might initially require daily testing, while others might initially require weekly testing. As the spread of disease slows, the testing frequency could be relaxed.
Test results could come from multiple testing sources, from lab-based PCR tests that look for viral RNA to consumer antibody tests that look for immunoglobulins. Test results identifying people as either not being actively infected or immune from prior infection would qualify for a certificate of non-infection. These certificates would expire based on the testing protocols, which themselves would vary by the risks based on geography and type of work, informed by published testing protocols grounded in science and epidemiology. Employers, and the testing companies they work with, would be required to report Covid-19 results to local public health authorities, benefiting everyone in the areas where employers require testing and certification.
Employer-led testing has potential risks that must be anticipated and addressed: Employers, acting alone, may be susceptible to making decisions based on non-validated tests that make dubious claims. Employers, especially those with a national reach, may not have the infrastructure to share data with local public health authorities, organized at the county level. And employers would need to develop a set of certification protocols informed by epidemiology that could be rapidly changing. This is on top of the perhaps obvious compliance requirements associated with collecting health information that varies across the U.S. These risks could lead to a failure in translating Covid-19 testing into coherent action that can bring life back to normal.
As unpalatable as employer-based coronavirus testing may be to many, it is preferable to not having an employer at all. As we write this, more than 16 million Americans have filed for unemployment. We can bring America back to work with broad and regular testing facilitated by employers.
Employers were the first to institute large-scale stay-at-home orders, opening the way for local and state governments and public health agencies to follow suit. In California, the first state to institute a stay-at-home order, major employers and universities had already asked their employees and students to stay home before government orders were put in place. This voluntary and independent action was essential to clearing the path for the decisive government action that is proving effective.
Employers can play a similar role in requiring a process of testing and certification in order to return to work and, in the future, requiring and verifying vaccination.
Only states can mandate vaccination; the federal government cannot because of a 1905 Supreme Court case on smallpox vaccination. That means any employer with a national footprint should expect to encounter state-to-state variation in vaccination requirements.
There is precedent for employers to require vaccination, however, and not wait for state requirements. Health care workers are already accustomed to mandatory influenza vaccination, required and audited by their employers. This is justified since not being vaccinated is a workplace hazard to oneself and to others. The same justification may be used by many employers to require vaccination against Covid-19 when a vaccine becomes available.
As the federal government has struggled to enact critical services and plans for the next phase of this pandemic, employers have begun assuming some of the leadership we traditionally ascribe to government.
The leadership of every employer in the U.S. are focused on protecting the health of their teams and ensuring they can get back to work. Creating a consensus on testing and certification, driven by employers willing and able to take early action, will accelerate Americas return to work. No employer in America can afford to just sit and wait.
Rajaie Batniji, M.D. is co-founder and chief health officer at Collective Health.
The return to normality after the coronavirus pandemic will be far from straightforward and a lot hinges on the development of an effective vaccine against Covid-19 according to medical experts and world leaders. Several options are being investigated and one team, led by British researcher Sarah Gilbert, a professor of vaccinology at Oxford University, suggests that it may be September before a vaccine becomes readily available.
I think theres a high chance that it will work based on other things that we have done with this type of vaccine, Dr. Gilbert told UK daily The Times.Its not just a hunch and as every week goes by we have more data to look at. I would go for 80 percent, thats my personal view.
Dr. Gilbert added that human trials could begin within two weeks after talks with the UK government.
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In the US, pharmaceutical company Moderna started human trials in March in tandem with the US National Institutes of Health (NIH) according to a report by Bloomberg and the first results could be available in two months. The vaccine will be initially made available to front line health care workers if it proves successful. However, the NIH and the US Food and Drug Administration have warned that it could be at least a year before a vaccine is made available for the public at large.
Separately, Pfizer Inc has said that early data has helped it identify a drug candidate with the potential to help treat patients infected with the novel coronavirus. It also finalized a plan to develop a coronavirus vaccine in partnership with German drugmaker BioNTech SE and saidthe companies hope to produce millions of vaccines by the end of 2020. The companies said they plan to start trials of the vaccine as early as this month.
Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau has said that normal business in the country will not resume until a vaccine is available and also sounded a note of caution that such a scenario could be a "long way off."
The global economy faces huge challenges due to the coronavirus pandemic and the International Monetary Fund has made the grim prediction that the world could be set for "the worst economic fallout since the great depression."
And just like that, Novavax (NVAX) is back in the spotlight. Gaining a whopping 328% since the start of 2020, the healthcare company has consistently attracted attention from market watchers, primarily thanks to its efforts to develop a vaccine against COVID-19. The latest reason for its appearance on Wall Streets radar? Its vaccine development programs giant leap forward.
On April 8, the company announced that it had identified a lead COVID-19 vaccine candidate. The experimental vaccine, NVX-CoV2373, is a prefusion protein created using NVAX's patented lipid nanoparticle platform, with a Phase 1 first-in-human study set to begin in mid-May. As a result of this rapid timeline, NVAX could release early safety and immunogenicity data as soon as July based on the expected 35-day trial schedule.
It should be noted that according to preclinical data, NVX-CoV2373 was able to produce high titer neutralizing antibodies against SARS-CoV-2 virus after a single immunization, with the result being eight times higher following the second dose. This is significant because the result demonstrates the vaccine could offer significant immune protection in humans.
B.Riley FBR analyst Mayank Mamtani highlights the fact that NVAX's proprietary Matrix-M adjuvant is incorporated within NVX-CoV2373, along with full-length recombinant spike protein to further enhance immune responses in the Phase 1 placebo-controlled observer blinded study of ~130 healthy adults to assess safety and efficacy, dosage response, and number of vaccinations.
Expounding on the candidates potential, Mamtani wrote in a recent research note to clients, We believe this to represent incremental validation for NVAX's underappreciated recombinant nanoparticle vaccine platform and the ability to rapidly evaluate and advance a candidate to the clinic. With a strong balance sheet, i.e, $230 million in cash equivalents, and positive Ph. III NanoFlu data already reported in 4,000-plus patients, we believe NVAX to be well positioned to execute on a number of upcoming 2020 milestones including (1) reporting data on key secondary endpoints, microneutralization (MN) and cell-mediated immune (CMI) responses, ahead of a BLA filing for NanoFlu, and (2) Ph. I NVX-CoV2373 proof-of-concept data.
As NVAX already revealed it has a standing agreement with Emergent BioSolutions to utilize Emergent's rapid manufacturing and deployment capabilities to advance its vaccine products as well as a $4 million grant from the Coalition for Epidemic Preparedness Innovations (CEPI), Mamtani tells investors his bullish thesis remains firmly intact.
To this end, he reiterated a Buy rating and $20 price target. This implies shares could surge 15% in the next year. (To watch Mamtanis track record, click here)
What does the rest of the Street have to say? Out of 5 reviews published recently, 100% were bullish, making the consensus rating a Strong Buy. At $22.80, the average price target is more aggressive than Mamtanis and puts the upside potential at 31%. (See Novavax stock analysis on TipRanks)
To find good ideas for healthcare stocks trading at attractive valuations, visit TipRanks Best Stocks to Buy, a newly launched tool that unites all of TipRanks equity insights.
Meet 'Outstanding' Scientist Leading Charge on COVID-19 Vaccine | PEOPLE.com Top Navigation Close View image
Meet the 'Outstanding' 34-Year-Old Scientist Leading the Charge on Coronavirus Vaccine Trials
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"We know our vaccine is safe. Therefore, I will stick out my arm as the first vaccinee," said Chil-Yong Kang, PhD, DSc, FRSC, Professor of Virology in the Department of Microbiology and Immunology, Schulich School of Medicine and Dentistry at the University of Western Ontario.
Kang is a Canadian scientist who developed a preventative HIV vaccine which is currently in human clinical trials. Now, his research team is working round-the-clock on a vaccine for SARS-CoV-2, the virus that causes COVID-19.
Kang says his team is using its "well-established VSV (Vesicular Stomatitis Virus)-based platform technology" to create an effective vaccine against COVID-19. The same platform technology has been used successfully in his laboratory for the development of a vaccine for MERS (Middle East Respiratory Syndrome), another coronavirus disease. He says he is optimistic about having a preventive SARS-CoV-2 vaccine ready for testing soon.
His team is working 12-hour days, coming into the laboratory seven days a week to make their COVID-19 vaccine testable within three months, he says. That's breakneck speed for developing a vaccine for a new virus, which normally take years to develop, given that traditional vaccines take between eight and 10 years to develop. Dr. Anthony Fauci, the head of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases (NIAID), estimated that a vaccine could be ready for the general public in around 18 months.
Zoom interview by Linda Solomon Wood with Chil-Yong Kang, edited for brevity
But because of the urgency to halt the COVID-19 pandemic, Kang says he'd like to see the Canadian government fast-track vaccines for human clinical trial. And thats one of the reasons Kang and his team are working around the clock.
"Vaccines have to be safe. No matter how effective the vaccine is, if it isn't safe, we cannot use it," he says. "It [also] has to be effective. Ideally, we want to have a vaccine which can prevent over 90 per cent of infection."
The Government of Canada has provided funding for the research, nearly a million dollars through Canadian Institutes of Health Research.
Other Canadian universities working to find a vaccine are at McMaster University, University of Alberta, Laval University, University of British Columbia, University of Saskatchewan and University of Manitoba.
Kang says in the near future he's going to need much more support for the human clinical trials.
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