The dramatic rise in COVID-19 cases and hospitalizations due to the more transmissible Delta variant is significantly impacting all age groups, particularly Americans ages 11 or younger who are not yet eligible to receive vaccinations.
More than 500,000 children tested positive for COVID-19 in the U.S. from August 5 to August 26, according to state data collected by the American Academy of Pediatrics. At least 203,962 of those cases were reported in the week of August 19 to August 26; In late June, one weekly reported number was just shy of 8,500.
With concerns building over safely allowing children to return to in-person learning at schools, health experts agree that mask mandates are an effective tool in stemming infections.
“The virus is raging in all these children who are unvaccinated, which is why in schools mask mandates are so important,” CNN medical analyst Dr. Jonathan Reiner told Jake Tapper last week, pointing out that inoculation rates are also low among adolescents who are eligible. “They have no other protection. They’re literally sitting ducks.”
More states and school districts across the country are imposing mask and vaccine mandates, while others are working to limit COVID-19 exposure among the unvaccinated. New York Gov. Kathy Hochul announced on Tuesday plans to implement mandatory weekly COVID-19 testing for state school staff who are not vaccinated.
“We all need to remain vigilant to protect each other – and that means coming in to get your shot and booster shot, wearing masks in indoor spaces, and exercising basic safety measures that we are all familiar with by now,” Hochul said.
For teens ages 12 and up attending classes, it remains imperative for them to receive vaccinations to help curb the spread of COVID-19, officials say. And vaccine mandates, while unpopular to some, may be a necessary step.
“I believe that mandating vaccines for children to appear in school is a good idea,” Dr. Anthony Fauci, director of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases, told CNN this week, noting that this would not be a radical idea to impose.
“This is not something new. We have mandates in many places in schools, particularly public schools, that if in fact you want a child to come in — we’ve done this for decades and decades requiring (vaccines for) polio, measles, mumps, rubella, hepatitis,” Fauci said. “So this would not be something new, requiring vaccinations for children to come to school.”
OFFICIALS EXPECT ADDITIONAL VACCINE DATA SOON
Cognizant of the anxiousness felt by some parents and guardians sending their children back to school unvaccinated, health officials say they are working expediently to review whether the age of vaccine eligibility can be lowered.
If authorized, the CDC would move quickly to recommend the use of COVID-19 vaccines in younger children, agency director Dr. Rochelle Walensky said.
“Everybody is looking at this with urgency. Everyone recognizes how important it is for those children to have access to vaccines,” Walensky said during a National Parent Teacher Association town hall Wednesday.
The U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA) must approve or authorize the vaccines in younger children first, Walensky noted. And the vaccine makers must make the case to the FDA with clinical trial data.
“My understanding of the timeline is pretty consistent with what is being said — the middle of fall is my understanding, early fall is when we will anticipate seeing the data — and then it will lie with the hands of the FDA. And I’m hopeful for the end of the year,” she said.
Pfizer/BioNTech’s vaccine has been fully approved by the FDA for Americans 16 and older, and emergency use authorization has been granted for those 12 and up. The Moderna and Johnson & Johnson vaccines are under emergency use authorization only for adults 18 and older.
Moderna announced last week that it had completed its submission to the FDA for full approval, and has also filed with the FDA for an emergency use authorization for its vaccine in people age 12 and older.
Clinical trials of vaccines for children under the age of 12 are ongoing.
Fauci said Wednesday that the FDA should have the data to consider authorizing a COVID-19 vaccine for children under 12 by the end of September.
“We should have enough of the data to examine and make a decision as we get into late September, the beginning of October,” Fauci said. “Then the data will be presented to the FDA, and the FDA will make a determination whether they will grant that under an emergency use authorization or some other mechanism.”
When asked whether a COVID-19 vaccine will be authorized for young children before Thanksgiving, Fauci said he hopes so, but does not want to get ahead of the FDA.
GROUP SAYS NURSING SHORTAGE IS A ‘NATIONAL CRISIS’
With the rise in hospitalizations felt nationwide, a health care industry that is exhausted and consistently exposed to COVID-19 infection has sometimes resulted in fewer employees. States and networks have clamored for greater levels of staffing at a critical time of the pandemic.
The American Nurses Association has called on the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services to declare the nation’s shortage of nurses a “national crisis,” according to a letter the group sent to HHS Secretary Xavier Becerra.
“The nation’s health care delivery systems are overwhelmed, and nurses are tired and frustrated as this persistent pandemic rages on with no end in sight. Nurses alone cannot solve this longstanding issue and it is not our burden to carry,” association president Ernest Grant said on Wednesday.
Hospital staff remain at risk for COVID-19, researchers reported on Wednesday. Due to a combination of waning vaccine protection and the Delta variant, coronavirus infections have steadily risen among vaccinated healthcare workers in San Diego, Dr. Jocelyn Keehner and Dr. Lucy Horton of the University of California San Diego Health wrote in a letter to the New England Journal of Medicine.
They note that their findings support arguments for using masks more frequently as well as potentially offering booster doses of vaccine if similar evidence is gathered elsewhere.
The strain placed on health care systems is likely to continue into the near future, but there are signs that the situation could start to improve.
For the second week in a row, an ensemble forecast from the CDC has projected that new COVID-19 hospitalizations are likely to remain stable or have an uncertain trend over the next four weeks. Before last week, the forecasts had projected increasing hospitalizations since mid-July.
Yet despite the potential news that the surge could soon ease, the CDC urges caution with the data since actual numbers have fallen outside the range of previous predictions. CDC’s latest forecast predicts 550,000 to 1,600,000 new cases likely to be reported in the week ending September 25.
In the short term, Fauci told CNN’s Wolf Blitzer that it will help for people to practice mitigation measures, like masking and avoiding congregate settings.
“In the intermediate and longer term, it’s going to be vaccines that are going to solve this problem,” Fauci said.
TOKYO (AP) — Japanese technology group SoftBank swung back to profitability in the July-September quarter, boosted by positive results in its Vision Fund investments.
Tokyo-based SoftBank Group Corp. reported Tuesday a fiscal second quarter profit of nearly 1.18 trillion yen ($7.7 billion), compared with a 931 billion yen loss in the year-earlier period.
Quarterly sales edged up about 6% to nearly 1.77 trillion yen ($11.5 billion).
SoftBank credited income from royalties and licensing related to its holdings in Arm, a computer chip-designing company, whose business spans smartphones, data centers, networking equipment, automotive, consumer electronic devices, and AI applications.
The results were also helped by the absence of losses related to SoftBank’s investment in office-space sharing venture WeWork, which hit the previous fiscal year.
WeWork, which filed for Chapter 11 bankruptcy protection in 2023, emerged from Chapter 11 in June.
SoftBank has benefitted in recent months from rising share prices in some investment, such as U.S.-based e-commerce company Coupang, Chinese mobility provider DiDi Global and Bytedance, the Chinese developer of TikTok.
SoftBank’s financial results tend to swing wildly, partly because of its sprawling investment portfolio that includes search engine Yahoo, Chinese retailer Alibaba, and artificial intelligence company Nvidia.
SoftBank makes investments in a variety of companies that it groups together in a series of Vision Funds.
The company’s founder, Masayoshi Son, is a pioneer in technology investment in Japan. SoftBank Group does not give earnings forecasts.
Shopify Inc. executives brushed off concerns that incoming U.S. President Donald Trump will be a major detriment to many of the company’s merchants.
“There’s nothing in what we’ve heard from Trump, nor would there have been anything from (Democratic candidate) Kamala (Harris), which we think impacts the overall state of new business formation and entrepreneurship,” Shopify’s chief financial officer Jeff Hoffmeister told analysts on a call Tuesday.
“We still feel really good about all the merchants out there, all the entrepreneurs that want to start new businesses and that’s obviously not going to change with the administration.”
Hoffmeister’s comments come a week after Trump, a Republican businessman, trounced Harris in an election that will soon return him to the Oval Office.
On the campaign trail, he threatened to impose tariffs of 60 per cent on imports from China and roughly 10 per cent to 20 per cent on goods from all other countries.
If the president-elect makes good on the promise, many worry the cost of operating will soar for companies, including customers of Shopify, which sells e-commerce software to small businesses but also brands as big as Kylie Cosmetics and Victoria’s Secret.
These merchants may feel they have no choice but to pass on the increases to customers, perhaps sparking more inflation.
If Trump’s tariffs do come to fruition, Shopify’s president Harley Finkelstein pointed out China is “not a huge area” for Shopify.
However, “we can’t anticipate what every presidential administration is going to do,” he cautioned.
He likened the uncertainty facing the business community to the COVID-19 pandemic where Shopify had to help companies migrate online.
“Our job is no matter what comes the way of our merchants, we provide them with tools and service and support for them to navigate it really well,” he said.
Finkelstein was questioned about the forthcoming U.S. leadership change on a call meant to delve into Shopify’s latest earnings, which sent shares soaring 27 per cent to $158.63 shortly after Tuesday’s market open.
The Ottawa-based company, which keeps its books in U.S. dollars, reported US$828 million in net income for its third quarter, up from US$718 million in the same quarter last year, as its revenue rose 26 per cent.
Revenue for the period ended Sept. 30 totalled US$2.16 billion, up from US$1.71 billion a year earlier.
Subscription solutions revenue reached US$610 million, up from US$486 million in the same quarter last year.
Merchant solutions revenue amounted to US$1.55 billion, up from US$1.23 billion.
Shopify’s net income excluding the impact of equity investments totalled US$344 million for the quarter, up from US$173 million in the same quarter last year.
Daniel Chan, a TD Cowen analyst, said the results show Shopify has a leadership position in the e-commerce world and “a continued ability to gain market share.”
In its outlook for its fourth quarter of 2024, the company said it expects revenue to grow at a mid-to-high-twenties percentage rate on a year-over-year basis.
“Q4 guidance suggests Shopify will finish the year strong, with better-than-expected revenue growth and operating margin,” Chan pointed out in a note to investors.
This report by The Canadian Press was first published Nov. 12, 2024.
TORONTO – RioCan Real Estate Investment Trust says it has cut almost 10 per cent of its staff as it deals with a slowdown in the condo market and overall pushes for greater efficiency.
The company says the cuts, which amount to around 60 employees based on its last annual filing, will mean about $9 million in restructuring charges and should translate to about $8 million in annualized cash savings.
The job cuts come as RioCan and others scale back condo development plans as the market softens, but chief executive Jonathan Gitlin says the reductions were from a companywide efficiency effort.
RioCan says it doesn’t plan to start any new construction of mixed-use properties this year and well into 2025 as it adjusts to the shifting market demand.
The company reported a net income of $96.9 million in the third quarter, up from a loss of $73.5 million last year, as it saw a $159 million boost from a favourable change in the fair value of investment properties.
RioCan reported what it says is a record-breaking 97.8 per cent occupancy rate in the quarter including retail committed occupancy of 98.6 per cent.
This report by The Canadian Press was first published Nov. 12, 2024.
