WASHINGTON —
Johnson and Johnson’s forthcoming single-shot COVID-19 vaccine has more going for it than just a middling ability to prevent infection, the pre-eminent U.S. expert on infectious disease said Monday.
Dr. Anthony Fauci, President Joe Biden’s chief medical adviser and the public face of the pandemic battle in the United States, is urging people to look past the shot’s 72 per cent efficacy rate.
The Johnson and Johnson vaccine, expected to be the next one to receive emergency authorization from the U.S. Food and Drug Administration, has proven very effective at preventing death and hospitalization, Fauci said.
It’s also relatively cheap to manufacture. And it doesn’t require deep-freeze transportation and storage or double doses like its Moderna and Pfizer-BioNTech predecessors, both of which boast 95 per cent efficacy but are in short supply.
“There’s a lot more to protection than just preventing (people) from getting infected,” Fauci told an online media briefing.
“We want to keep people out of the hospital, and we don’t want people to die. And in that regard, this will be value-added, not only in the United States, but certainly in the developing world.”
In South Africa, for instance, Fauci said his colleagues are looking forward to getting a vaccine that doesn’t have the logistical challenges of the Pfizer and Moderna offerings.
“You cannot imagine how excited they are,” he said. “The idea of getting a minimal-cold-chain-required, cheap, one-shot vaccine means an awful lot.”
Fauci, CDC director Rochelle Walensky and Andy Slavitt, the senior adviser to the White House COVID-19 response team, have been using their thrice-weekly briefings to educate the world about the many virtues of vaccination in a pandemic.
It’s as much about denying the virus a “playing field” — an unvaccinated host, where it can continue to develop dangerous mutations — as it is about protecting individuals, they point out.
And that requires as many vaccines and vaccinations as possible, as quickly as possible, everywhere around the world, not just in the United States.
“Not only are you going to protect individuals from getting disease, not only are you going to protect them from getting infected, but you are going to prevent the emergence of variants here in our country,” Fauci said.
“The only way we’re going to completely stop mutants is if we stop this throughout the world.”
In an editorial in Sunday’s Wall Street Journal, former FDA commissioner Scott Gottlieb delivered a similar, if simpler, message: the more the merrier.
“Crushing COVID will require making the most of the different vaccine candidates, which come with their own pros and cons, and tweaking them to stay ahead of viral mutations,” Gottlieb wrote.
“New variants of COVID may demand vaccines that offer slightly different layers of protection and target slightly different parts of the virus. The regulatory process must encourage this kind of portfolio diversification, while allowing tweaks to keep ahead of the virus’s twists and turns.”
Dr. Theresa Tam, Canada’s chief public health officer, was asked last week whether different vaccines should be aimed at different demographic groups.
Time will tell, Tam said.
“We will have to look at the data in relation to that particular vaccine: in the clinical trials, what age groups were looked at and other specific information that will help us provide those recommendations,” she said.
Different vaccines have different characteristics, and some may lend themselves to different applications than others, she added.
“Those other kinds of characteristics and criteria — that will be reviewed for (on) who do we best use the supplies that we may get of new vaccines.”
More cases of the COVID-19 variants first identified in the United Kingdom and South Africa are being detected in the U.S. each day, although that could be in part because of improved detection methods, Walensky said.
“CDC has been working on multiple fronts to improve our ability to adapt and understand these variants,” she said.
“The recent rise in the number of variants detected in the United States is likely due at least in part to our expanded ability to sequence their virus samples.”
This report by The Canadian Press was first published Feb. 1, 2021.
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.