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Our briefing for Tuesday, March 22, 2022:
Mar 22, 2022 3:41:13 PM
- United States drug maker Pfizer Inc. announced on Tuesday that it will sell four million courses of its Covid-19 pill Paxlovid to Unicef for use in 95 low-income countries. The deal will make up nearly 3 per cent of the 150 million courses that Pfizer expects to produce in the coming year. The 95 countries to receive the shipments make up 53 per cent of the world’s population. Pfizer Chief Executive Albert Bourla said that the deal was part of the company’s strategy to make sure the pill was available to everyone "regardless of where they live or their circumstances." While the transaction price was not disclosed, Pfizer has said the low to middle-income nations will receive the pill at a not-for-profit price, while higher income nations will pay more. In clinical trials, the Paxlovid pill has shown it is up to 90 percent effective in preventing hospitalizations caused by Covid-19, which is significantly better than the Merck & Co. antiviral pill molnupiravir. Paxlovid is a two-dose treatment that pairs nirmatrelvir with ritonavir and is to be taken over a five-day period after symptoms of Covid-19 are present.
- The Canadian government is still hesitant to release any information on when the country will see an end to all Covid-19 restrictions. Health Minister Yves Duclos fielded a number of questions from Conservative and NDP members of the House of Commons on Monday, who wanted to know what conditions needed to be met for Canada to end restrictions once and for all. Duclos said the decision will rely on several factors, including vaccination rates, hospital capacity and the epidemiological effects of long-Covid. “To be responsible means that you need to follow the evidence, the science and the precautionary principle and adjust or analyze policies as things evolve,” he said. Opposition parties have long called on the government to disclose their decision-making process for federal Covid guidelines and how public health requirements are set. “I find that quite shocking, that there’s not an answer to be given, that it’s much too complex for the health committee and for Canadians to understand,” Conservative MP Stephen Ellis said to the minister at committee.
- In the United Kingdom, the number of people in hospital has reached record highs in several areas as the BA.2 subvariant sweeps across the nation. In Scotland, 2,128 people are in hospital up from its previous peak of 2,053 last January. In the south east and south west of England cases are breaking records set in the height of the second wave in February 2021. In the whole of the U.K., nearly 15,000 people are in hospital which makes a week over week increase of 22 per cent. The spike in cases has in part been caused by the relaxation of all covid restrictions that came in to place on February 24. Last week, First Minster of Scotland Nicola Sturgeon announced that the law requiring masks to be worn on public transport and other close-proximity settings would not be scrapped as initially planned due to the current spike in cases. It is now thought that one in every fourteen people in Scotland has Covid-19 which is up from one in every eighteen the week previous.
- France is reporting a 36 per cent rise in new Covid-19 cases after most restrictions were lifted in the country on March 14. The 7-day average is closing in on 89,000 compared to just 60,000 the week previous. French President Emmanuel Macron – who is up for re-election in three weeks’ time – decided to lift the restrictions citing a mass-decline in case numbers. The people of France are no longer required to wear masks in public settings, except for on public transport, in hospitals and in other medical facilities. The government has also lifted vaccine passport requirements for bars and movie theaters. Hospitalizations in the country continue to drop, but at a slower pace than the previous weeks at just 1.7 per cent, the slowest decline since February. The Alsace region, which was also hit hard at the beginning of the pandemic is seeing the largest increase in cases with over 1000 per every 100,000 inhabitants.
- China has locked down the industrial city of Shenyang late Monday night as nearly 5,000 new cases of the virus were recorded across the country on Monday. The city of 9 million inhabitants was put into an emergency lockdown overnight after fearing that cases from the neighboring province of Jilin have spread to Shenyang and the province Liaoning. Shenyang recorded 47 new cases on Tuesday causing major manufacturers, like BMW, to close their housing complexes and barred residents from leaving without a 48-hour negative test result. The country recorded two deaths resulting from complications caused by the virus on Saturday marking the first deaths in over a year. President Xi Jinping has said there is a need for the country to “minimize the impact” of Covid-19 on the economy but has remained steadfast in his Covid Zero policy. Several larger cities, like Shanghai have avoided a full-scale lockdown but have instead isolated individual buildings, and for the first time is looking to American drug maker Pfizer’s antiviral drug Paxlovid to combat severe infection in country. China received 10,000 courses of the drug on Sunday.
Covid-19 – Due Diligence And Asset Management
How the pandemic shaped Gen Z's approach to saving and investing for retirement
Brief: Jason Dorsey, Gen Z Researcher and Author, joins Yahoo Finance Live to discuss how Gen Z and millennials are approaching retirement savings and finances emerging from the shocks of the pandemic. Video Transcript. DAVE BRIGGS: Is there a generational gap when it comes to saving for the future? Well, study after study has, indeed, shown that, but it might not be exactly what you think. Let's talk about it with Jason Dorsey. He is a Gen Z researcher and the author of "Z Economy." Jason, good to have you on, my friend. So tell me- JASON DORSEY: Thank you for having me. DAVE BRIGGS: --how are Gen Zers preparing for the future? Are they, indeed, putting away money for retirement? JASON DORSEY: They are, and it's pretty shocking. When we talk about Gen Z, the oldest members are about 25 years old. And what our research shows in multiple studies is that Gen Z is actually saving money. They're trying to hold on to the money that they were going to spend. They'll even have a birthday party. Keep the money, and then ask their parents for money to go spend, which is pretty funny. The Gen Z, right now, 70% of them say that they need to be saving money today in order to be able to retire one day.
Are MSMEs ready for private equity, venture capital? What experts say
Brief: India's MSME sectors were highly affected by the wrath of Covid-19. According to CII, MSME sectors employ about 12 crore people and about half of the Indian exports. According to experts the root problem from the domestic MSME sector is failure to attract the private capital into their business, leading to constant starvation for funds. “MSME owners and entrepreneurs should thrive to rope in professional money. Without any predetermined rate of interest, private investments are the most expensive form of capital for a business. One should use this capital in areas where the return on investments is higher than the cost of capital. Investing this capital judiciously in the needed business areas can fetch much higher returns than the actual cost. Lenders are not active participants of your business, whereas PE funds or VCs participate in the growth actively and give a professional structure to the business.
Traders Sleep in Offices to Keep Working Amid Shanghai Lockdowns
Brief: As China’s major financial centers confront their worst Covid outbreaks to date, many fund managers are rolling out sleeping bags on trading floors across Shanghai and Shenzhen. Traders are volunteering to take turns camping out in their offices to avoid restrictions sweeping through the cities at a time when Chinese capital markets are experiencing the biggest bout of volatility since mid-2020. With Shanghai becoming one of the nation’s epicenters for new coronavirus infections, employers are preparing for the possibility of sudden lockdowns that could forcibly quarantine traders at homes or work for days or even weeks. That means making sure workers have enough provisions on hand in case they get stuck in the office. At AXA SPDB Investment Managers Co., for example, staff is being supplied with airbeds, instant noodles and emergency kits.
Former White House Adviser Targets Viral Threats in New CEO Role
Brief: Former White House biodefense adviser Rajeev Venkayya is taking the reins at a new venture-backed company that aims to fill a gap in treatments to combat Covid-19 and future pandemic threats. Venkayya, who stepped down as head of Takeda Pharmaceutical Co.’s vaccines unit last month, is now the chief executive officer at Aerium Therapeutics, a biotech company backed by Omega Funds. The company launched Tuesday with an initial focus on developing new monoclonal antibodies against Covid. The drugmaker is advancing with two such antibodies that have shown promise against the delta variant as well as omicron and its offshoots in animal tests, according to Aerium. The data will be submitted to a medical journal, meaning it hasn’t yet been peer-reviewed. Aerium sees an opportunity to expand in the field and a need for new tools to help patients, especially vulnerable people who haven’t been able to benefit from vaccines, after omicron overpowered some antibody treatments and raised questions about the efficacy of others. “The virus evolved very quickly around vaccines and therapeutics,” Venkayya said in an interview. “We increasingly will be trying to get away from the variant-chasing game and into the space of broadly protective therapeutics.”
Inflation protection: Is gold still the best hedge?
Brief: Gold’s comeback amid Russia’s war in Ukraine and monetary policy uncertainty, the role of gold exchange-traded commodities (ETC) in a multi-asset portfolio and combining precious metals with ESG were the topics discussed at ETF Stream’s recent webinar in partnership with HANetf. The webinar, titled Inflation protection: Is gold still the best hedge?, started by looking at the dramatic return of gold ETCs to favour after a subdued COVID-19 recovery period in 2021. Anthony Bamber, head of business development at The Royal Mint, which co-created the Royal Mint Physical Gold Securities ETC (RMAU), said: “Towards the end of February, we saw gold jump around 6% which was the largest monthly gain since May 2021. “As everything in Russia and Ukraine began to escalate further in March, it got up to its record highs again. It was these escalations plus other underlying issues such as inflation and the energy crisis that caused this.
