Indians can now travel to 17 countries as the Ministry of Civil Aviation has established a separate bilateral air bubble arrangement with Ukraine to conduct select international passenger flights between the two countries.

"To further widen the scope of international air connectivity, an air bubble arrangement is now in place for flights between India and Ukraine, taking the number of such arrangements to 17. Carriers of India and Ukraine will operate between the two countries," Union Minister Hardeep Singh Puri said.

"Transport bubbles" or "air travel arrangements" are temporary arrangements between two countries intended to resume commercial passenger services when regular international flights are suspended.

International commute has largely been affected due to the COVID-19 epidemic.

The air bubble arrangement is now in place for flights between India and Ukraine under the Vande Bharat Mission -- which started in early May to evacuate Indians stranded abroad due to coronavirus-induced travel restrictions.The mission is in its sixth phase which will continue till October 24.&nbsp;

Accordingly, it will be up to the concerned airlines to ensure no travel restrictions for Indian nationals to enter the respective country with a particular visa category before issuing tickets/boarding passes to Indian citizens.

India has made similar arrangements with 16 countries - Afghanistan, Bahrain, Oman, Canada, France, Germany, Iraq, Japan, Maldives, Nigeria, Qatar, UAE, Kenya, Bhutan, UK, and the USA.

Indians can now travel to 17 countries as the Ministry of Civil Aviation has established a separate bilateral air bubble arrangement with Ukraine to conduct select international passenger flights between the two countries.

Indians can now travel to 17 countries as the Ministry of Civil Aviation has established a separate bilateral air bubble arrangement with Ukraine to conduct select international passenger flights between the two countries. "To further widen the scope of international air connectivity, an air bubble arrangement is now in place for flights between India and Ukraine, taking the number of such arrangements to 17. Carriers of India and Ukraine will operate between the two countries," Union Minister Hardeep Singh Puri said. "Transport bubbles" or "air travel arrangements" are temporary arrangements between two countries intended to resume commercial passenger services when regular international flights are suspended. International commute has largely been affected due to the COVID-19 epidemic. The air bubble arrangement is now in place for flights between India and Ukraine under the Vande Bharat Mission -- which started in early May to evacuate Indians stranded abroad due to coronavirus-induced travel restrictions.The mission is in its sixth phase which will continue till October 24. Accordingly, it will be up to the concerned airlines to ensure no travel restrictions for Indian nationals to enter the respective country with a particular visa category before issuing tickets/boarding passes to Indian citizens. India has made similar arrangements with 16 countries - Afghanistan, Bahrain, Oman, Canada, France, Germany, Iraq, Japan, Maldives, Nigeria, Qatar, UAE, Kenya, Bhutan, UK, and the USA.

India-Ukraine air bubble arrangement now in place

Finnish Prime Minister Sanna Marin left an EU summit to self-isolate as a precaution after attending a meeting this week with a Finnish MP who has since tested positive for Covid-19.

"The prime minister has today left the European Council and asked the Swedish Prime Minister, Stefan Lofven, to represent Finland during the final meeting," the government said in a statement on Friday.

Marin will return to Finland, where she will be tested and then she will self-isolate at the prime minister's residence in Helsinki.

The move was described as a "precautionary" measure after Finnish parliamentarian Tom Packalen announced on Friday that he had tested positive for the virus.

The two had attended a joint meeting in Finland's parliament on Wednesday.

Poland's Prime Minister Mateusz Morawiecki has also not been present at the meeting as he is self-isolating in his home country.

Danish Prime Minister Mette Frederiksen has objected to the EU meeting being held in person at a time when Europe is battling a surge of the virus.

Finnish Prime Minister Sanna Marin left an EU summit to self-isolate as a precaution after attending a meeting this week with a Finnish MP who has since tested positive for Covid-19.

Finnish Prime Minister Sanna Marin left an EU summit to self-isolate as a precaution after attending a meeting this week with a Finnish MP who has since tested positive for Covid-19. "The prime minister has today left the European Council and asked the Swedish Prime Minister, Stefan Lofven, to represent Finland during the final meeting," the government said in a statement on Friday. Marin will return to Finland, where she will be tested and then she will self-isolate at the prime minister's residence in Helsinki. The move was described as a "precautionary" measure after Finnish parliamentarian Tom Packalen announced on Friday that he had tested positive for the virus. The two had attended a joint meeting in Finland's parliament on Wednesday. Poland's Prime Minister Mateusz Morawiecki has also not been present at the meeting as he is self-isolating in his home country. Danish Prime Minister Mette Frederiksen has objected to the EU meeting being held in person at a time when Europe is battling a surge of the virus.

Finnish PM leaves EU summit as 'precautionary' measure

The garment sector has been severely impacted due to the coronavirus pandemic and now they are left with only two choices. One choice is to adapt and the other is to go bust.

Crisis of designers, retailers, and shoppers in Coronavirus pandemic

First reported in 2012 in Saudi Arabia, Middle East Respiratory Syndrome (MERS) is a respiratory illness caused by a coronavirus with symptoms similar to the COVID-19 coronavirus, namely, fever, cough and shortness of breath with a range from none, to mild, to severe.

As of January 2020, about 2,500 cases of MERS have been reported worldwide. Human-to-human transmission typically requires close contact with an infected person, the spread being uncommon outside of hospitals.

In contrast to COVID-19, the death rate from MERS is about 35%.

MERS is believed to have originated in bats, was transmitted to camels as an intermediate host, then infecting humans, who had contact with the infected animals.

Although the COVID-19 virus has structural similarities to bat coronaviruses, its precise origin has yet to be identified.

The most distinguishing and unique structural feature of the COVID-19 virus is the furin polybasic cleavage site, a sequence of amino acids that interacts with human cell enzymes, which “cut” or “cleave” parts of the viral structure, thus contributing to the life cycle of the virus.

In the case of COVID-19, that sequence of amino acids is usually identified as proline-arginine-arginine-alanine or, in scientific notation, PRRA, which precedes an arginine-serine cleavage point, R-S.

It is unknown from where the PRRA sequence originated because it does not exist in any of the bat coronaviruses identified as close relatives of the COVID-19 virus.

A model for such a structure, however, does exist in the MERS coronavirus, which has a proline-arginine-serine-valine or PRSV sequence preceding the R-S cleavage point and having the following alignment:

COVID-19 &nbsp; &nbsp;PRRAR-S

MERS &nbsp; &nbsp; &nbsp; &nbsp; &nbsp; PRSVR-S

Both sequences begin with proline (P), both are polybasic having more than one arginine (R) and both have a non-polar amino acid in the fourth position, alanine (A) and valine (V), respectively, prior to the cleavage point, R-S.

It is important to note that COVID-19 and MERS are from two completely different families of coronaviruses, so one could not have evolved from the other.

According to the scientific article “Structures and dynamics of the novel S1/S2 protease cleavage site loop of the SARS-CoV-2 spike glycoprotein," the presence of proline (P) is highly unusual.

Unlike other amino acids, proline produces structural rigidity in proteins and is found in only 5 out of 132 identified furin cleavage site sequences.

Likewise, alanine (A) located just prior to the R-S cleavage point exists in only 5 out of 132 furin cleavage site sequences.

In an early June scientific article, “A novel bat coronavirus closely related to SARS-CoV-2 contains natural insertions at the S1/S2 cleavage site of the spike protein,” the authors claimed to have identified a bat coronavirus, called RmYN02, that appears to have a “precursor” of the COVID-19 furin polybasic cleavage site.

RmYN02 has a proline-alanine-alanine (PAA) insertion roughly in a similar position to the COVID-19 virus, but PAA is chemically neutral, lacks any basic amino acids and has no R-S point to be cleaved.

RmYN02's PAA sequence, therefore, cannot be considered a precursor of the COVID-19 furin polybasic cleavage site.

So, the question remains, if no yet identified close relative of COVID-19 has a similar furin polybasic cleavage site, from where did such a unique structural feature with amino acids in unusual positions arise?

Furin polybasic cleavage sites are known to increase viral infectivity and pathogenicity. Genetic engineering techniques for inserting such cleavage sites have existed for at least fifteen years.

At present, no natural evolutionary pathway has been identified to explain the presence of COVID-19’s furin polybasic cleavage site.

Those who may have manufactured the COVID-19 virus, could have been trying to mimic the cleavage site found in MERS. &nbsp;

Furthermore, the high rate of human-to-human transmission found for COVID-19, may have resulted from "pre-adapting" the virus for human infection by serial infection or “passaging” of the virus using animal models genetically-engineered to express the human coronavirus receptor.

There is now a preponderance of evidence that the COVID-19 virus was the product of laboratory experimentation rather than a natural infectious "jump" from bats to humans.

China still has a lot of explaining to do.

(Lawrence Sellin, Ph.D. is a retired U.S. Army Reserve colonel, who previously worked at the U.S. Army Medical Research Institute of Infectious Diseases and conducted basic and clinical research in the pharmaceutical industry. His email address is lawrence.sellin@gmail.com)

(Disclaimer: The opinions expressed above are the personal views of the author and do not reflect the views of ZMCL.)

First reported in 2012 in Saudi Arabia, Middle East Respiratory Syndrome (MERS) is a respiratory illness caused by a coronavirus with symptoms similar to the COVID-19 coronavirus, namely, fever, cough and shortness of breath with a range from none, to mild, to severe.

First reported in 2012 in Saudi Arabia, Middle East Respiratory Syndrome (MERS) is a respiratory illness caused by a coronavirus with symptoms similar to the COVID-19 coronavirus, namely, fever, cough and shortness of breath with a range from none, to mild, to severe. As of January 2020, about 2,500 cases of MERS have been reported worldwide. Human-to-human transmission typically requires close contact with an infected person, the spread being uncommon outside of hospitals. In contrast to COVID-19, the death rate from MERS is about 35%. MERS is believed to have originated in bats, was transmitted to camels as an intermediate host, then infecting humans, who had contact with the infected animals. Although the COVID-19 virus has structural similarities to bat coronaviruses, its precise origin has yet to be identified. The most distinguishing and unique structural feature of the COVID-19 virus is the furin polybasic cleavage site, a sequence of amino acids that interacts with human cell enzymes, which “cut” or “cleave” parts of the viral structure, thus contributing to the life cycle of the virus. In the case of COVID-19, that sequence of amino acids is usually identified as proline-arginine-arginine-alanine or, in scientific notation, PRRA, which precedes an arginine-serine cleavage point, R-S. It is unknown from where the PRRA sequence originated because it does not exist in any of the bat coronaviruses identified as close relatives of the COVID-19 virus. A model for such a structure, however, does exist in the MERS coronavirus, which has a proline-arginine-serine-valine or PRSV sequence preceding the R-S cleavage point and having the following alignment: COVID-19 PRRAR-S MERS PRSVR-S Both sequences begin with proline (P), both are polybasic having more than one arginine (R) and both have a non-polar amino acid in the fourth position, alanine (A) and valine (V), respectively, prior to the cleavage point, R-S. It is important to note that COVID-19 and MERS are from two completely different families of coronaviruses, so one could not have evolved from the other. According to the scientific article “Structures and dynamics of the novel S1/S2 protease cleavage site loop of the SARS-CoV-2 spike glycoprotein," the presence of proline (P) is highly unusual. Unlike other amino acids, proline produces structural rigidity in proteins and is found in only 5 out of 132 identified furin cleavage site sequences. Likewise, alanine (A) located just prior to the R-S cleavage point exists in only 5 out of 132 furin cleavage site sequences. In an early June scientific article, “A novel bat coronavirus closely related to SARS-CoV-2 contains natural insertions at the S1/S2 cleavage site of the spike protein,” the authors claimed to have identified a bat coronavirus, called RmYN02, that appears to have a “precursor” of the COVID-19 furin polybasic cleavage site. RmYN02 has a proline-alanine-alanine (PAA) insertion roughly in a similar position to the COVID-19 virus, but PAA is chemically neutral, lacks any basic amino acids and has no R-S point to be cleaved. RmYN02's PAA sequence, therefore, cannot be considered a precursor of the COVID-19 furin polybasic cleavage site. So, the question remains, if no yet identified close relative of COVID-19 has a similar furin polybasic cleavage site, from where did such a unique structural feature with amino acids in unusual positions arise? Furin polybasic cleavage sites are known to increase viral infectivity and pathogenicity. Genetic engineering techniques for inserting such cleavage sites have existed for at least fifteen years. At present, no natural evolutionary pathway has been identified to explain the presence of COVID-19’s furin polybasic cleavage site. Those who may have manufactured the COVID-19 virus, could have been trying to mimic the cleavage site found in MERS. Furthermore, the high rate of human-to-human transmission found for COVID-19, may have resulted from "pre-adapting" the virus for human infection by serial infection or “passaging” of the virus using animal models genetically-engineered to express the human coronavirus receptor. There is now a preponderance of evidence that the COVID-19 virus was the product of laboratory experimentation rather than a natural infectious "jump" from bats to humans. China still has a lot of explaining to do. (Lawrence Sellin, Ph.D. is a retired U.S. Army Reserve colonel, who previously worked at the U.S. Army Medical Research Institute of Infectious Diseases and conducted basic and clinical research in the pharmaceutical industry. His email address is lawrence.sellin@gmail.com) (Disclaimer: The opinions expressed above are the personal views of the author and do not reflect the views of ZMCL.)

Was the MERS virus a model for the creation of COVID-19?

Coronavirus pandemic has pushed several economies into a deep recession. The outbreak has had a big impact on the economic, social, and political fronts in many parts of the world. In Myanmar, the virus has dragged the poor families to an edge. Watch report.

Myanmar's coronavirus crisis: Virus drags poor families to the edge

IMF's world economic outlook says that the impact of COVID-19 is less severe than expected on the global economy. However, the pandemic would leave deep and enduring scars caused by job losses and weaker investment. WION spoke to IMF Chief Economist Gita Gopinath to know the broader picture of the biggest economic crisis the world is facing now.

WION exclusive with IMF Chief Economist Gita Gopinath: COVID-19 impact on global economy

Since the beginning of the COVID-19 pandemic, the Chinese Communist Party supported by some Western scientists and a politically-motivated media have desperately tried to convince the world that the COVID-19 virus originated as a bat beta-coronavirus which underwent a natural mutation process and was then acquired by humans after exposure to infected animals.

Undoubtedly, such subterfuge is meant to protect certain vested interests, including the potentially devastating political and economic consequences for China, global corporate and private investment in China and a negative effect on scientific collaboration and research funding of major Western research laboratories.

In her first article, “Unusual Features of the SARS-CoV-2 Genome Suggesting Sophisticated Laboratory Modification Rather Than Natural Evolution and Delineation of Its Probable Synthetic Route,” Chinese scientist and whistleblower, Dr. Li-Meng Yan presented the biological evidence demonstrating that the COVID-19 virus was made in a laboratory.

Now, Dr. Yan has published her second scientific article “SARS-CoV-2 Is an Unrestricted Bioweapon: A Truth Revealed through Uncovering a Large-Scale, Organized Scientific Fraud,” which describes the extraordinary lengths the Chinese Communist Party has gone to cover-up the true laboratory origin of the COVID-19 virus in order to escape responsibility for the pandemic.

For months after the start of the outbreak, China flooded the scientific literature with subtle and sometimes not so subtle messages supporting its narrative that COVID-19 is a naturally-occurring disease that “jumped” from animals to humans in the Wuhan seafood market.

After endless media reports and scientific studies, the theory that the Wuhan seafood market was the source for animal–human COVID-19 transmission was totally discredited, even by the Chinese Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.

On February 3, 2020, “batwoman” Dr. Zheng-Li Shi of the Wuhan Institute of Virology published an article suggesting that COVID-19 originated in bats and a bat coronavirus named RaTG13 was shown to be 96.2% identical to the COVID-19 virus, thus supporting the naturally-occurring theory.

Since then, literally hundreds of scientific articles have used RaTG13 as a basis for investigating the natural origin of the COVID-19 pandemic, despite the fact that RaTG13 exists only on paper because no live virus or intact genome of RaTG13 have ever been isolated or recovered. 
Dr. Yan and her colleagues now make multiple arguments indicating that RaTG13 is a fabricated virus.

One way to determine if a virus is related to or evolved from another virus, in this case, RaTG13 and the COVID-19 virus, is to compare the synonymous and non-synonymous mutations in the genetic code.

The DNA genetic code, which is composed of combinations of the nucleotides guanine, adenine, cytosine and thymine (G, A, C and T), determines the structure of proteins. It does so through groups of three nucleotides called codons that correspond to specific amino acids, the building blocks of proteins, and that code is redundant.

For example, the amino acid arginine can be produced by codons CGT, CGA, CTC or CGG, meaning the third nucleotide in the codon is redundant or interchangeable and will still code for arginine. Any change in the first or second nucleotide will produce a different amino acid.

So, a viral genetic code can mutate, but still produce the same amino acid or a “synonymous” outcome. A mutation in the first or second nucleotide in a codon will result in different amino acid, a “non-synonymous” outcome.

In the absence of a major natural or artificial recombinant event, viruses that are naturally related or evolve from each other, as claimed for RaTG13 and the COVID-19 virus, have roughly standard ratios comparing synonymous and non-synonymous mutations.

Dr. Yan’s data show that when the ratios of synonymous and non-synonymous mutations between a critical segment of the RaTG13 and COVID-19 viruses are compared, the result “is abnormal and a violation of the principles of natural evolution.”

The interpretation is that RaTG13 and the COVID-19 virus could not be related to each other through natural evolution and that RaTG13 is a likely fabrication.

In addition, a reconstructed RaTG13 receptor binding domain does not bind to the angiotensin converting enzyme-2 receptors in two species of horseshoe bats, implying that RaTG13 could not exist in a bat population from which it would mutate and infect humans, completely undermining the naturally-occurring theory.

Dr. Yan also questions the accuracy of China’s pangolin (scaly anteater) coronavirus data upon which dozens of scientific studies examining potential natural coronavirus recombination events are based.

In early June, another novel bat coronavirus, RmYN02, which shares a 93.3% sequence similarity to the COVID-19 virus, was identified and used to support the Communist Chinese Party’s argument that the pandemic was a natural outbreak.

In that weak attempt to buttress the naturally-occurring theory, the Chinese authors of the RmYN02 article claim that a proline-alanine-alanine (PAA) amino acid insertion represents an ancestor to the proline-arginine-arginine-alanine (PRRA) furin polybasic cleavage site found in the COVID-19 virus, but not found in any other related bat coronavirus.

The presence of the furin polybasic cleavage site is a marker for genetic manipulation and, therefore, countering that fact would be an important objective of the Chinese Communist Party's propaganda machine.&nbsp;

The RmYN02 hypothesis disintegrates under scrutiny because the PAA sequence is chemically neutral, not basic and it could not cleave anything.

RmYN02 does not even possess the arginine-serine (R-S) cleavage point found in the COVID-19 virus and all related coronaviruses and the published RmYH02 sequence seems to be out of alignment.

Dr. Yan’s second scientific article adds one more nail in the coffin of China’s false theory that the COVID-19 pandemic was naturally-occurring.

(Lawrence Sellin, Ph.D. is a retired U.S. Army Reserve colonel, who previously worked at the U.S. Army Medical Research Institute of Infectious Diseases and conducted basic and clinical research in the pharmaceutical industry. His email address is lawrence.sellin@gmail.com)

(Disclaimer: The opinions expressed above are the personal views of the author and do not reflect the views of ZMCL.) 
&nbsp;

Since the beginning of the COVID-19 pandemic, the Chinese Communist Party supported by some Western scientists and a politically-motivated media have desperately tried to convince the world that the COVID-19 virus originated as a bat beta-coronavirus which underwent a natural mutation process and was then acquired by humans after exposure to infected animals.

Since the beginning of the COVID-19 pandemic, the Chinese Communist Party supported by some Western scientists and a politically-motivated media have desperately tried to convince the world that the COVID-19 virus originated as a bat beta-coronavirus which underwent a natural mutation process and was then acquired by humans after exposure to infected animals. Undoubtedly, such subterfuge is meant to protect certain vested interests, including the potentially devastating political and economic consequences for China, global corporate and private investment in China and a negative effect on scientific collaboration and research funding of major Western research laboratories. In her first article, “Unusual Features of the SARS-CoV-2 Genome Suggesting Sophisticated Laboratory Modification Rather Than Natural Evolution and Delineation of Its Probable Synthetic Route,” Chinese scientist and whistleblower, Dr. Li-Meng Yan presented the biological evidence demonstrating that the COVID-19 virus was made in a laboratory. Now, Dr. Yan has published her second scientific article “SARS-CoV-2 Is an Unrestricted Bioweapon: A Truth Revealed through Uncovering a Large-Scale, Organized Scientific Fraud,” which describes the extraordinary lengths the Chinese Communist Party has gone to cover-up the true laboratory origin of the COVID-19 virus in order to escape responsibility for the pandemic. For months after the start of the outbreak, China flooded the scientific literature with subtle and sometimes not so subtle messages supporting its narrative that COVID-19 is a naturally-occurring disease that “jumped” from animals to humans in the Wuhan seafood market. After endless media reports and scientific studies, the theory that the Wuhan seafood market was the source for animal–human COVID-19 transmission was totally discredited, even by the Chinese Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. On February 3, 2020, “batwoman” Dr. Zheng-Li Shi of the Wuhan Institute of Virology published an article suggesting that COVID-19 originated in bats and a bat coronavirus named RaTG13 was shown to be 96.2% identical to the COVID-19 virus, thus supporting the naturally-occurring theory. Since then, literally hundreds of scientific articles have used RaTG13 as a basis for investigating the natural origin of the COVID-19 pandemic, despite the fact that RaTG13 exists only on paper because no live virus or intact genome of RaTG13 have ever been isolated or recovered. Dr. Yan and her colleagues now make multiple arguments indicating that RaTG13 is a fabricated virus. One way to determine if a virus is related to or evolved from another virus, in this case, RaTG13 and the COVID-19 virus, is to compare the synonymous and non-synonymous mutations in the genetic code. The DNA genetic code, which is composed of combinations of the nucleotides guanine, adenine, cytosine and thymine (G, A, C and T), determines the structure of proteins. It does so through groups of three nucleotides called codons that correspond to specific amino acids, the building blocks of proteins, and that code is redundant. For example, the amino acid arginine can be produced by codons CGT, CGA, CTC or CGG, meaning the third nucleotide in the codon is redundant or interchangeable and will still code for arginine. Any change in the first or second nucleotide will produce a different amino acid. So, a viral genetic code can mutate, but still produce the same amino acid or a “synonymous” outcome. A mutation in the first or second nucleotide in a codon will result in different amino acid, a “non-synonymous” outcome. In the absence of a major natural or artificial recombinant event, viruses that are naturally related or evolve from each other, as claimed for RaTG13 and the COVID-19 virus, have roughly standard ratios comparing synonymous and non-synonymous mutations. Dr. Yan’s data show that when the ratios of synonymous and non-synonymous mutations between a critical segment of the RaTG13 and COVID-19 viruses are compared, the result “is abnormal and a violation of the principles of natural evolution.” The interpretation is that RaTG13 and the COVID-19 virus could not be related to each other through natural evolution and that RaTG13 is a likely fabrication. In addition, a reconstructed RaTG13 receptor binding domain does not bind to the angiotensin converting enzyme-2 receptors in two species of horseshoe bats, implying that RaTG13 could not exist in a bat population from which it would mutate and infect humans, completely undermining the naturally-occurring theory. Dr. Yan also questions the accuracy of China’s pangolin (scaly anteater) coronavirus data upon which dozens of scientific studies examining potential natural coronavirus recombination events are based. In early June, another novel bat coronavirus, RmYN02, which shares a 93.3% sequence similarity to the COVID-19 virus, was identified and used to support the Communist Chinese Party’s argument that the pandemic was a natural outbreak. In that weak attempt to buttress the naturally-occurring theory, the Chinese authors of the RmYN02 article claim that a proline-alanine-alanine (PAA) amino acid insertion represents an ancestor to the proline-arginine-arginine-alanine (PRRA) furin polybasic cleavage site found in the COVID-19 virus, but not found in any other related bat coronavirus. The presence of the furin polybasic cleavage site is a marker for genetic manipulation and, therefore, countering that fact would be an important objective of the Chinese Communist Party's propaganda machine. The RmYN02 hypothesis disintegrates under scrutiny because the PAA sequence is chemically neutral, not basic and it could not cleave anything. RmYN02 does not even possess the arginine-serine (R-S) cleavage point found in the COVID-19 virus and all related coronaviruses and the published RmYH02 sequence seems to be out of alignment. Dr. Yan’s second scientific article adds one more nail in the coffin of China’s false theory that the COVID-19 pandemic was naturally-occurring. (Lawrence Sellin, Ph.D. is a retired U.S. Army Reserve colonel, who previously worked at the U.S. Army Medical Research Institute of Infectious Diseases and conducted basic and clinical research in the pharmaceutical industry. His email address is lawrence.sellin@gmail.com) (Disclaimer: The opinions expressed above are the personal views of the author and do not reflect the views of ZMCL.)

Chinese virologist reveals China’s fake science and the COVID-19 cover-up

Russia now has not one, but two COVID-19 vaccines with regulatory approvals in the pipeline.

According to the country’s register of authorised medicines, after Sputnik V, another vaccine candidate has received regulatory approval.

Russian President Vladimir Putin revealed the news at a government meeting on Wednesday.

The vaccine in question was developed Siberia’s Vector Institute, and had successfully completed human trials last month.

Also read:&nbsp;<a href="http://13.235.153.162/world/russia-releases-first-batch-of-covid-19-vaccine-sputnik-v-into-public-325883" hreflang="en">Russia releases first batch of Covid-19 vaccine Sputnik V into public</a>

No results have been made available yet, with Phase III of trials set to begin soon.

"We need to increase production of the first and second vaccine," Putin said during a broadcast on state TV. "We are continuing to cooperate with our foreign partners and will promote our vaccine abroad”, he added.

The new vaccine is named EpiVacCorona, and marks the second one to be licensed in the country. The vaccine has been tested on 100 volunteers aged between 18-60 in Novosibirsk.&nbsp;The vaccine is peptide-based.

In Pics:&nbsp;<a href="http://13.235.153.162/photos/all-you-want-to-know-about-russias-coronavirus-vaccine-sputnik-v-319775" hreflang="en">All you want to know about Russia's coronavirus vaccine 'Sputnik V'</a>

The Sputnik V vaccine, developed by Gamaleya Institute based in Moscow, was approved for use in August.

Similarly, Sputnik V was also registered before its Phase III trials had begun, and was based on an adenovirus vector. Currently, a trial with 40,000 participants is underway in Moscow.

For EpiVacCorona, large-scale human trials are expected to begin by the end of this year - November or December, as reported by TASS.

Also read:&nbsp;<a href="http://13.235.153.162/world/russias-sputnik-v-coronavirus-vaccine-or-publicity-stunt-319816" hreflang="en">Russia's Sputnik V: Coronavirus vaccine or publicity stunt?</a>

The Phase III trials of the new vaccine will involve the participation of 30,000 volunteers. Out of these, the first 5,000 will be inducted from Siberia, as reported by Interfax.

People who work in high-risk environments have already been inoculated with the Sputnik V vaccine, the Russian health ministry has claimed.

Russia now has not one, but two COVID-19 vaccines with regulatory approvals in the pipeline. According to the country’s register of authorised medicines, after Sputnik V, another vaccine candidate has received regulatory approval.

Russia now has not one, but two COVID-19 vaccines with regulatory approvals in the pipeline. According to the country’s register of authorised medicines, after Sputnik V, another vaccine candidate has received regulatory approval. Russian President Vladimir Putin revealed the news at a government meeting on Wednesday. The vaccine in question was developed Siberia’s Vector Institute, and had successfully completed human trials last month. Also read: Russia releases first batch of Covid-19 vaccine Sputnik V into public No results have been made available yet, with Phase III of trials set to begin soon. "We need to increase production of the first and second vaccine," Putin said during a broadcast on state TV. "We are continuing to cooperate with our foreign partners and will promote our vaccine abroad”, he added. The new vaccine is named EpiVacCorona, and marks the second one to be licensed in the country. The vaccine has been tested on 100 volunteers aged between 18-60 in Novosibirsk. The vaccine is peptide-based. In Pics: All you want to know about Russia's coronavirus vaccine 'Sputnik V' The Sputnik V vaccine, developed by Gamaleya Institute based in Moscow, was approved for use in August. Similarly, Sputnik V was also registered before its Phase III trials had begun, and was based on an adenovirus vector. Currently, a trial with 40,000 participants is underway in Moscow. For EpiVacCorona, large-scale human trials are expected to begin by the end of this year - November or December, as reported by TASS. Also read: Russia's Sputnik V: Coronavirus vaccine or publicity stunt? The Phase III trials of the new vaccine will involve the participation of 30,000 volunteers. Out of these, the first 5,000 will be inducted from Siberia, as reported by Interfax. People who work in high-risk environments have already been inoculated with the Sputnik V vaccine, the Russian health ministry has claimed.

After Sputnik V, Russia approves second COVID-19 vaccine - EpiVacCorona

A Japanese computer has shed light on the spread of coronavirus and the role played by local conditions.

According tot he supercomputer, humidity can have a huge impact on the spread of COVID-19, and can potentially cause particles of virus to spread. This is owing to the dry conditions indoors during winter.

The findings add that humidifiers may assist in limiting the rate of infections during winter, when window ventilation is not viable. The study was released by Riken, a research giant, in collaboration with Kobe University.

Also read:&nbsp;<a href="http://13.235.153.162/world/face-shields-ineffective-against-covid-19-rules-worlds-fastest-supercomputer-329398" hreflang="en">Face shields ineffective against COVID-19, rules world's fastest supercomputer</a>

Using the Fugaku supercomputer, the researchers modelled the emission and potential flow of COVID-19 like particles in indoor environments.

The researchers discovered that twice as much as aerosolised particles were released when the air humidity was lower than 30 per cent, when compared to humidity levels of 60 per cent and higher.

Additionally, the study added that masks are more effective than face shields when it comes to protecting oneself from COVID-19 aerosols.

The supercomputer also found that while dining, people are at more risk of contracting COVID-19 from others on the side, not to their front. It also added that the number of singers in choruses should be limited.

Also read:&nbsp;<a href="http://13.235.153.162/technology/worlds-fastest-supercomputer-deployed-to-find-cure-for-coronavirus-307948" hreflang="en">World's fastest supercomputer deployed to find 'cure' for coronavirus</a>

The scientific community is increasingly accepting that the virus can spread through air. The US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention revised its guidelines earlier this month, claiming the pathogen can linger in the air for hours.

The research team for Riken was spearheaded by Makoto Tsubokura. The same team has led other studies which modelled spread of COVID-19 in work spaces, trains, and class rooms.

The computer simulations showed that opening windows on trains can help improve ventilation by three times, which in turn lowers the concentration of ambient microbes.

"People's blind fear or unfounded confidence against the infection of COVID-19 is simply because it is invisible," Tsubokura told Reuters.

A Japanese computer has shed light on the spread of coronavirus and the role played by local conditions. According tot he supercomputer, humidity can have a huge impact on the spread of COVID-19, and can potentially cause particles of virus to spread.

A Japanese computer has shed light on the spread of coronavirus and the role played by local conditions. According tot he supercomputer, humidity can have a huge impact on the spread of COVID-19, and can potentially cause particles of virus to spread. This is owing to the dry conditions indoors during winter. The findings add that humidifiers may assist in limiting the rate of infections during winter, when window ventilation is not viable. The study was released by Riken, a research giant, in collaboration with Kobe University. Also read: Face shields ineffective against COVID-19, rules world's fastest supercomputer Using the Fugaku supercomputer, the researchers modelled the emission and potential flow of COVID-19 like particles in indoor environments. The researchers discovered that twice as much as aerosolised particles were released when the air humidity was lower than 30 per cent, when compared to humidity levels of 60 per cent and higher. Additionally, the study added that masks are more effective than face shields when it comes to protecting oneself from COVID-19 aerosols. The supercomputer also found that while dining, people are at more risk of contracting COVID-19 from others on the side, not to their front. It also added that the number of singers in choruses should be limited. Also read: World's fastest supercomputer deployed to find 'cure' for coronavirus The scientific community is increasingly accepting that the virus can spread through air. The US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention revised its guidelines earlier this month, claiming the pathogen can linger in the air for hours. The research team for Riken was spearheaded by Makoto Tsubokura. The same team has led other studies which modelled spread of COVID-19 in work spaces, trains, and class rooms. The computer simulations showed that opening windows on trains can help improve ventilation by three times, which in turn lowers the concentration of ambient microbes. "People's blind fear or unfounded confidence against the infection of COVID-19 is simply because it is invisible," Tsubokura told Reuters.

Japanese supercomputer Fugaku shows how humidity affects aerosol spread of COVID-19

The director general of the World Health Organisation said on Wednesday an additional 10,000 children a month could die this year from malnutrition as a result of the impact of the COVID-19 pandemic.

Dr Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus, speaking at a U.N Food and Agriculture (FAO) conference, said he expected a 14% increase this year in children suffering from malnutrition as a result of the pandemic.

Also read:&nbsp;<a href="http://13.235.153.162/world/who-records-biggest-one-day-increase-in-global-coronavirus-cases-as-europe-grapples-with-virus-333613" hreflang="en">WHO records biggest one-day increase in global coronavirus cases as Europe grapples with virus</a>

This equates to 6.7 million more malnourished children, mostly in sub-Saharan Africa and south Asia.

"The pandemic has caused serious disruptions to essential services, immunisation, maternal services, child nutrition, family planning and more," he said.

"We can not accept a world where the rich have access to healthy diets while the poor are left behind," he added.

The director general of the World Health Organisation said on Wednesday an additional 10,000 children a month could die this year from malnutrition as a result of the impact of the COVID-19 pandemic.

The director general of the World Health Organisation said on Wednesday an additional 10,000 children a month could die this year from malnutrition as a result of the impact of the COVID-19 pandemic. Dr Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus, speaking at a U.N Food and Agriculture (FAO) conference, said he expected a 14% increase this year in children suffering from malnutrition as a result of the pandemic. Also read: WHO records biggest one-day increase in global coronavirus cases as Europe grapples with virus This equates to 6.7 million more malnourished children, mostly in sub-Saharan Africa and south Asia. "The pandemic has caused serious disruptions to essential services, immunisation, maternal services, child nutrition, family planning and more," he said. "We can not accept a world where the rich have access to healthy diets while the poor are left behind," he added.

10,000 more children a month could die of malnutrition due to COVID impact: WHO

European countries have begun to close schools and cancel surgeries, going well beyond curbs on social life, as overwhelmed authorities face their nightmare scenario of a COVID-19 resurgence right before the onset of winter.

Most European nations eased lockdowns over the summer to start reviving economies already heading for unprecedented downturns and job losses from the pandemic's first wave.

But the return of normal activity - from packed restaurants to new university terms - fuelled a sharply-rising spike in cases all over the continent.

Also read:&nbsp;<a href="http://13.235.153.162/world/spain-imposes-new-restrictions-in-catalonia-amid-virus-surge-in-europe-334549" hreflang="en">Spain imposes new restrictions in Catalonia amid virus surge in Europe</a>

Bars and pubs were among the first to shut or face earlier closing in the new lockdowns, but now the surging infection rates are also testing governments' resolve to keep schools open and non-COVID medical care going.

The Czech Republic, which has Europe's worst rate per capita, has shifted schools to distance learning and hospitals started cutting non-urgent medical procedures to free up beds. Bars, restaurants and clubs have shut.

"Sometimes we are at the edge of crying, that happens quite often now," said Lenka Krejcova, a head nurse at Slany hospital northwest of Prague, as builders sped through the hospital's corridors to turn a general ward into a COVID-19 department.

Moscow authorities said on Wednesday they would introduce online learning for many students starting on Monday, while Northern Ireland announced a two-week schools' closure.

Major European economies of Germany, Britain and France have so far resisted pressure to close schools, a move that during the spring lockdowns created hardship across the workforce, with parents struggling to juggle child care and work from home.

'IT'S A MESS'

In Germany, politicians are debating whether to extend the Christmas-New Year break to reduce contagion among children spreading to the wider community, though critics say there is no evidence that schools have been infection hot spots.

The Netherlands returned to "partial lockdown" on Wednesday, closing bars and restaurants, but kept schools open.

European daily infections have been running at an average of almost 100,000 a day, forcing governments to introduce a range of tightening restrictions, each attempting to calibrate them in order to protect health without destroying livelihoods.

Also read:&nbsp;<a href="http://13.235.153.162/world/who-records-biggest-one-day-increase-in-global-coronavirus-cases-as-europe-grapples-with-virus-333613" hreflang="en">WHO records biggest one-day increase in global coronavirus cases as Europe grapples with virus</a>

"It's a mess, it's a mess, my son, what can I tell you? We really don't know how we are going to end up," said an Italian pensioner in Rome.

French President Emmanuel Macron is expected to unveil further restrictions on Wednesday, with media reporting that city curfews are under consideration.

France's five largest cities - Paris, Marseille, Lyon, Toulouse and Lille - are already on maximum alert, with bars and gyms closed and restaurants under strict controls.

British Prime Minister Boris Johnson faces opposition calls to impose another national lockdown in England, but has so far resisted. Hospital admissions, however, are climbing and field hospitals in the spring are once more being readied.

In Spain, authorities in its richest region of Catalonia are set to announce either a closure of bars and restaurants for two weeks or a drastic reduction in opening hours.

In Belgium, with Europe's second worst infection rate per capita, hospitals now have to reserve a quarter of their beds for COVID-19 patients.

"We can't see the end of the tunnel today," Renaud Mazy, the managing director of the University Clinics of Saint-Luc in Brussels, told Belgian radio La Premiere.

European countries have begun to close schools and cancel surgeries, going well beyond curbs on social life, as overwhelmed authorities face their nightmare scenario of a COVID-19 resurgence right before the onset of winter.

European countries have begun to close schools and cancel surgeries, going well beyond curbs on social life, as overwhelmed authorities face their nightmare scenario of a COVID-19 resurgence right before the onset of winter. Most European nations eased lockdowns over the summer to start reviving economies already heading for unprecedented downturns and job losses from the pandemic's first wave. But the return of normal activity - from packed restaurants to new university terms - fuelled a sharply-rising spike in cases all over the continent. Also read: Spain imposes new restrictions in Catalonia amid virus surge in Europe Bars and pubs were among the first to shut or face earlier closing in the new lockdowns, but now the surging infection rates are also testing governments' resolve to keep schools open and non-COVID medical care going. The Czech Republic, which has Europe's worst rate per capita, has shifted schools to distance learning and hospitals started cutting non-urgent medical procedures to free up beds. Bars, restaurants and clubs have shut. "Sometimes we are at the edge of crying, that happens quite often now," said Lenka Krejcova, a head nurse at Slany hospital northwest of Prague, as builders sped through the hospital's corridors to turn a general ward into a COVID-19 department. Moscow authorities said on Wednesday they would introduce online learning for many students starting on Monday, while Northern Ireland announced a two-week schools' closure. Major European economies of Germany, Britain and France have so far resisted pressure to close schools, a move that during the spring lockdowns created hardship across the workforce, with parents struggling to juggle child care and work from home. 'IT'S A MESS' In Germany, politicians are debating whether to extend the Christmas-New Year break to reduce contagion among children spreading to the wider community, though critics say there is no evidence that schools have been infection hot spots. The Netherlands returned to "partial lockdown" on Wednesday, closing bars and restaurants, but kept schools open. European daily infections have been running at an average of almost 100,000 a day, forcing governments to introduce a range of tightening restrictions, each attempting to calibrate them in order to protect health without destroying livelihoods. Also read: WHO records biggest one-day increase in global coronavirus cases as Europe grapples with virus "It's a mess, it's a mess, my son, what can I tell you? We really don't know how we are going to end up," said an Italian pensioner in Rome. French President Emmanuel Macron is expected to unveil further restrictions on Wednesday, with media reporting that city curfews are under consideration. France's five largest cities - Paris, Marseille, Lyon, Toulouse and Lille - are already on maximum alert, with bars and gyms closed and restaurants under strict controls. British Prime Minister Boris Johnson faces opposition calls to impose another national lockdown in England, but has so far resisted. Hospital admissions, however, are climbing and field hospitals in the spring are once more being readied. In Spain, authorities in its richest region of Catalonia are set to announce either a closure of bars and restaurants for two weeks or a drastic reduction in opening hours. In Belgium, with Europe's second worst infection rate per capita, hospitals now have to reserve a quarter of their beds for COVID-19 patients. "We can't see the end of the tunnel today," Renaud Mazy, the managing director of the University Clinics of Saint-Luc in Brussels, told Belgian radio La Premiere.

Panicked Europe battens down against COVID second wave

Journalists covering COVID-19 pandemic claim that Facebook is the biggest spreader of disinformation, followed by elected officials. &nbsp;

An international survey of journalism and COVID-19 conducted by the International Center for Journalists (ICFJ) and the Tow Center for Digital Journalism at Columbia University shed light on false information.

Facebook recently updated its hate speech policy, effectively banning all content which denies or distorts the Holocaust. Earlier, Zuckerberg had denied appeals to do the same.

Also read:&nbsp;<a href="http://13.235.153.162/world/dr-li-meng-yan-virologist-who-claims-covid-19-manufactured-in-china-lab-challenges-facebook-335158" hreflang="en">Dr Li-Meng Yan, virologist who claims COVID-19 manufactured in China lab challenges Facebook</a>

The researchers found that 66 per cent journalists&nbsp; associated Facebook with fake news, and called it the primary source of “prolific disinformation”.

82 per cent journalists part of the study claimed to have reported misinformation to Facebook, and its corollary platforms WhatsApp and Instagram. Out of these, almost half claimed that they were dissatisfied with the company’s response.

The survey also looked at disinformation spread on Twitter, Youtube, and Google search. The project began in April 2020 to ascertain the correlation between coronavirus and journalism.

Also read:&nbsp;<a href="http://13.235.153.162/technology/facebook-will-ban-ads-discouraging-people-from-getting-vaccines-335075" hreflang="en">Facebook will ban ads discouraging people from getting vaccines</a>

Half of the journalists from the US, UK, India, Nigeria, and Brazil claimed politicians and elected officials remained the second top source of false information regarding COVID-19, after social media.

In August, findings claimed that websites spreading misinformation about COVID-19 garnered half a billion views on Facebook in the month of April, when COVID-19 was spreading ferociously throughout the world.

Journalists covering COVID-19 pandemic claim that Facebook is the biggest spreader of disinformation, followed by elected officials. An international survey of journalism and COVID-19 conducted by the International Center for Journalists (ICFJ) and the Tow Center for Digital Journalism at Columbia University shed light on false information.

Journalists covering COVID-19 pandemic claim that Facebook is the biggest spreader of disinformation, followed by elected officials. An international survey of journalism and COVID-19 conducted by the International Center for Journalists (ICFJ) and the Tow Center for Digital Journalism at Columbia University shed light on false information. Facebook recently updated its hate speech policy, effectively banning all content which denies or distorts the Holocaust. Earlier, Zuckerberg had denied appeals to do the same. Also read: Dr Li-Meng Yan, virologist who claims COVID-19 manufactured in China lab challenges Facebook The researchers found that 66 per cent journalists associated Facebook with fake news, and called it the primary source of “prolific disinformation”. 82 per cent journalists part of the study claimed to have reported misinformation to Facebook, and its corollary platforms WhatsApp and Instagram. Out of these, almost half claimed that they were dissatisfied with the company’s response. The survey also looked at disinformation spread on Twitter, Youtube, and Google search. The project began in April 2020 to ascertain the correlation between coronavirus and journalism. Also read: Facebook will ban ads discouraging people from getting vaccines Half of the journalists from the US, UK, India, Nigeria, and Brazil claimed politicians and elected officials remained the second top source of false information regarding COVID-19, after social media. In August, findings claimed that websites spreading misinformation about COVID-19 garnered half a billion views on Facebook in the month of April, when COVID-19 was spreading ferociously throughout the world.

Facebook and elected officials biggest sources of coronavirus disinformation, journalists claim

Donald Trump's ardent Indian fan in Telangana has died of cardiac arrest. Bussa Krishna, who worshipped Donald Trump and was upset by the news of US President contracting Covid-19 passed away on Sunday (October 11). He had posted a tearful video on his Facebook page some days ago and had wished Trump good health and had prayed for his fast recovery from coronavirus that has killed more than 1 million people worldwide.

Trump revealed on Oct. 2 that he had tested positive for COVID-19 and spent three nights in the hospital for treatment. He said on Sunday he had fully recovered and was due to resume campaigning on Monday ahead of the Nov. 3 U.S. election.

Speaking to local media, Krishna's family said he was "depressed" that Trump and his wife Melania had got the disease and that he wasn't eating or sleeping in the days before he collapsed.

"He started worshipping more like not for the one or two hours, but for three-four hours and he's starving, he's fasting, starving, fasting and he's crying continuously," Krishna's cousin told local media.

(With Reuters inputs)

Donald Trump's ardent Indian fan in Telangana has died of cardiac arrest. Bussa Krishna, who worshipped Donald Trump and was upset by the news of US President contracting Covid-19 passed away on Sunday (October 11).

Donald Trump's ardent Indian fan in Telangana has died of cardiac arrest. Bussa Krishna, who worshipped Donald Trump and was upset by the news of US President contracting Covid-19 passed away on Sunday (October 11). He had posted a tearful video on his Facebook page some days ago and had wished Trump good health and had prayed for his fast recovery from coronavirus that has killed more than 1 million people worldwide. Trump revealed on Oct. 2 that he had tested positive for COVID-19 and spent three nights in the hospital for treatment. He said on Sunday he had fully recovered and was due to resume campaigning on Monday ahead of the Nov. 3 U.S. election. Speaking to local media, Krishna's family said he was "depressed" that Trump and his wife Melania had got the disease and that he wasn't eating or sleeping in the days before he collapsed. "He started worshipping more like not for the one or two hours, but for three-four hours and he's starving, he's fasting, starving, fasting and he's crying continuously," Krishna's cousin told local media. (With Reuters inputs)

Telangana: Ardent fan of Donald Trump dies 'depressed' after US President's Covid-19 infection

Standing in circles marked to keep social distance, thousands of faithful gathered and held candles at one of Catholicism’s most famous sanctuaries in Portugal on Monday evening, with many praying for the end of the coronavirus pandemic.

Coronavirus Pandemic: Thousands pray in Portugal's main catholic site

British Prime Minister Boris Johnson will on Monday impose a tiered system of further restrictions on parts of England as the COVID-19 outbreak accelerates, though anger is rising at the cost of the stringent curtailment of freedoms.

UK PM Boris Johnson to unveil three-tier lockdown plan

South Korea reported 102 new coronavirus cases as of Monday midnight, marking the first triple-digit increase in six days, the Korea Disease Control and Prevention Agency (KDCA) said on Tuesday.

Daily infections had fallen largely into the double-digit range in the past two weeks, which led the government to relax some rules on social distancing this week.

The latest daily tally was slightly up from 97 a day before and the country reported one additional COVID-19 death. It brought the total number of coronavirus infections to 24,805 and the death toll to 434, the KDCA said.

The increase was chiefly ascribed to recent spikes in imported cases in line with resurgences in infections around the globe.

Of the new cases, 69 were domestically transmitted, and 33 imported. The largest portion of imported cases came from Russia, with 14, followed by Japan with five and Nepal with four, KDCA data showed.&nbsp;

South Korea reported 102 new coronavirus cases as of Monday midnight, marking the first triple-digit increase in six days, the Korea Disease Control and Prevention Agency (KDCA) said on Tuesday.

South Korea reported 102 new coronavirus cases as of Monday midnight, marking the first triple-digit increase in six days, the Korea Disease Control and Prevention Agency (KDCA) said on Tuesday. Daily infections had fallen largely into the double-digit range in the past two weeks, which led the government to relax some rules on social distancing this week. The latest daily tally was slightly up from 97 a day before and the country reported one additional COVID-19 death. It brought the total number of coronavirus infections to 24,805 and the death toll to 434, the KDCA said. The increase was chiefly ascribed to recent spikes in imported cases in line with resurgences in infections around the globe. Of the new cases, 69 were domestically transmitted, and 33 imported. The largest portion of imported cases came from Russia, with 14, followed by Japan with five and Nepal with four, KDCA data showed.

South Korea reports first triple-digit rise in coronavirus cases in six days

US President Donald Trump, with the presidential election just three weeks away, returned&nbsp;to the campaign trail on Monday after being hospitalised for coronavirus, and set off on a blitz of key swing states. He tested negative for COVID-19 on consecutive days, the White House physician said.

Trump's evening rally at an airport in Sanford, Florida,&nbsp;kicked off a three-week sprint to Election Day as new polls show him losing more ground to Democratic rival Joe Biden in two battleground states that could decide the November 3 contest.

"It's great to be back in my home state, Florida, to make my official return to the campaign trail," Trump declared&nbsp;in&nbsp;front of a crowd of thousands of supporters, standing shoulder-to-shoulder, mostly without masks, despite the ongoing pandemic.

"I am so energised by your prayers and humbled by your support," he said.

Trump -- yet again -- played down the coronavirus and said, "22 days from now we're going to win this state. We're going to win four more years at the White House."

"I feel so powerful. I'll walk into that audience. I'll walk in there, and I'll kiss everyone in that audience. I'll kiss the guys and the beautiful women... everybody," he added.

In rare form just a week after his release from hospital, Trump's hour-long speech called on all of his campaign classics: vicious attacks against "Crooked Hillary" Clinton and the "corrupt" press, alarmist warnings against the "radical left" and the "socialist nightmare."

Trump also mocked his opponent, whom he has nicknamed "Sleepy Joe," saying that "practically nobody showed up" to Biden's campaign event.

Unlike Trump, Biden has been following public health guidelines during the pandemic, hosting socially-distanced campaign events that sharply contrast with Trump's packed, largely maskless extravaganzas -- including a recent celebration at the White House described by experts as a "superspreader."

The president was earlier declared non-contagious. or "not a transmission risk",&nbsp;following which he headed to Florida for his&nbsp;campaign rally -- since he disclosed he contracted the novel coronavirus.

"I can share with you that he tested negative, on consecutive days, using the Abbot BinaxNOW antigen card," Sean Conley said in a memo released to the public on Monday. The doctor said the negative determination had taken into account a number of measurements, and not just the rapid test alone.

The&nbsp;brief statement was issued while the president was on board Air Force One en route to Florida for the&nbsp;campaign rally.

The US president said on October 2 that he contracted the virus, following which he spent three days in a military hospital. In a memo, Dr Sean Conley said the tests and other clinical and laboratory data "indicate a lack of detectable viral replication."

Trump's rally in Florida, and planned rallies in Pennsylvania on Tuesday, Iowa on Wednesday and North Carolina on Thursday, will be watched closely to see whether the president has reshaped his campaign approach since contracting the virus.

Trump is now seeking to change the dynamics of a race that national opinion polls and some state polls show he is losing to Biden.

Trump told Fox News on Sunday he felt good and, without producing evidence, that he was now "immune", an assertion that drew a flag from Twitter for violating the social media platform's rules about misleading information related to COVID-19.

Biden also tested negative for COVID-19 on Monday, his campaign said in a statement. The former vice president has tested negative a number of times since Trump announced his positive test.

Biden pulled further ahead in Wisconsin and Pennsylvania, building momentum in two states that Trump carried in the 2016 presidential election, Reuters/Ipsos opinion polls showed on Monday.

The polls, conducted Tuesday through Sunday, showed Biden now leading Trump by 7 percentage points in both states.

Taking advantage of his momentum and growing advantage in the polls, Biden on Monday campaigned in Ohio, where he was once considered a long shot, as he tries to expand his reach into Republican-leaning states.

Biden also appeared at a get-out-the-vote event in Cincinnati. It was Biden`s second campaign trip in as many weeks to Ohio, which was once thought out of reach but where polls now show a competitive race. He blasted his handling of the pandemic.

"215,000 dead because of Covid," the 77-year-old former vice president told a small group of auto workers who gathered in their American-made cars in a parking lot outside a union hall in Toledo, Ohio.

"Trump knew how dangerous the disease was but did nothing," Biden said. "Why didn't he tell us? Why didn't he warn us?"

"His reckless personal conduct since his diagnosis has been unconscionable," Biden added. "The longer Donald Trump is president, the more reckless he seems to get."

Trump won the state by 8 percentage points four years ago and almost certainly must carry it again to win re-election. No Republican has won the White House without carrying Ohio.

For months, Trump had worked furiously to shift public attention away from the virus and his handling of the pandemic, which has infected more than 7.8 million people in the United States, killed more than 214,000 and put millions out of work.

His own illness has put the spotlight squarely on his coronavirus response during the closing stretch of the race, with the Biden campaign scaling up its attacks and stretching its campaign into states that normally lean Republican.

Critics fault Trump for failing to encourage supporters at campaign events, and even White House staff, to wear protective masks and abide by social-distancing guidelines. At least 11 close Trump aides have tested positive for the coronavirus.

(with inputs from agencies)

US President Donald Trump, with the presidential election just three weeks away, returned to the campaign trail on Monday after being hospitalised for coronavirus, and set off on a blitz of key swing states.

US President Donald Trump, with the presidential election just three weeks away, returned to the campaign trail on Monday after being hospitalised for coronavirus, and set off on a blitz of key swing states. He tested negative for COVID-19 on consecutive days, the White House physician said. Trump's evening rally at an airport in Sanford, Florida, kicked off a three-week sprint to Election Day as new polls show him losing more ground to Democratic rival Joe Biden in two battleground states that could decide the November 3 contest. "It's great to be back in my home state, Florida, to make my official return to the campaign trail," Trump declared in front of a crowd of thousands of supporters, standing shoulder-to-shoulder, mostly without masks, despite the ongoing pandemic. "I am so energised by your prayers and humbled by your support," he said. Trump -- yet again -- played down the coronavirus and said, "22 days from now we're going to win this state. We're going to win four more years at the White House." "I feel so powerful. I'll walk into that audience. I'll walk in there, and I'll kiss everyone in that audience. I'll kiss the guys and the beautiful women... everybody," he added. In rare form just a week after his release from hospital, Trump's hour-long speech called on all of his campaign classics: vicious attacks against "Crooked Hillary" Clinton and the "corrupt" press, alarmist warnings against the "radical left" and the "socialist nightmare." Trump also mocked his opponent, whom he has nicknamed "Sleepy Joe," saying that "practically nobody showed up" to Biden's campaign event. Unlike Trump, Biden has been following public health guidelines during the pandemic, hosting socially-distanced campaign events that sharply contrast with Trump's packed, largely maskless extravaganzas -- including a recent celebration at the White House described by experts as a "superspreader." The president was earlier declared non-contagious. or "not a transmission risk", following which he headed to Florida for his campaign rally -- since he disclosed he contracted the novel coronavirus. "I can share with you that he tested negative, on consecutive days, using the Abbot BinaxNOW antigen card," Sean Conley said in a memo released to the public on Monday. The doctor said the negative determination had taken into account a number of measurements, and not just the rapid test alone. The brief statement was issued while the president was on board Air Force One en route to Florida for the campaign rally. The US president said on October 2 that he contracted the virus, following which he spent three days in a military hospital. In a memo, Dr Sean Conley said the tests and other clinical and laboratory data "indicate a lack of detectable viral replication." Trump's rally in Florida, and planned rallies in Pennsylvania on Tuesday, Iowa on Wednesday and North Carolina on Thursday, will be watched closely to see whether the president has reshaped his campaign approach since contracting the virus. Trump is now seeking to change the dynamics of a race that national opinion polls and some state polls show he is losing to Biden. Trump told Fox News on Sunday he felt good and, without producing evidence, that he was now "immune", an assertion that drew a flag from Twitter for violating the social media platform's rules about misleading information related to COVID-19. Biden also tested negative for COVID-19 on Monday, his campaign said in a statement. The former vice president has tested negative a number of times since Trump announced his positive test. Biden pulled further ahead in Wisconsin and Pennsylvania, building momentum in two states that Trump carried in the 2016 presidential election, Reuters/Ipsos opinion polls showed on Monday. The polls, conducted Tuesday through Sunday, showed Biden now leading Trump by 7 percentage points in both states. Taking advantage of his momentum and growing advantage in the polls, Biden on Monday campaigned in Ohio, where he was once considered a long shot, as he tries to expand his reach into Republican-leaning states. Biden also appeared at a get-out-the-vote event in Cincinnati. It was Biden`s second campaign trip in as many weeks to Ohio, which was once thought out of reach but where polls now show a competitive race. He blasted his handling of the pandemic. "215,000 dead because of Covid," the 77-year-old former vice president told a small group of auto workers who gathered in their American-made cars in a parking lot outside a union hall in Toledo, Ohio. "Trump knew how dangerous the disease was but did nothing," Biden said. "Why didn't he tell us? Why didn't he warn us?" "His reckless personal conduct since his diagnosis has been unconscionable," Biden added. "The longer Donald Trump is president, the more reckless he seems to get." Trump won the state by 8 percentage points four years ago and almost certainly must carry it again to win re-election. No Republican has won the White House without carrying Ohio. For months, Trump had worked furiously to shift public attention away from the virus and his handling of the pandemic, which has infected more than 7.8 million people in the United States, killed more than 214,000 and put millions out of work. His own illness has put the spotlight squarely on his coronavirus response during the closing stretch of the race, with the Biden campaign scaling up its attacks and stretching its campaign into states that normally lean Republican. Critics fault Trump for failing to encourage supporters at campaign events, and even White House staff, to wear protective masks and abide by social-distancing guidelines. At least 11 close Trump aides have tested positive for the coronavirus. (with inputs from agencies)

'I feel so powerful': Trump returns to campaign trail after testing negative for coronavirus

COVID-19 patients may experience more severe symptoms the second time they are infected, according to research released Tuesday confirming it is possible to catch the potentially deadly disease more than once.

Study: COVID-19 reinfection casts doubt on virus immunity

Covid-19 patients may experience more severe symptoms the second time they are infected, according to research released Tuesday confirming it is possible to catch the potentially deadly disease more than once.

A study published in The Lancet Infectious Diseases journal charts the first confirmed case of Covid-19 reinfection in the United States -- the country worst hit by the pandemic -- and indicates that exposure to the virus may not guarantee future immunity.

The patient, a 25-year-old Nevada man, was infected with two distinct variants of SARS-CoV-2, the virus that causes Covid-19, within a 48-day time frame.&nbsp;

The second infection was more severe than the first, resulting in the patient being hospitalised with oxygen support.

The paper noted four other cases of reinfection confirmed globally, with one patient each in Belgium, the Netherlands, Hong Kong and Ecuador.&nbsp;

Experts said the prospect of reinfection could have a profound impact on how the world battles through the pandemic.

In particular, it could influence the hunt for a vaccine -- the currently Holy Grail of pharmaceutical research.&nbsp;

"The possibility of reinfections could have significant implications for our understanding of Covid-19 immunity, especially in the absence of an effective vaccine," said Mark Pandori, for the Nevada State Public Health Laboratory and lead study author.&nbsp;

"We need more research to understand how long immunity may last for people exposed to SARS-CoV-2 and why some of these second infections, while rare, are presenting as more severe."

- Waning immunity? -

Vaccines work by triggering the body's natural immune response to a certain pathogen, arming it with antibodies it to fight off future waves of infection.

But it is not at all clear how long Covid-19 antibodies last.&nbsp;

For some diseases, such as measles, infection confers lifelong immunity. For other pathogens, immunity may be fleeting at best.&nbsp;

The authors said the US patient could have been exposed to a very high dose of the virus the second time around, triggering a more acute reaction.&nbsp;

Alternatively, it may have been a more virulent strain of the virus.&nbsp;

Another hypothesis is a mechanism known as antibody dependent enhancement -- that is, when antibodies actually make subsequent infections worse, such as with dengue fever.

The researchers pointed out that reinfection of any kind remains rare, with only a handful of confirmed cases out of tens of millions of Covid-19 infections globally.

However, since many cases are asymptomatic and therefore unlikely to have tested positive initially, it may be impossible to know if a given Covid-19 case is the first or second infection.

In a linked comment to The Lancet paper, Akiko Iwasaka, a professor of Immunobiology and Molecular, Cellular and Developmental Biology at Yale University, said the findings could impact public health measures.

"As more cases of reinfection surface, the scientific community will have the opportunity to understand better the correlates of protection and how frequently natural infections with SARS-CoV-2 induce that level of immunity," she said.

"This information is key to understanding which vaccines are capable of crossing that threshold to confer individual and herd immunity," added Iwasaka, who was not involved in the study.

Covid-19 patients may experience more severe symptoms the second time they are infected, according to research released Tuesday confirming it is possible to catch the potentially deadly disease more than once.

Covid-19 patients may experience more severe symptoms the second time they are infected, according to research released Tuesday confirming it is possible to catch the potentially deadly disease more than once. A study published in The Lancet Infectious Diseases journal charts the first confirmed case of Covid-19 reinfection in the United States -- the country worst hit by the pandemic -- and indicates that exposure to the virus may not guarantee future immunity. The patient, a 25-year-old Nevada man, was infected with two distinct variants of SARS-CoV-2, the virus that causes Covid-19, within a 48-day time frame. The second infection was more severe than the first, resulting in the patient being hospitalised with oxygen support. The paper noted four other cases of reinfection confirmed globally, with one patient each in Belgium, the Netherlands, Hong Kong and Ecuador. Experts said the prospect of reinfection could have a profound impact on how the world battles through the pandemic. In particular, it could influence the hunt for a vaccine -- the currently Holy Grail of pharmaceutical research. "The possibility of reinfections could have significant implications for our understanding of Covid-19 immunity, especially in the absence of an effective vaccine," said Mark Pandori, for the Nevada State Public Health Laboratory and lead study author. "We need more research to understand how long immunity may last for people exposed to SARS-CoV-2 and why some of these second infections, while rare, are presenting as more severe." - Waning immunity? - Vaccines work by triggering the body's natural immune response to a certain pathogen, arming it with antibodies it to fight off future waves of infection. But it is not at all clear how long Covid-19 antibodies last. For some diseases, such as measles, infection confers lifelong immunity. For other pathogens, immunity may be fleeting at best. The authors said the US patient could have been exposed to a very high dose of the virus the second time around, triggering a more acute reaction. Alternatively, it may have been a more virulent strain of the virus. Another hypothesis is a mechanism known as antibody dependent enhancement -- that is, when antibodies actually make subsequent infections worse, such as with dengue fever. The researchers pointed out that reinfection of any kind remains rare, with only a handful of confirmed cases out of tens of millions of Covid-19 infections globally. However, since many cases are asymptomatic and therefore unlikely to have tested positive initially, it may be impossible to know if a given Covid-19 case is the first or second infection. In a linked comment to The Lancet paper, Akiko Iwasaka, a professor of Immunobiology and Molecular, Cellular and Developmental Biology at Yale University, said the findings could impact public health measures. "As more cases of reinfection surface, the scientific community will have the opportunity to understand better the correlates of protection and how frequently natural infections with SARS-CoV-2 induce that level of immunity," she said. "This information is key to understanding which vaccines are capable of crossing that threshold to confer individual and herd immunity," added Iwasaka, who was not involved in the study.

Covid-19 reinfection casts doubt on virus immunity, study says

When the coronavirus pandemic shuttered offices around the United States in March, many companies told their employees that it would be only a short hiatus away from headquarters.

Workers, they said, would be back in their cubicles within a matter of weeks. Weeks turned into September. Then September turned into January. And now, with the virus still surging in some parts of the country, a growing number of employers are delaying return-to-office dates once again, to the summer of 2021 at the earliest.

Google was one of the first to announce that July 2021 was its return-to-office date. Uber, Slack and Airbnb soon jumped on the bandwagon. In the past week, Microsoft, Target, Ford Motor Co. and The New York Times said they, too, had postponed the return of in-person work to next summer and acknowledged the inevitable: The pandemic isn’t going away anytime soon.

“Let’s just bite the bullet,” said Joan Burke, the chief people officer of DocuSign in San Francisco. In August, her company, which manages electronic document signatures, decided it would allow its 5,200 employees to work from home until June 2021.

“We’re still in a place where this is evolving,” she said. “None of us have all the answers.”

Many more companies are expected to delay their return-to-office dates to keep workers safe. And workers said they were in no rush to go back, with 73% of U.S. employees fearing that being in their workplace could pose a risk to their personal health and safety, according to a study by Wakefield Research commissioned by Envoy, a workplace technology company.

More companies are also saying that they will institute permanent work-from-home policies so employees do not ever have to come into the office again.

In May, Facebook was one of the first to announce that it would allow many employees to work remotely even after the pandemic. Twitter, Coinbase and Shopify have also said they would do so. On Friday, Microsoft announced it would also be part of that shift.

The elongating timelines and changing policies add up to a continued balancing act for companies as the coronavirus shatters work norms and upends assumptions about where workers need to be to achieve maximum productivity. Employers are also under pressure to be as open as possible about their intentions so that workers can plan ahead with their lives.

The postponement of return dates is a “psychological blow for those who expected this to be a transition phase,” said Tsedal Neeley, a Harvard Business School professor who studies remote work. “The reality is hitting that, ‘There won’t be a vaccine as I expected very quickly. This is going to be my life, and I’d better learn how to do this.’”

Neeley likened the situation to waiting at an airport terminal for a flight that is continually delayed. With the new dates announced, she said, people can finally start adjusting from a temporary “grinning and bear it” approach to a permanent shift.

Successful companies “have begun to think about long-term strategy rather than ‘Let’s just survive our crisis,’” she said.

Much of corporate America is now following the lead of Silicon Valley tech companies like Google and Facebook. They were among those that allowed employees to work from home even before the pandemic hit in full force in March. Since then, Facebook has set the tone in planning for permanent remote work, while Google established the July 2021 target date for returning to the office.

“I hope this will offer the flexibility you need to balance work with taking care of yourselves and your loved ones over the next 12 months,” Google’s chief executive, Sundar Pichai, wrote in an email to employees about the July 2021 date.

Other employers soon emulated the tech giants, also citing worker flexibility as a key factor in pushing their return-to-office dates to next summer.

Burke, the DocuSign executive, said announcing the June 2021 return date to employees prompted a “collective sigh of relief inside the company” because it put an end to the incremental postponements and uncertainty of when they would be expected to return.

Remote work has been productive, she said, and people like not having to commute. But a mix of in-person and remote is probably the most popular option for employees when life returns to normal, she said, because they also miss the social interaction of an office space.

Zoom “is not the same thing, and it’s exhausting,” Burke said. “By 7 o’clock last night, I was Zoomed out.”

Other companies that have delayed their returns to the office until next summer often face a more complicated decision because their workforces are not just made up of white-collar engineers, unlike those of internet companies.

Ford said last week that its decision to hold off on back in-person office work through June 2021 would apply to its roughly 32,000 employees in North America who are already working remotely. The company, which has about 188,000 employees, said the policy does not apply to factory staff.

When Target announced its decision to let some employees continue to work at home through June 2021 in a letter to staff last week, it said it would apply just to employees at its headquarters in Minneapolis. The company said a small number of employees who rely on the headquarters facilities would continue to work on-site. In-store employees will work in retail stores as usual.

Some companies that have already tried bringing employees back to the office have grappled with safety concerns. Last month, Goldman Sachs and JPMorgan Chase sent send some workers back home after employees who had returned to the office tested positive for the virus.

When the coronavirus pandemic shuttered offices around the United States in March, many companies told their employees that it would be only a short hiatus away from headquarters.

When the coronavirus pandemic shuttered offices around the United States in March, many companies told their employees that it would be only a short hiatus away from headquarters. Workers, they said, would be back in their cubicles within a matter of weeks. Weeks turned into September. Then September turned into January. And now, with the virus still surging in some parts of the country, a growing number of employers are delaying return-to-office dates once again, to the summer of 2021 at the earliest. Google was one of the first to announce that July 2021 was its return-to-office date. Uber, Slack and Airbnb soon jumped on the bandwagon. In the past week, Microsoft, Target, Ford Motor Co. and The New York Times said they, too, had postponed the return of in-person work to next summer and acknowledged the inevitable: The pandemic isn’t going away anytime soon. “Let’s just bite the bullet,” said Joan Burke, the chief people officer of DocuSign in San Francisco. In August, her company, which manages electronic document signatures, decided it would allow its 5,200 employees to work from home until June 2021. “We’re still in a place where this is evolving,” she said. “None of us have all the answers.” Many more companies are expected to delay their return-to-office dates to keep workers safe. And workers said they were in no rush to go back, with 73% of U.S. employees fearing that being in their workplace could pose a risk to their personal health and safety, according to a study by Wakefield Research commissioned by Envoy, a workplace technology company. More companies are also saying that they will institute permanent work-from-home policies so employees do not ever have to come into the office again. In May, Facebook was one of the first to announce that it would allow many employees to work remotely even after the pandemic. Twitter, Coinbase and Shopify have also said they would do so. On Friday, Microsoft announced it would also be part of that shift. The elongating timelines and changing policies add up to a continued balancing act for companies as the coronavirus shatters work norms and upends assumptions about where workers need to be to achieve maximum productivity. Employers are also under pressure to be as open as possible about their intentions so that workers can plan ahead with their lives. The postponement of return dates is a “psychological blow for those who expected this to be a transition phase,” said Tsedal Neeley, a Harvard Business School professor who studies remote work. “The reality is hitting that, ‘There won’t be a vaccine as I expected very quickly. This is going to be my life, and I’d better learn how to do this.’” Neeley likened the situation to waiting at an airport terminal for a flight that is continually delayed. With the new dates announced, she said, people can finally start adjusting from a temporary “grinning and bear it” approach to a permanent shift. Successful companies “have begun to think about long-term strategy rather than ‘Let’s just survive our crisis,’” she said. Much of corporate America is now following the lead of Silicon Valley tech companies like Google and Facebook. They were among those that allowed employees to work from home even before the pandemic hit in full force in March. Since then, Facebook has set the tone in planning for permanent remote work, while Google established the July 2021 target date for returning to the office. “I hope this will offer the flexibility you need to balance work with taking care of yourselves and your loved ones over the next 12 months,” Google’s chief executive, Sundar Pichai, wrote in an email to employees about the July 2021 date. Other employers soon emulated the tech giants, also citing worker flexibility as a key factor in pushing their return-to-office dates to next summer. Burke, the DocuSign executive, said announcing the June 2021 return date to employees prompted a “collective sigh of relief inside the company” because it put an end to the incremental postponements and uncertainty of when they would be expected to return. Remote work has been productive, she said, and people like not having to commute. But a mix of in-person and remote is probably the most popular option for employees when life returns to normal, she said, because they also miss the social interaction of an office space. Zoom “is not the same thing, and it’s exhausting,” Burke said. “By 7 o’clock last night, I was Zoomed out.” Other companies that have delayed their returns to the office until next summer often face a more complicated decision because their workforces are not just made up of white-collar engineers, unlike those of internet companies. Ford said last week that its decision to hold off on back in-person office work through June 2021 would apply to its roughly 32,000 employees in North America who are already working remotely. The company, which has about 188,000 employees, said the policy does not apply to factory staff. When Target announced its decision to let some employees continue to work at home through June 2021 in a letter to staff last week, it said it would apply just to employees at its headquarters in Minneapolis. The company said a small number of employees who rely on the headquarters facilities would continue to work on-site. In-store employees will work in retail stores as usual. Some companies that have already tried bringing employees back to the office have grappled with safety concerns. Last month, Goldman Sachs and JPMorgan Chase sent send some workers back home after employees who had returned to the office tested positive for the virus.

July is the new January: More companies delay return to the office

Mark Martin's family restaurant weathered two world wars, the Dust Bowl, and the Great Depression, serving up heaping plates of hand-battered fried chicken, mashed potatoes and creamed corn to a devoted clientele. But it could not survive the pandemic.

The restaurant, nestled by the highway in Abilene, Kansas, closed permanently on Sept. 25, after struggling to break even amid shutdowns caused by the COVID-19 outbreak.

"We're kind of in shock that this will be the end of it for us," said Martin, the fourth generation to run the Brookville Hotel, a name that reflects its origins as a small hotel in nearby Brookville, Kansas that his family acquired in 1894.

The virus has upended travel and spending habits for millions of Americans. Small business failures in the first months of the pandemic were modest, however, as federal aid helped companies make payrolls as they waited for life to return to normal.

Also read:&nbsp;<a href="http://13.235.153.162/world/pangolins-found-to-carry-coronavirus-strains-still-being-used-in-china-334888" hreflang="en">Pangolins, found to carry coronavirus strains, still being used in China</a>

But the virus continues to spread, shattering records&nbsp;for new cases in the Midwest last week, while emergency federal aid is running out. With cold weather and flu season nearing, which typically brings a drop in business for restaurants even in good years, Brookville's fate may be a harbinger of things to come.

Based on an analysis of credit card transactions by the online marketing firm Womply, one in five small businesses in the United States open at the beginning of 2020 had permanently stopped operating as of mid-September - including 23% of restaurants. About 40% of restaurants recently surveyed&nbsp;by the National Restaurants Association say they will be out of business in six months unless there is more financial relief from the government.

Martin, 70, said he was hopeful in the first months of the pandemic. The restaurant secured a $57,000 loan through the federal government's Paycheck Protection Program - a vital lifeline, he said. Three-quarters of that went to pay his several dozen employees, "which allowed us to free up those dollars to pay other expenses, like the mortgage and gas bill — all the stuff a restaurant needs," he said.

They reopened Easter weekend for takeout only and hit their goals: 200 meals on Saturday and 400 on Easter itself. Mother's Day was a hit, with 700 takeout meals. They were eventually able to reopen the dining rooms, with limited seating.

However, business remained half the level of a year ago, Martin said. Summer is normally the busy season, thanks to a steady stream of visitors to the nearby Eisenhower Presidential Library and Museum. Often, Brookville would have two tour buses a week stop by for lunch or dinner. But the museum remains closed, and they had just two buses all summer.

Martin cut costs everywhere, including switching to hauling the restaurant's garbage to the dump with his own trailer to shave the $375 a month cost of pickup - but it was not enough to turn a profit.

By the time they closed in September, he estimates he had lost $50,000 in total for the year, compared to the up to $50,000 annual profit he was used to.

SHUTDOWN RIPPLES THROUGH COMMUNITY

Martin and his wife Connie rebuilt the restaurant in Abilene in 2000, painstakingly mirroring the old hotel's distinctive look, with a round-roof facade and the words "Since 1870" in large letters. His mortgage, which helped to fund the revamp, stands at around $700,000.

There was no fifth generation waiting to take over. The couple's only child, daughter Brandy Lea, passed away 25 years ago at age 17.

Also read:&nbsp;<a href="http://13.235.153.162/world/i-feel-so-powerful-trump-returns-to-campaign-trail-after-testing-negative-for-coronavirus-334848" hreflang="en">'I feel so powerful': Trump returns to campaign trail after testing negative for coronavirus</a>

Martin has heard from his bank that there might be interest from someone who could reopen the restaurant, but he thinks that is unlikely until after the pandemic subsides. He said he has no plans to retire, in part because he has poured most of his savings into the restaurant, and just applied for a job as a courier.

Among the personal things he took with him: the framed bronze medallion Brookville received in 2007 from the James Beard Foundation when they were given an 'America's Classics' award.

The shutdown has rippled through the Abilene community, population 6,300. Kim Palenske, who hostessed at the restaurant for eight years, said she knew they were struggling but was still startled when Martin decided to close.

The restaurant was so well known, Palenske said, she was sure it would survive. "We had people from Australia," she said, "and there were people who would make a day of it to drive from Wichita to have lunch on a Sunday."

Palenske, who also works part-time at the local school, said she will need something new to make up for the lost income. "I haven't started looking yet," she said. "I'm still kind of in shock."

Customers are also reeling. Mary Stirtz and her husband, local retirees, would pick up dinner almost every warm Friday night and eat it at nearby Eisenhower Park while they watched the swimmers in the outdoor pool. They celebrated their 50th wedding anniversary in the park two years ago, with 35 dinners from Brookville for extended family and friends who attended.

"We loved it," she said. "We just loved it."

Mark Martin's family restaurant weathered two world wars, the Dust Bowl, and the Great Depression, serving up heaping plates of hand-battered fried chicken, mashed potatoes and creamed corn to a devoted clientele.

Mark Martin's family restaurant weathered two world wars, the Dust Bowl, and the Great Depression, serving up heaping plates of hand-battered fried chicken, mashed potatoes and creamed corn to a devoted clientele. But it could not survive the pandemic. The restaurant, nestled by the highway in Abilene, Kansas, closed permanently on Sept. 25, after struggling to break even amid shutdowns caused by the COVID-19 outbreak. "We're kind of in shock that this will be the end of it for us," said Martin, the fourth generation to run the Brookville Hotel, a name that reflects its origins as a small hotel in nearby Brookville, Kansas that his family acquired in 1894. The virus has upended travel and spending habits for millions of Americans. Small business failures in the first months of the pandemic were modest, however, as federal aid helped companies make payrolls as they waited for life to return to normal. Also read: Pangolins, found to carry coronavirus strains, still being used in China But the virus continues to spread, shattering records for new cases in the Midwest last week, while emergency federal aid is running out. With cold weather and flu season nearing, which typically brings a drop in business for restaurants even in good years, Brookville's fate may be a harbinger of things to come. Based on an analysis of credit card transactions by the online marketing firm Womply, one in five small businesses in the United States open at the beginning of 2020 had permanently stopped operating as of mid-September - including 23% of restaurants. About 40% of restaurants recently surveyed by the National Restaurants Association say they will be out of business in six months unless there is more financial relief from the government. Martin, 70, said he was hopeful in the first months of the pandemic. The restaurant secured a $57,000 loan through the federal government's Paycheck Protection Program - a vital lifeline, he said. Three-quarters of that went to pay his several dozen employees, "which allowed us to free up those dollars to pay other expenses, like the mortgage and gas bill — all the stuff a restaurant needs," he said. They reopened Easter weekend for takeout only and hit their goals: 200 meals on Saturday and 400 on Easter itself. Mother's Day was a hit, with 700 takeout meals. They were eventually able to reopen the dining rooms, with limited seating. However, business remained half the level of a year ago, Martin said. Summer is normally the busy season, thanks to a steady stream of visitors to the nearby Eisenhower Presidential Library and Museum. Often, Brookville would have two tour buses a week stop by for lunch or dinner. But the museum remains closed, and they had just two buses all summer. Martin cut costs everywhere, including switching to hauling the restaurant's garbage to the dump with his own trailer to shave the $375 a month cost of pickup - but it was not enough to turn a profit. By the time they closed in September, he estimates he had lost $50,000 in total for the year, compared to the up to $50,000 annual profit he was used to. SHUTDOWN RIPPLES THROUGH COMMUNITY Martin and his wife Connie rebuilt the restaurant in Abilene in 2000, painstakingly mirroring the old hotel's distinctive look, with a round-roof facade and the words "Since 1870" in large letters. His mortgage, which helped to fund the revamp, stands at around $700,000. There was no fifth generation waiting to take over. The couple's only child, daughter Brandy Lea, passed away 25 years ago at age 17. Also read: 'I feel so powerful': Trump returns to campaign trail after testing negative for coronavirus Martin has heard from his bank that there might be interest from someone who could reopen the restaurant, but he thinks that is unlikely until after the pandemic subsides. He said he has no plans to retire, in part because he has poured most of his savings into the restaurant, and just applied for a job as a courier. Among the personal things he took with him: the framed bronze medallion Brookville received in 2007 from the James Beard Foundation when they were given an 'America's Classics' award. The shutdown has rippled through the Abilene community, population 6,300. Kim Palenske, who hostessed at the restaurant for eight years, said she knew they were struggling but was still startled when Martin decided to close. The restaurant was so well known, Palenske said, she was sure it would survive. "We had people from Australia," she said, "and there were people who would make a day of it to drive from Wichita to have lunch on a Sunday." Palenske, who also works part-time at the local school, said she will need something new to make up for the lost income. "I haven't started looking yet," she said. "I'm still kind of in shock." Customers are also reeling. Mary Stirtz and her husband, local retirees, would pick up dinner almost every warm Friday night and eat it at nearby Eisenhower Park while they watched the swimmers in the outdoor pool. They celebrated their 50th wedding anniversary in the park two years ago, with 35 dinners from Brookville for extended family and friends who attended. "We loved it," she said. "We just loved it."

After frying chicken for over 100 years, Kansas restaurant is shut by pandemic

Euro zone economy is entering a tougher phase as a surge in COVID-19 cases puts a question mark over the recent rebound.

World Business Watch: ECB’s Lane braces for tougher phase for Euro zone economy

According to International Council of Nurses (ICN), many nurses caring for COVID-19 patients are suffering burn-out or psychological distress, and many have faced abuse or discrimination outside of work.

ICN: Nurses suffer burn-out, face discrimination outside of work

British Prime Minister Boris Johnson announced a new system of lockdown rules on Monday, classifying the risk level in regions to help tackle rising infection rates in parts of England and simplify existing regulations.

WHY IS THE GOVERNMENT DOING THIS?

Two reasons:

1. Because infection rates in parts of England, particularly in the north of the country, are rising fast.

Health officials say data show infections are beginning to move from younger people to more vulnerable older age groups, and will continue to spread further across the country.

2. The existing rules are confusing.

Over the summer, the government has tried to shut down outbreaks by tightening restrictions on an area-by-area basis. That has spawned a patchwork of different rules which ministers say needs simplifying.

WHAT ARE THEY DOING?

The government is announcing three tiers of regulations, each with broadly standardised rules.

Tier One: Medium

Expected to cover a significant part of the country. This is essentially a continuation of the existing rules that apply across the country. The main points are:

- Rule of Six: When seeing friends and family you do not live with you should meet in groups of 6 or less.

- Early hospitality closure: Businesses selling food or drink, indoor leisure centres or facilities, funfairs, theme parks, and bingo halls, must be closed between 10 p.m. and 5 a.m.

Tier Two: High

Most areas that have already been placed under some form of local lockdown will be put in this category, with the intention of preventing further household-to-household transmission of the virus.

- All mixing between households indoors is prohibited

- The rule of six applies outdoors

Tier Three: Very High

This will apply in the areas of greatest concern, and will define a minimum set of rules:

- Social mixing is prohibited indoors and in private gardens

- Pubs and bars will be told to close.

- Additional measures can be imposed with the agreement of local leaders. These could include closing other sectors such as gyms and casinos.

Schools, universities and non-essential retail will not be closed.

WHO DOES THIS APPLY TO?

England.

Scotland, Wales and Northern Ireland are in charge of their own rules, although they have all committed to working together where at all possible.

British Prime Minister Boris Johnson announced a new system of lockdown rules on Monday, classifying the risk level in regions to help tackle rising infection rates in parts of England and simplify existing regulations.

British Prime Minister Boris Johnson announced a new system of lockdown rules on Monday, classifying the risk level in regions to help tackle rising infection rates in parts of England and simplify existing regulations. WHY IS THE GOVERNMENT DOING THIS? Two reasons: 1. Because infection rates in parts of England, particularly in the north of the country, are rising fast. Health officials say data show infections are beginning to move from younger people to more vulnerable older age groups, and will continue to spread further across the country. 2. The existing rules are confusing. Over the summer, the government has tried to shut down outbreaks by tightening restrictions on an area-by-area basis. That has spawned a patchwork of different rules which ministers say needs simplifying. WHAT ARE THEY DOING? The government is announcing three tiers of regulations, each with broadly standardised rules. Tier One: Medium Expected to cover a significant part of the country. This is essentially a continuation of the existing rules that apply across the country. The main points are: - Rule of Six: When seeing friends and family you do not live with you should meet in groups of 6 or less. - Early hospitality closure: Businesses selling food or drink, indoor leisure centres or facilities, funfairs, theme parks, and bingo halls, must be closed between 10 p.m. and 5 a.m. Tier Two: High Most areas that have already been placed under some form of local lockdown will be put in this category, with the intention of preventing further household-to-household transmission of the virus. - All mixing between households indoors is prohibited - The rule of six applies outdoors Tier Three: Very High This will apply in the areas of greatest concern, and will define a minimum set of rules: - Social mixing is prohibited indoors and in private gardens - Pubs and bars will be told to close. - Additional measures can be imposed with the agreement of local leaders. These could include closing other sectors such as gyms and casinos. Schools, universities and non-essential retail will not be closed. WHO DOES THIS APPLY TO? England. Scotland, Wales and Northern Ireland are in charge of their own rules, although they have all committed to working together where at all possible.

What is England's new COVID-19 lockdown system?

US President Donald Trump has claimed he no longer has coronavirus and is now “immune” to Covid-19 as he prepares to return to the campaign trail.

Donald Trump claims immunity from COVID-19 ahead of rallies

For months, public health experts have been eagerly watching the companies developing spit tests for the coronavirus that could be used at home, producing results in a matter of minutes.

If these rapid tests worked, as many news articles have pointed out, they could greatly expand the number of people tested. Some experts have said they could perform as well as a vaccine in curbing the spread of the virus. But so far, the technology is not panning out as some have hoped.

E25Bio and OraSure, two companies pursuing rapid at-home coronavirus tests, have abandoned efforts to use saliva in their products. Their tests, which detect pieces of coronavirus proteins called antigens, will for now rely on shallow nose swabs.

“If I was placing a bet — which I am, because I’m leading an antigen-based testing company — I would say it’s going to be very difficult for antigen-based testing to work on saliva samples,” said Bobby Brooke Herrera, an E25Bio founder and its chief executive. The notion that the virus sets up shop in the mouth and produces enough antigen to be picked up by today’s technology, he said, “is far-fetched.”

The two companies pursued saliva (or “oral fluids,” in the case of OraSure) for months in the hopes of their tests being more comfortable than swabs, some of which go painfully deep into the nose, and less reliant on supply chains that have caused long delays for laboratory tests.

“There’s nothing more convenient than spitting in a tube,” said Dr. Valerie Fitzhugh, a pathologist at Rutgers University.

But as they continued to tinker with their tests, researchers at both E25Bio and OraSure found saliva’s performance to be more lackluster than anticipated. “This was a result of optimization studies,” said Stephen Tang, OraSure’s chief executive. A saliva antigen test is still theoretically possible, Tang added. But after comparing the amount of coronavirus antigen found in the nostrils and throat, as well as different parts of the mouth, including the cheeks, gums and tongue, “we decided to optimize around the nasal cavity,” he said.

Despite a deluge of data on saliva’s benefits, it’s relatively new to the testing scene. No fully government-approved test for a respiratory pathogen has ever used spit. And there’s still no consensus on how well saliva works for detecting the coronavirus, compared with the fluids obtained by nose swabs. Studies comparing the amount of virus in the two sites have produced conflicting results.

Spit also differs vastly among people, and can even change over the course of a single day. “We’ve all noticed that there is variable performance,” said Sarah Jung, scientific director of clinical microbiology at Children’s Hospital Colorado.

Both E25Bio and OraSure plan to seek authorization from the Food and Drug Administration to sell at-home antigen tests using nose swabs instead of spit, a technique similar to the one used by the Abbott antigen test that takes about 15 minutes. The E25Bio test would require people to swab their nose, stir the sample into a chemical soup, apply the mixture to a paper strip and wait up to half an hour for bands to appear. E25Bio’s test picks up on about 80% of the infections that ultrasensitive laboratory tests detect — the FDA’s bare minimum for a regulatory greenlight. OraSure declined to give any details about its test’s methodology or accuracy.

Saliva does seem to be working when used in laboratory tests known as PCR, which look for bits of the virus’s genetic material, or RNA, rather than antigens. PCR tests detect minute amounts of coronavirus RNA, making them far more sensitive than antigen tests. Research teams at Rutgers and Yale have been granted emergency authorization for these spit PCR tests.

At the University of Illinois, some 10,000 of the institution’s in-house PCR tests are performed each day on saliva from students, faculty and staff members — roughly 1% of the nation’s daily tests. Standard PCR tests, however, take hours to run and are subject to shortages.

Other scientists, like Dr. Zev Williams of Columbia University, are working on variants of rapid saliva tests that, like PCR, detect RNA, but don’t require expensive laboratory machines. His team’s prototype takes 45 minutes. It uses an array of portable equipment, including two tissue-box-size heaters.

That’s too bulky and expensive for at-home testing. But he said the test could be deployed in places where crowds gather. His team has submitted an application for emergency approval from the FDA. In the meantime, they’ve partnered with Sorrento Therapeutics to scale up production.

The Columbia saliva test relies on a technique called LAMP that’s generally faster but a bit less accurate than PCR. The spit sample is briefly boiled and mixed into a cocktail of chemicals that then gets incubated at 145 degrees Fahrenheit for half an hour. The latest data shows the Columbia test performs as well as a laboratory deep-nose swab test more than 96% of the time, even when using saliva from sick patients who gave messy samples.

“Even if there was food or blood, we took it,” Williams said. That wouldn’t fly with most other saliva tests in use, he said, which ban eating, tooth-brushing and even gum chewing for about an hour before.

Another saliva LAMP test is being tested by David O’Connor at the University of Wisconsin-Madison. Their technique bears many similarities to the Columbia test but takes slightly longer and involves extra steps. Early trials have gone well, O’Connor said.

But saliva LAMP tests face their own hurdles. Saliva tends to clump and stick, and can be a difficult substance to handle and transfer from tube to tube, said Jennifer Dien Bard, director of the clinical microbiology and virology laboratory at Children’s Hospital Los Angeles.

“To me,” Dien Bard said, “something like this might still belong in a lab.”

For months, public health experts have been eagerly watching the companies developing spit tests for the coronavirus that could be used at home, producing results in a matter of minutes.

For months, public health experts have been eagerly watching the companies developing spit tests for the coronavirus that could be used at home, producing results in a matter of minutes. If these rapid tests worked, as many news articles have pointed out, they could greatly expand the number of people tested. Some experts have said they could perform as well as a vaccine in curbing the spread of the virus. But so far, the technology is not panning out as some have hoped. E25Bio and OraSure, two companies pursuing rapid at-home coronavirus tests, have abandoned efforts to use saliva in their products. Their tests, which detect pieces of coronavirus proteins called antigens, will for now rely on shallow nose swabs. “If I was placing a bet — which I am, because I’m leading an antigen-based testing company — I would say it’s going to be very difficult for antigen-based testing to work on saliva samples,” said Bobby Brooke Herrera, an E25Bio founder and its chief executive. The notion that the virus sets up shop in the mouth and produces enough antigen to be picked up by today’s technology, he said, “is far-fetched.” The two companies pursued saliva (or “oral fluids,” in the case of OraSure) for months in the hopes of their tests being more comfortable than swabs, some of which go painfully deep into the nose, and less reliant on supply chains that have caused long delays for laboratory tests. “There’s nothing more convenient than spitting in a tube,” said Dr. Valerie Fitzhugh, a pathologist at Rutgers University. But as they continued to tinker with their tests, researchers at both E25Bio and OraSure found saliva’s performance to be more lackluster than anticipated. “This was a result of optimization studies,” said Stephen Tang, OraSure’s chief executive. A saliva antigen test is still theoretically possible, Tang added. But after comparing the amount of coronavirus antigen found in the nostrils and throat, as well as different parts of the mouth, including the cheeks, gums and tongue, “we decided to optimize around the nasal cavity,” he said. Despite a deluge of data on saliva’s benefits, it’s relatively new to the testing scene. No fully government-approved test for a respiratory pathogen has ever used spit. And there’s still no consensus on how well saliva works for detecting the coronavirus, compared with the fluids obtained by nose swabs. Studies comparing the amount of virus in the two sites have produced conflicting results. Spit also differs vastly among people, and can even change over the course of a single day. “We’ve all noticed that there is variable performance,” said Sarah Jung, scientific director of clinical microbiology at Children’s Hospital Colorado. Both E25Bio and OraSure plan to seek authorization from the Food and Drug Administration to sell at-home antigen tests using nose swabs instead of spit, a technique similar to the one used by the Abbott antigen test that takes about 15 minutes. The E25Bio test would require people to swab their nose, stir the sample into a chemical soup, apply the mixture to a paper strip and wait up to half an hour for bands to appear. E25Bio’s test picks up on about 80% of the infections that ultrasensitive laboratory tests detect — the FDA’s bare minimum for a regulatory greenlight. OraSure declined to give any details about its test’s methodology or accuracy. Saliva does seem to be working when used in laboratory tests known as PCR, which look for bits of the virus’s genetic material, or RNA, rather than antigens. PCR tests detect minute amounts of coronavirus RNA, making them far more sensitive than antigen tests. Research teams at Rutgers and Yale have been granted emergency authorization for these spit PCR tests. At the University of Illinois, some 10,000 of the institution’s in-house PCR tests are performed each day on saliva from students, faculty and staff members — roughly 1% of the nation’s daily tests. Standard PCR tests, however, take hours to run and are subject to shortages. Other scientists, like Dr. Zev Williams of Columbia University, are working on variants of rapid saliva tests that, like PCR, detect RNA, but don’t require expensive laboratory machines. His team’s prototype takes 45 minutes. It uses an array of portable equipment, including two tissue-box-size heaters. That’s too bulky and expensive for at-home testing. But he said the test could be deployed in places where crowds gather. His team has submitted an application for emergency approval from the FDA. In the meantime, they’ve partnered with Sorrento Therapeutics to scale up production. The Columbia saliva test relies on a technique called LAMP that’s generally faster but a bit less accurate than PCR. The spit sample is briefly boiled and mixed into a cocktail of chemicals that then gets incubated at 145 degrees Fahrenheit for half an hour. The latest data shows the Columbia test performs as well as a laboratory deep-nose swab test more than 96% of the time, even when using saliva from sick patients who gave messy samples. “Even if there was food or blood, we took it,” Williams said. That wouldn’t fly with most other saliva tests in use, he said, which ban eating, tooth-brushing and even gum chewing for about an hour before. Another saliva LAMP test is being tested by David O’Connor at the University of Wisconsin-Madison. Their technique bears many similarities to the Columbia test but takes slightly longer and involves extra steps. Early trials have gone well, O’Connor said. But saliva LAMP tests face their own hurdles. Saliva tends to clump and stick, and can be a difficult substance to handle and transfer from tube to tube, said Jennifer Dien Bard, director of the clinical microbiology and virology laboratory at Children’s Hospital Los Angeles. “To me,” Dien Bard said, “something like this might still belong in a lab.”

Companies ditch plans for rapid coronavirus spit tests at home

More than half of French nurses are close to burning out, according to a survey of nearly 60,000 of them published on Sunday in the wake of the coronavirus pandemic.

The survey also found they were struggling with cancelled holidays and increased work due to coronavirus.

The survey carried out by the national French nursing union found that 57 per cent of respondents reported being in a "state of professional exhaustion", up from 33 per cent before the global Covid-19 pandemic struck France early in 2020.

The findings underline the strains being felt in the healthcare sector in Europe, which came under unprecedented pressure during the first wave of infections and now faces another surge in admissions.

The results are also likely to increase pressure on the centrist French government of President Emmanuel Macron, with more than a third of nurses saying their departments were understaffed compared to normal.&nbsp;

Two thirds said working conditions have deteriorated since the start of the pandemic.

One in five nurses said they had been unable to take a holiday since March.

"While there are 34,000 vacant nurses' positions at this time in 2020... the degraded working conditions mean we risk seeing even more nurses throwing in the towel," the union said in its statement.

More than half of French nurses are close to burning out, according to a survey of nearly 60,000 of them published on Sunday in the wake of the coronavirus pandemic.

More than half of French nurses are close to burning out, according to a survey of nearly 60,000 of them published on Sunday in the wake of the coronavirus pandemic. The survey also found they were struggling with cancelled holidays and increased work due to coronavirus. The survey carried out by the national French nursing union found that 57 per cent of respondents reported being in a "state of professional exhaustion", up from 33 per cent before the global Covid-19 pandemic struck France early in 2020. The findings underline the strains being felt in the healthcare sector in Europe, which came under unprecedented pressure during the first wave of infections and now faces another surge in admissions. The results are also likely to increase pressure on the centrist French government of President Emmanuel Macron, with more than a third of nurses saying their departments were understaffed compared to normal. Two thirds said working conditions have deteriorated since the start of the pandemic. One in five nurses said they had been unable to take a holiday since March. "While there are 34,000 vacant nurses' positions at this time in 2020... the degraded working conditions mean we risk seeing even more nurses throwing in the towel," the union said in its statement.

More than half of French nurses approaching burn-out, survey says

UK PM Boris Johnson to impose further COVID-19 restrictions

Recent surge in COVID-19 cases in Malaysia has people worried. The health concerns are now taking a toll on local businesses in the country. Watch the report to know more.

Local businesses in Malaysia take the hit due to COVID-19 pandemic

President Donald Trump’s long rants and seemingly erratic behavior last week — which some doctors believe might have been fueled by his use of dexamethasone, a steroid, to treat COVID-19 — renewed a long-simmering debate among national security experts about whether it is time to retire one of the early inventions of the Cold War: the unchecked authority of the president to launch nuclear weapons.

Trump has publicly threatened the use of those weapons only once in his presidency, during his first collision with North Korea in 2017. But it was his decision not to invoke the 25th Amendment and turn control over to Vice President Mike Pence last week that has prompted concern inside and outside the government.

Among those who have long argued for the need to rethink presidents’ “sole authority” powers are the former Defense Secretary William J. Perry, considered the dean of American nuclear strategists, who has cited the fragility of a nuclear-weapons control chain and the fear that it can be subject to errors of judgment or failure to ask the right questions under the pressure of a warning of an incoming attack.

Trump’s critics have long questioned whether his unpredictable statements and contradictions pose a nuclear danger. But the concerns raised last week were somewhat different: whether a president taking mood-altering drugs could determine whether a nuclear alert was a false alarm.

That question is a new one. The military’s Strategic Command often conducts drills that simulate actual but inconclusive evidence that the United States may be under nuclear attack. Such simulations drive home the reality that even a president asking all the right questions could make a mistake. But they rarely simulate what would happen if the president’s judgment was impaired.

“A nuclear crisis can happen at any time,” Tom Z. Collina, the policy director at the Ploughshares Fund, a private group that seeks to defuse nuclear threats, noted last week in an opinion piece. “If such a crisis takes place when a president’s thinking is compromised for any reason,” he added, “the results could be catastrophic.”

Traditionally, presidents have temporarily conveyed authority — including nuclear launch authority — to the vice president when they anticipated being under anesthesia. Ronald Reagan took that step in 1985, and George W. Bush did so in 2002 and 2007. There was no indication that Trump was unconscious, but there was reason to be concerned that the cocktail of drugs he was given could impair his judgment to make the most critical decisions entrusted to a president.

Last week in telephone interviews with Fox News and Fox Business Network, Trump said he was no longer taking experimental medications but was still on dexamethasone, which doctors say can produce euphoria, bursts of energy and even a sense of invulnerability. On Friday, he told Fox News he was off the drug, which he appears to have taken for less than a week.

But during that week, his prolific Twitter activity and rambling interviews led many to question whether the drugs had accentuated his erratic tendencies. His doctors’ refusal to describe with any specificity his condition or treatment only played up the concern.

“The history of obfuscating the medical condition of presidents is as old as the Republic,” said Vipin Narang, a professor at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology who has studied the nuclear command-and-control chain. “The issue here is that the dex” — shorthand for dexamethasone — “can make you paranoid and delusional.”

“We don’t know how much he was given,” Narang said. “And if he gives an order in the middle of the night, and no one is there to stop him, we are dependent on his military aide not to transmit the order or the duty officer at the national military command center to stop it.”

The military’s standard response is that it would carry out a “legal order” after authenticating that it truly came from the president. But that narrow answer does not address the problem that no other senior officials — the secretary of defense, the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff or the commander of Strategic Command, which has responsibility for the nuclear arsenal — are required to sign off.

Government officials refuse to say whether they were taking any special precautions when Trump was taking the drugs. In conversations over the past week, which they would not hold on the record, several pointed to the stories surrounding Richard Nixon’s last days in office in 1974. He was drinking heavily and talking to portraits on the walls, and his aides feared he was emotionally unstable.

His secretary of defense, James Schlesinger, a hawkish cold warrior, said he instructed the military not to react to White House orders on nuclear arms unless they were cleared by him or Secretary of State Henry Kissinger. (Schlesinger died in 2014, and Kissinger, now 97, has said that he had no knowledge of such an arrangement.)

If Schlesinger’s account is true, it was “certainly extralegal,” Narang said. There is no evidence that anyone around Trump, including Pence or Defense Secretary Mark Esper, whom Trump has reportedly frozen out of key decisions, had any enhanced authority while the president was on medication.

The “sole authority” tradition is unusual among the world’s nine nuclear powers; even Russia requires two out of three designated officials to sign off on a nuclear launch. While the Constitution says that only Congress can declare war, the speed of bombers and missiles made clear during the Cold War that there would be no time to convene Congress or mount a defense. As a result, Congress began delegating to the president all powers to use nuclear weapons during Harry Truman’s administration. He is the only president who has ordered a nuclear strike.

Officials from many nations felt the immense pressure surrounding such a decision during a simulation of a launch exercise conducted this year at the Munich Security Conference, the leading gathering of the West’s national security officials. Volunteers donned virtual reality headsets and were put through the head-spinning flow of data that comes in as a president faces a 15-minute window to decide whether to launch ground-based missiles before they are destroyed.

There were tiny hints throughout that suggested there could be a false alarm, but the evidence was muddy.

“The last finger I would want on the nuclear button,” said Hans M. Kristensen, the director of the Nuclear Information Project at the Federation of American Scientists, a private group in Washington, “is that of a president on drugs.”

It is not a new problem: John Kennedy took powerful pain medications, though there is no evidence that his judgment was impaired during the Cuban Missile Crisis, the closest the United States and the Soviet Union came to a nuclear exchange.

But no one understands exactly how the drugs given to Trump interact. And according to scientists, the most common mood enhancements associated with dexamethasone are mania and hypomania, a euphoric state. The hallmarks of hypomania include inflated self-esteem, increased talkativeness, decreased need for sleep, racing thoughts, distractibility and absence of restraint to engage in activities that could invite personal harm.

Not surprisingly, the military imposes strict limitations on the officers who oversee the nation’s nuclear forces. Known as the Personnel Reliability Program, it assures that the authority is vested in people “who demonstrate the highest levels of integrity and dependability” and whose behavior is observed “on a frequent and consistent basis.” A 1991 study said thousands of nuclear personnel were decertified every year.

Peter D. Zimmerman, a physicist and former government arms scientist, said few things better illustrated the confused nature of the American effort to prevent a single individual from launching a nuclear strike than the “two-man rule” in nuclear silos, submarines, bombers and the nation’s coast-to-coast atomic complex.

The rule requires the presence of two authorized people for any step involving access to the armaments or the launching of a nuclear strike. “No unaccompanied person ever approaches a nuclear weapon,” Zimmerman wrote in a 2017 opinion essay. “It’s a basic precaution against theft, misuse or sabotage.”

But it does not apply to the commander in chief, whether in the Oval Office or at Walter Reed National Military Medical Center.

A president could misjudge the situation or become impulsive, Zimmerman noted in an interview. “And the consequences,” he said, “would be horrendous.”

President Donald Trump’s long rants and seemingly erratic behavior last week — which some doctors believe might have been fueled by his use of dexamethasone, a steroid, to treat COVID-19 — renewed a long-simmering debate among national security experts about whether it is time to retire one of the early inventions of the Cold War: the unchecked authority of the president to launch nuclear weapons.

President Donald Trump’s long rants and seemingly erratic behavior last week — which some doctors believe might have been fueled by his use of dexamethasone, a steroid, to treat COVID-19 — renewed a long-simmering debate among national security experts about whether it is time to retire one of the early inventions of the Cold War: the unchecked authority of the president to launch nuclear weapons. Trump has publicly threatened the use of those weapons only once in his presidency, during his first collision with North Korea in 2017. But it was his decision not to invoke the 25th Amendment and turn control over to Vice President Mike Pence last week that has prompted concern inside and outside the government. Among those who have long argued for the need to rethink presidents’ “sole authority” powers are the former Defense Secretary William J. Perry, considered the dean of American nuclear strategists, who has cited the fragility of a nuclear-weapons control chain and the fear that it can be subject to errors of judgment or failure to ask the right questions under the pressure of a warning of an incoming attack. Trump’s critics have long questioned whether his unpredictable statements and contradictions pose a nuclear danger. But the concerns raised last week were somewhat different: whether a president taking mood-altering drugs could determine whether a nuclear alert was a false alarm. That question is a new one. The military’s Strategic Command often conducts drills that simulate actual but inconclusive evidence that the United States may be under nuclear attack. Such simulations drive home the reality that even a president asking all the right questions could make a mistake. But they rarely simulate what would happen if the president’s judgment was impaired. “A nuclear crisis can happen at any time,” Tom Z. Collina, the policy director at the Ploughshares Fund, a private group that seeks to defuse nuclear threats, noted last week in an opinion piece. “If such a crisis takes place when a president’s thinking is compromised for any reason,” he added, “the results could be catastrophic.” Traditionally, presidents have temporarily conveyed authority — including nuclear launch authority — to the vice president when they anticipated being under anesthesia. Ronald Reagan took that step in 1985, and George W. Bush did so in 2002 and 2007. There was no indication that Trump was unconscious, but there was reason to be concerned that the cocktail of drugs he was given could impair his judgment to make the most critical decisions entrusted to a president. Last week in telephone interviews with Fox News and Fox Business Network, Trump said he was no longer taking experimental medications but was still on dexamethasone, which doctors say can produce euphoria, bursts of energy and even a sense of invulnerability. On Friday, he told Fox News he was off the drug, which he appears to have taken for less than a week. But during that week, his prolific Twitter activity and rambling interviews led many to question whether the drugs had accentuated his erratic tendencies. His doctors’ refusal to describe with any specificity his condition or treatment only played up the concern. “The history of obfuscating the medical condition of presidents is as old as the Republic,” said Vipin Narang, a professor at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology who has studied the nuclear command-and-control chain. “The issue here is that the dex” — shorthand for dexamethasone — “can make you paranoid and delusional.” “We don’t know how much he was given,” Narang said. “And if he gives an order in the middle of the night, and no one is there to stop him, we are dependent on his military aide not to transmit the order or the duty officer at the national military command center to stop it.” The military’s standard response is that it would carry out a “legal order” after authenticating that it truly came from the president. But that narrow answer does not address the problem that no other senior officials — the secretary of defense, the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff or the commander of Strategic Command, which has responsibility for the nuclear arsenal — are required to sign off. Government officials refuse to say whether they were taking any special precautions when Trump was taking the drugs. In conversations over the past week, which they would not hold on the record, several pointed to the stories surrounding Richard Nixon’s last days in office in 1974. He was drinking heavily and talking to portraits on the walls, and his aides feared he was emotionally unstable. His secretary of defense, James Schlesinger, a hawkish cold warrior, said he instructed the military not to react to White House orders on nuclear arms unless they were cleared by him or Secretary of State Henry Kissinger. (Schlesinger died in 2014, and Kissinger, now 97, has said that he had no knowledge of such an arrangement.) If Schlesinger’s account is true, it was “certainly extralegal,” Narang said. There is no evidence that anyone around Trump, including Pence or Defense Secretary Mark Esper, whom Trump has reportedly frozen out of key decisions, had any enhanced authority while the president was on medication. The “sole authority” tradition is unusual among the world’s nine nuclear powers; even Russia requires two out of three designated officials to sign off on a nuclear launch. While the Constitution says that only Congress can declare war, the speed of bombers and missiles made clear during the Cold War that there would be no time to convene Congress or mount a defense. As a result, Congress began delegating to the president all powers to use nuclear weapons during Harry Truman’s administration. He is the only president who has ordered a nuclear strike. Officials from many nations felt the immense pressure surrounding such a decision during a simulation of a launch exercise conducted this year at the Munich Security Conference, the leading gathering of the West’s national security officials. Volunteers donned virtual reality headsets and were put through the head-spinning flow of data that comes in as a president faces a 15-minute window to decide whether to launch ground-based missiles before they are destroyed. There were tiny hints throughout that suggested there could be a false alarm, but the evidence was muddy. “The last finger I would want on the nuclear button,” said Hans M. Kristensen, the director of the Nuclear Information Project at the Federation of American Scientists, a private group in Washington, “is that of a president on drugs.” It is not a new problem: John Kennedy took powerful pain medications, though there is no evidence that his judgment was impaired during the Cuban Missile Crisis, the closest the United States and the Soviet Union came to a nuclear exchange. But no one understands exactly how the drugs given to Trump interact. And according to scientists, the most common mood enhancements associated with dexamethasone are mania and hypomania, a euphoric state. The hallmarks of hypomania include inflated self-esteem, increased talkativeness, decreased need for sleep, racing thoughts, distractibility and absence of restraint to engage in activities that could invite personal harm. Not surprisingly, the military imposes strict limitations on the officers who oversee the nation’s nuclear forces. Known as the Personnel Reliability Program, it assures that the authority is vested in people “who demonstrate the highest levels of integrity and dependability” and whose behavior is observed “on a frequent and consistent basis.” A 1991 study said thousands of nuclear personnel were decertified every year. Peter D. Zimmerman, a physicist and former government arms scientist, said few things better illustrated the confused nature of the American effort to prevent a single individual from launching a nuclear strike than the “two-man rule” in nuclear silos, submarines, bombers and the nation’s coast-to-coast atomic complex. The rule requires the presence of two authorized people for any step involving access to the armaments or the launching of a nuclear strike. “No unaccompanied person ever approaches a nuclear weapon,” Zimmerman wrote in a 2017 opinion essay. “It’s a basic precaution against theft, misuse or sabotage.” But it does not apply to the commander in chief, whether in the Oval Office or at Walter Reed National Military Medical Center. A president could misjudge the situation or become impulsive, Zimmerman noted in an interview. “And the consequences,” he said, “would be horrendous.”

Trump’s virus treatment revives questions about unchecked nuclear authority

Vaccine-maker Moderna Inc will soon apply for real-time reviews of its experimental COVID-19 vaccine in Europe, days after the EU health regulator launched rolling reviews of shots from its rivals.

WION Special Story: 10 months of COVID-19, still no vaccine | World News

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