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The U.S. death toll from the coronavirus-borne illness COVID-19 climbed above 518,000 on Thursday, as President Joe Biden added his voice to a chorus of outrage over Texas and Mississippi’s decision to reopen their states for business, just as declining case numbers are stalling and public health experts are urging Americans to stick with safety measures.
Texas Gov. Greg Abbott drew a storm of criticism for his decision to end the state’s face-mask mandate, one of the key recommendations of infectious-disease experts to protect against transmission. Biden said that decision was “Neanderthal thinking” and a “big mistake.”
Texas has the third highest death toll from COVID-19 among states after California and New York and has vaccinated only a small percentage of its population. The head of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention has warned several times in the past week against reopening prematurely, warning that the nation is still seeing about 70,000 new cases a day and about 2,000 deaths, as new variants that are far more infectious than the original virus circulate.
The U.S. added at least 66,714 new COVID-19 cases on Wednesday, according to a New York Times tracker, and at least 2,368 people died. The U.S. has averaged 64,409 cases a day for the past week, down 17% from the average two weeks earlier.
The CDC’s vaccine tracker is showing that as of 6.00 a.m. ET Wednesday, 107 million doses had been delivered to states, 80.5 million shots had been administered and 52.9 million Americans had received one or more doses, equal to 15.9% of the population.
In Texas, just 13% of the population has received at least one shot, the data show, while just 7.2% of the population has received two shots, putting the state among the laggards in getting jabs into arms.
Critics charged Abbott with seeking to distract Texans from the recent deadly winter freeze that left millions of people without power. And more companies said they would continue to require customers and employees to wear face masks, despite the lifting of the statewide mandate.
Hewlett Packard Enterprise Co. HPE, -5.46% — whose headquarters was newly relocated to Houston — said its offices in Texas would remain closed to “all but team members performing essential activities for the time being,” as MarketWatch’s Jon Swartz reported.
“Out of an abundance of caution, all safety measures such as masking, distancing and enhanced cleaning that are currently in place at our sites will remain in place,” a company spokeswoman said.“ We will make any appropriate changes to our policies and procedures based on the most current medical guidance available to us.”
Oracle ORCL, -1.49%, which recently moved its headquarters to Austin, declined to comment.
Alerts and web-browser tools can help you book a Covid-19 vaccine appointment. WSJ’s Joanna Stern met up with Kris Slevens, an IT guy who has booked over 300 appointments for New Jersey seniors, to learn the best tricks to compete in the vaccine-booking Hunger Games. Photo illustration: Emil Lendof for The Wall Street Journal
In vaccine news, the European drug regulator said it would start a rolling review of Sputnik V, the Russian vaccine that caused controversy last year when officials started to administer it while it was still being reviewed in late-stage clinical trials.
The European Medicines Agency has come under fire for delays in authorizing vaccines and failing to secure sufficient supplies of those it has authorized. Hungary broke ranks with the trading bloc earlier this year and purchased Sputnik V doses. It was followed by the Czech Republic, which is currently struggling with one of the worst case loads in the world, measured by head of population.
In other news:
• Vir Biotechnology Inc. VIR, -8.46% said the experimental COVID-19 treatment that it’s developing with GlaxoSmithKline GSK, -0.35% may not benefit patients, MarketWatch’s Jaimy Lee reported. The investigational monoclonal antibody therapy was being tested in hospitalized COVID-19 patients in a Phase 3 clinical trial conducted by the National Institutes of Health until an independent safety board recommended that the trial investigators close the study to enrollment at this time, Vir said. “While we are disappointed with the recommendation … we are encouraged by the safety profile of VIR-7831 and by the possibility of a benefit on top of remdesivir and corticosteroids in this advanced cohort of patients,” Vir CEO George Scangos said in a news release. (Remdesivir, which is also called Veklury, was developed by Gilead Sciences Inc. GILD, +1.27% and is the only COVID-19 treatment to have a full Food and Drug Administration approval.
• The Biden administration announced a program aimed at vaccinating an estimated 2 million at-risk people in the U.S. who are 65 years old or older. As part of the Vaccine Community Connectors program, health insurers such as the Blue Cross Blue Shield Association will help to identify people who qualify for the initiative, educate these individuals about the “safety, efficacy, and value” of COVID-19 vaccines, help them schedule appointments to get the vaccine, and then arrange transportation, according to a statement put out by the BCBS and America’s Health Insurance Plans, the trade group for most of the large health insurers in the U.S.
To counter skepticism over its covid-19 vaccine, Russia has built a big public-relations effort at home and abroad. WSJ’s Georgi Kantchev explains why the success of Sputnik V is so important for the Kremlin. Photo: Juan Mabromata/AFP via Getty Images
•Novartis AG NVS, -1.17% and CureVac NV CVAC, -2.67% have reached an agreement for Novartis to help CureVac manufacture its COVID-19 vaccine, which is currently under review by the European Medicines Agency. Novartis expects to make up to 50 million doses of the vaccine by the end of 2021, and up to a further 200 million doses in 2022, at its manufacturing site in Kundl, Austria. CureVac has already reached agreements with other partners to develop, produce and commercialize its vaccine, including with Bayer AG BAYN, +0.43% and GlaxoSmithKline.
• A World Health Organization team investigating the origins of Covid-19 is planning to scrap an interim report on its recent mission to China amid mounting tensions between Beijing and Washington over the investigation and an appeal from one international group of scientists for a new probe, the Wall Street Journal reported. The group of two dozen scientists is calling in an open letter on Thursday for a new international inquiry. They say the WHO team that last month completed a mission to Wuhan — the Chinese city where the first known cases were found — had insufficient access to adequately investigate possible sources of the new coronavirus, including whether it slipped from a laboratory.
• Germany’s vaccine commission has recommended the use of the vaccine developed by AstraZeneca Plc and Oxford University for people over the age of 65, the Guardian reported. The news was announced by health minister Jens Spahn. Belgium announced a similar move on Wednesday after France also approved the vaccine for that age group.
• Many Republican lawmakers have criticized governors’ emergency restrictions since the start of the coronavirus outbreak. Now that most legislatures are back in session, a new type of pushback is taking root: misinformation, the Associated Press reported. In their own comments or by inviting skeptics to testify at legislative hearings, some GOP state lawmakers are using their platform to promote false information about the virus, the steps needed to limit its spread and the vaccines that will pull the nation out of the pandemic. In some cases, the misstatements have faced swift backlash, sometimes being censored online. That’s raised tough questions about how aggressively to combat potentially dangerous misinformation from elected officials or during legislative hearings while protecting free speech and people’s access to government.
Latest tallies
The global tally for confirmed cases of the coronavirus that causes COVID-19 climbed above 115.4 million on Thursday, according to data aggregated by Johns Hopkins University, while the death toll rose above 2.56 million.
About 65 million people have recovered from COVID, the data show.
The U.S. has the highest case tally in the world at 28.8 million and the highest death toll at 518,817.
Brazil has the second highest death toll at 259,271 and is third by cases at 10.7 million.
India is second worldwide in cases with 11.2 million, and fourth in deaths at 157,435.
Mexico has the third highest death toll at 188,044 and 13th highest case tally at 2.1 million.
The U.K. has 4.2 million cases and 124,259 deaths, the highest in Europe and fifth highest in the world.
China, where the virus was first discovered late last year, has had 101,046 confirmed cases and 4,837 deaths, according to its official numbers.
What’s the economy saying?
The number of new applications for U.S. unemployment benefits rose slightly to 745,000 at the end of February, signaling the economy is still a long way from recovering all the jobs lost during the coronavirus pandemic, MarketWatch’s Jeffry Bartash reported.
Initial jobless claims filed traditionally through the states rose by 9,000 to 745,000 in the week ended Feb. 27, the government said Thursday.
Economists surveyed by Dow Jones and The Wall Street Journal had forecast new claims would total a seasonally adjusted 750,000.
Another 436,696 applications for benefits were filed through a temporary federal-relief program.
The claims data has been erratic and unreliable lately owing to fraud, processing problems and bad weather like the freak cold spell in Texas that caused severe power outages and shut down many businesses. New claims in Texas rose sharply last week.
Yet even if the current figures were very accurate, it would show the economy is still suffering major layoffs.
Read now: The highest percentage of workers getting unemployment benefits are in these five states
Separately, the productivity of American workers fell by a revised 4.2% annual rate in the fourth quarter, marking the biggest decline in 39 years, according to the latest government update.
Output, or the amount of goods and services produced, increased by a slightly revised 5.5%, the government said Thursday.
Hours worked tumbled at an annual 10.1% pace, somewhat less than the initial 10.7% estimate.
Productivity is determined by the difference between output and hours worked.
Unit-labor costs jumped by a 6% annual pace in the fourth quarter. Originally the government put the increase at 6.8%.
The Dow Jones Industrial Average DJIA, -1.14% and the S&P 500 SPX, -1.26% were choppy on Thursday.
