Daily Briefing – 262

Post: Mar. 14, 2021

COVID Update

Governor Cuomo issued a press release yesterday morning providing an overview of New York’s COVID-19 tracking data from Sunday March 14th.

Hospitalization tracking data for the Mid-Hudson region and the rest of the State are below.

Hospitalizations

Patients Currently in Hospital statewide: 4,486
Hospitalizations Mid-Hudson Region: 458

ICU Beds In Use (All Uses)

Occupied ICU Beds Statewide: 4,175
Occupied ICU Beds Mid-Hudson Region: 408

Other Data

Statewide Positivity Rate: 3.15%
Mid-Hudson Positivity Rate: 4.54%

Useful Websites:

Through January, New York Was Still Down 1 Million Jobs

New York’s post-pandemic recovery continued to lag far behind the national average in January, with total private employment in the Empire State remaining a million jobs below the level of a year earlier.

The latest establishment payroll headcount from the state Labor Department—reflecting an important annual “benchmark” re-estimate based on employer unemployment insurance filings—also shows the state’s job count took a bigger dip than originally reported in December, when Governor Cuomo tightened some restrictions in response to a second wave of coronavirus infections. The updated December number was down 1.062 million, reflecting a net loss of nearly 100,000 more jobs that previously estimated.

NYS Vaccine Update – 6.5 Million Doses, 2.26 Million Fully Vaccinated

As of 11 am Sunday 4,416,159 (plus 86,114 from yesterday) New Yorkers have received at least one vaccine dose and 2,264,763 are fully vaccinated (Plus 50,651). In the Hudson Valley 421,118 (plus 7,766) have at least one dose and 214,194 (plus 3,820) are fully vaccinated.

US Passes 100 Million COVID-19 Vaccinations

The United States has passed 100 million vaccine doses administered, a big milestone that shows the pace of the vaccination campaign is accelerating.

The U.S. also set a new record for shots administered in a day on Friday, at 2.9 million, according to the White House, with the seven-day average up to 2.3 million per day. About 35 million people have been fully vaccinated, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, while about 65 million have received at least one dose. Almost 65 percent of people over age 65 have received at least one dose, up from 8 percent when President Biden took office, the White House said.

EU Approves Johnson & Johnson Vaccine

The European Medicines Agency said that the J&J vaccine is safe and effective against Covid-19, and hours later EU authorities formally authorized its use. Distribution is set to begin in the second quarter.

The J&J vaccine has the potential to significantly bolster vaccination drives over time. It can be kept in refrigerators instead of freezers, making it easier to store and distribute than some vaccines already approved, and recipients need only one dose rather than the two administered for other vaccines, often many weeks apart.

Novavax Vaccine 96% Effective Against Original Virus

Novavax Inc’s COVID-19 vaccine was 96% effective in preventing cases caused by the original version of the coronavirus in a late-stage trial conducted in the United Kingdom, the company said on Thursday, moving it a step closer to regulatory approval. The vaccine was 100% effective in preventing serious illness and death.

The vaccine was also about 86% effective in protecting against the more contagious virus variant first discovered and now prevalent in the UK. It was only around 55% effective in a separate, smaller trial in South Africa, where volunteers were primarily exposed to another newer, more contagious variant that is widely circulating there and spreading around the world.

Some Key Details of the American Rescue Plan from PKF O’Conner Davies

The House of Representatives passed a final version of H.R. 1319, the American Rescue Plan Act of 2021 (ARPA), on March 10, 2021. This version of the bill has now passed both the House and Senate and was signed by President Biden on March 11, 2021. Among a broad array of stimulus provisions, the legislation includes an extended timeframe for the employee retention credit through the end of 2021, as well as credits for paid family and sick leave for employees and dependent children. There are also enhancements to the PPP loan program, and additional assistance availability to shuttered venue operators and restaurant businesses.

This article updates their previous article, which covered the original version of the bill before changes were made in the Senate. A brief summary of the tax highlights of ARPA follows.

Onshoring Vaccine Production – Vaccine Nationalism Deepens

The vaccine crunch in Europe has shown that states that depend on deliveries from multinationals can be vulnerable. In January, AstraZeneca cut supplies to the bloc by more than half for the first and second quarters, and told Brussels it was not able to divert Belgian-made drugs that were earmarked for the United Kingdom. The cut heightened tensions between London and Brussels and prompted European leaders to set curbs on exports of vaccines made in the EU – starting this month, when Italy blocked exports of AstraZeneca’s shot.

After these manufacturing setbacks deprived European Union members of drugs made on their own soil there is a push to build domestic capacity. From Australia to Thailand, states planning home-based vaccine plants are starting to reshape the industry.

What You Can and Can’t Do if You’ve Been Vaccinated – What You Need to Know

For now, people who have gotten their shots must navigate decision-making in a world where the vaccinated and unvaccinated will coexist for months, even within the same household.

So what should and shouldn’t you do? The U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention issued guidelines Monday. Fully vaccinated people can gather indoors with others who are also fully vaccinated without taking extra precautions, the CDC said. And vaccinated people may gather with one other unvaccinated family without masks and distancing as long as the unvaccinated members are healthy and aren’t at risk for developing a more serious case of Covid-19. But the CDC urged fully vaccinated people to continue taking precautions in public, and in medium or large private gatherings.

Get the answers at the WSJ

Chronogram Guide to Getting Vaccinated in the Hudson Valley

The River, a publication of Chronogram, partnered up with the healthcare journalism experts at ClearHealthCosts to create a local guide to getting a COVID-19 vaccine in the Hudson Valley and the Catskills. The guide includes the latest official guidelines and criteria from New York State and local governments, and also some insider tips on navigating the process, an interactive map of all of the vaccine sites in the region, and more.

Vaccine information changes all the time. New sites are popping up weekly. New groups of people are becoming eligible. The state’s rules for who can get vaccinated where might change without warning. They’re keeping this guide updated and here is the latest update as of March 12

Read the guide

NAM Global Manufacturing Economic Report

The J.P. Morgan Global Manufacturing PMI picked up from 53.6 in January to 53.9 in February, the fastest pace in three years. Overall, manufacturers remain very upbeat in their outlook for production over the next six months. The index for future output rose to its highest level since May 2014. Supply chain disruptions helped push input prices higher, with raw material costs jumping at the swiftest rate since April 2011.

In February, eight of the top nine markets for U.S.-manufactured goods had expanding manufacturing sectors, up from seven in January. Many markets experienced notable milestones in the PMI data, including Germany (best since January 2018), Japan (best since December 2018), the Netherlands (best since July 2018) and South Korea (best since April 2010). At the other extreme, Mexico contracted at the slowest pace of decline in 11 months.

Global Economic Update 03 2021

The Economist: Biden’s Stimulus is a High-Stakes Gamble for America and the World

When the pandemic struck it was natural to fear that the world economy would stay in the doldrums for years. America is defying such pessimism. Having outrun gloomy growth forecasts from last summer, it is adding fiscal rocket fuel to an already fiery economic-policy mix. President Joe Biden’s $1.9trn stimulus bill takes to nearly $3trn (14% of pre-crisis gdp) the amount of pandemic-related spending passed since December, and to about $6trn the total paid out since the start of the crisis. On current plans the Federal Reserve and Treasury will also pour some $2.5trn into the banking system this year, and interest rates will stay near zero. Mr Biden’s spending will provide welcome relief to those whose lives have been upended—today America is still missing 9.5m jobs. Thanks to extra cash for most parents, the country’s persistent and widespread child poverty will fall dramatically.

Yet, though today’s policymakers have a guaranteed place in economic history, they may not come to be seen as heroes. That is because America is running an unpredictable three-pronged economic experiment that features historic levels of fiscal stimulus, a more tolerant attitude at the Fed towards temporary overshoots in inflation, and huge pent-up savings which no one knows if consumers will hoard or spend. This experiment has no parallel since the second world war. The danger for America and the world is that the economy overheats.

Covid-19 Cases Can be Shaped by Medical Conditions and Demography

Covid-19 threatens everyone, but its risk is concentrated among particular groups of people. To help readers understand how the disease interacts with demography and with other illnesses (“comorbidities”), we have built a statistical risk model, using records in the Covid-19 Research Database from 425,000 people in America who tested positive. For any group of unvaccinated people of a given age, sex and mix of comorbidities, our model estimates the share that would be hospitalized or die within 30 days of a covid-19 diagnosis.

This interactive tool lets you explore the model’s output for any combination of variables. It assumes that comorbidities not selected are not present, even if they often appear together. For example, if you enter only Type 2 diabetes, you will receive an estimate for people with Type 2 diabetes but not hypertension.

This tool is free to use at The Economist

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