New York City targets June 8 reopening date, marking a milestone
New York City on Friday was poised to mark a major milestone in the global coronavirus crisis, with the city targeting June 8 to join other regions in relaxing the restrictions that have throttled the world’s largest economy.
Up until very recently, the Big Apple was considered one of the world’s largest epicenters of the COVID-19 pandemic, which has infected nearly 6 million worldwide and killed over 362,000. In the U.S., more than 1.7 million cases have been reported with more than 101,000 dead.
Yet with hospitalizations and new infections on a down-curve, New York Gov. Andrew Cuomo said the city would begin unwinding stay-at-home orders — among the nation’s strictest — with NYC-based businesses eyeing early June for a return to work. Meanwhile, CNBC reported that Wall Street banking giant Morgan Stanley will allow traders to come back to the office next month.
The developments come as the Centers for Disease Control unveiled wide-ranging office guidelines to prevent new infections, but are seen as having a dramatic impact on workplace culture. Both the CDC and the Empire State’s governor urged citizens to continue wearing masks, and abiding by social distancing measures to prevent further spreading.
“Those simple devices…make all the difference,” Cuomo told reporters on Friday. “Getting 19 million people to do it, that’s what’s hard.”
The U.S. coronavirus death count has surpassed 100,000. (Graphic: David Foster/Yahoo Finance)
More debate over COVID drug treatment
As more pharmaceutical companies rise to the challenge of finding effective COVID-19 treatments and a potential vaccine, new controversy was stirred over hydroxychloroquine, an anti-malarial generic that’s been used in coronavirus trial treatments.
Reuters reported on Friday that Sanofi (SNY) has temporarily stopped recruiting new COVID-19 patients for two clinical trials on hydroxychloroquine, and will no longer supply the drug until concerns about safety are cleared up.
The drug has been the center of a media firestorm, especially after President Donald Trump announced he was using it as a preventative measure. Last week, an article in The Lancet article, a medical journal, prompted the World Health Organization to halt its trials on hydroxychloroquine.
However, that same article — which said the drug was ineffective and deadly — has been questioned by experts, with more than 100 doctors from around the world signing a letter that pushed back on its conclusions.
“The subsequent media headlines have caused considerable concern to participants and patients enrolled in randomized controlled trials…This impact has led many researchers around the world to scrutinize in detail the publication in question. This scrutiny has raised both methodological and data integrity concerns,” the letter said.
It isn’t the first time experts have doubted The Lancet’s conclusions. It also published the results of clinical trials of Gilead Science’s antiviral treatment in China, which were halted due to a lack of sufficient participants. The article stated the treatment, remdesivir, was ineffective.
However, data from the National Institute of Health showed the treatment had a positive effect. Yet even that finding was questioned by some critics who questioned the results.
But even those results from the NIH study had its critics, saying the improvement seen in treated patients was insignificant and detailed data was missing.