COVID-19 Monitor

Last Updated:October 15, 2020

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Federal government rules out adoption of Mila Institute’s COVID-19 contact-tracing app (The Logic) Published on: June 4, 2020 | Category: Canadian Business, Global Response

The federal government has ruled out an endorsement of one of the highest-profile Canadian efforts to develop a COVID-19 contact-tracing smartphone app, The Logic has learned.
The decision against adopting Mila’s app, which is based on the protocols developed by Britain’s National Health Service (NHS), strongly suggests the federal government will instead endorse an app based on Apple and Google exposure notification application programming interface.
Ottawa-based Shopify, which has developed an app based on the two companies’ technology, is arguably the country’s most prominent remaining contender.

Canada’s trade deficit doubled to $3.3B in April as COVID-19 walloped imports and exports (CBC) Published on: June 4, 2020 | Category: Canadian Business, Economic Impact

Exports fell to lowest level in a decade, while imports dropped to lowest since 2011.
“We are really getting hammered with respect to cars and crude,” said Peter Hall, chief economist at Export Development Canada.
The slump in auto and energy exports because of shutdowns was also reflected in Canada-U.S. trade data, where total trade fell by $23.4 billion, representing more than 90 per cent of Canada’s trade activity decline.

Pandemic Could Scar a Generation of Working Mothers (NY Times) Published on: June 4, 2020 | Category: Economic Impact

Working from home has highlighted and compounded the heavier domestic burden borne by women. Now office reopenings may force new career sacrifices.
Day care centers are just starting to reopen, with restrictions, so who will take care of their children?
For many working mothers, the gradual reopening won’t solve their problems, but compound them — forcing them out of the labor force or into part-time jobs while increasing their responsibilities at home.

The pandemic is still gathering pace in most of the world (The Economist) Published on: June 4, 2020 | Category: Global Response

All told, poorer countries account for some three-quarters of the 100,000 or so new cases detected around the world each day.
These numbers are alarming, especially because they are grave underestimates. Poorer countries tend to conduct fewer tests than richer ones, so even more infections and deaths are going uncounted in them.
Their governments tend not to have much money, either. That has prompted the authorities to relax the restrictions they put in place to slow the spread of the disease, to save their citizens from ruin.

The real impact of COVID-19 on income (Cardify) Published on: June 4, 2020 | Category: Economic Impact

Over 60% of Americans experienced a decline in income during the pandemic, both in the form of job losses and salary reductions.
Low income segments of the population were the most likely to suffer a total loss of income (14%). Conversely, high income individuals were at a much higher risk of an income reduction, but were much less likely to suffer total income loss (4%).
The vast majority of income losses arise from salary reductions, not job dismissals. As a result, we believe that looking at unemployment figures to assess the financial health of consumers coming out of COVID-19 is deeply flawed and incomplete.

‘Did I Miss Anything?’: A Man Emerges From a 75-Day Silent Retreat (NY Times) Published on: June 4, 2020 | Category: Leadership

Daniel Thorson went into a silent retreat in mid-March, meditating through 75 coronavirus news cycles, Boris Johnson’s hospitalization, social distancing and sourdough starter.
They compared him to Rip Van Winkle, the fictional character who falls asleep in the Catskills and wakes up 20 years later to discover that his beard is a foot long and the United States is no longer ruled by the British Crown.
It stunned him to discover that the many and various topics that interested him — global warming, electoral politics, the health care system — had been subsumed by a single topic of conversation, the coronavirus.

The quest for a vaccine could restore faith in big pharma (The Economist) Published on: June 4, 2020 | Category: Canadian Business, Global Response

Until the coronavirus, the company barely dabbled in the $60bn-a-year vaccine business. Yet now he is leading the effort not just to create a vaccine, but also to bring big pharma back in from the cold.
Yet it is in the quest for the vaccine that Mr Soriot’s faith in innovation could be most consequential. In April AstraZeneca struck a landmark deal with Oxford University to distribute a potential jab.
Within three weeks it had secured manufacturing capacity for 1bn doses, with the aim of beginning deliveries in September.

The C.D.C. Waited ‘Its Entire Existence for This Moment.’ What Went Wrong? (NY Times) Published on: June 3, 2020 | Category: Global Response

Americans returning from China landed at U.S. airports by the thousands in early February, potential carriers of a deadly virus who had been diverted to a handful of cities for screening by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.
But the effort was frustrated as the C.D.C.’s decades-old notification system delivered information collected at the airports that was riddled with duplicative records, bad phone numbers and incomplete addresses.
When the system went offline in mid-February, briefly halting the flow of passenger data, local officials listened in disbelief on a conference call as the C.D.C. responded to the possibility that infected travelers might slip away.
“Just let them go,” two of the health officials recall being told.

Coronavirus crisis could cause $25tn fossil fuel industry collapse (Guardian) Published on: June 3, 2020 | Category: Canadian Business, Economic Impact

The coronavirus outbreak could trigger a $25tn (£20tn) collapse in the fossil fuel industry by accelerating a terminal decline for the world’s most polluting companies.
The report predicts a 2% decline in demand for fossil fuels every year could cause the future profits of oil, gas and coal companies to collapse from an estimated $39tn to just $14tn.
It follows findings from the International Energy Agency, which forecast the Covid-19 fallout would lead to the most severe plunge in energy demand since the second world war and trigger multidecade lows for the world’s consumption of oil, gas and coal, while renewable energy continued to grow.

Amazon is sued over warehouses after New York worker brings coronavirus home, cousin dies (Reuters) Published on: June 3, 2020 | Category: Canadian Business, Economic Impact

Amazon.com Inc has been sued for allegedly fostering the spread of the coronavirus by mandating unsafe working conditions, causing at least one employee to contract COVID-19, bring it home, and see her cousin die.
The lawsuit said Amazon has made JFK8, which employs about 5,000, a “place of danger” by impeding efforts to stop the coronavirus spreading, boosting productivity at the expense of safety.
The lawsuit seeks an injunction requiring that Amazon comply with worker safety and public nuisance laws, and not punish employees who develop COVID-19 symptoms or are quarantined.

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